Weird "greetings" on my iPhone

Very rarely--though still often enough for me to be a little weirded out by it--my iPhone displays some sort of "greeting" messages when I press the sleep button to wake it up.

Here's a screenshot of the most recent one:



There have been other messages that say things like "GOODNIGHT" and "HAPPY VALENTINE'S" I think(?), all in white text with just the "Dismiss" button at the bottom and a blank black background.

It doesn't do anything malicious, in fact it doesn't affect my iPhone at all (at least, not to my knowledge). I was just curious as to what it was and if anyone else was getting these greetings from their iPhone at random times.

TexanMan05 said:

lol! It's a code that someone can use to send messages between iPhones. Someone you know is most likely pranking you. There are a few other threads on the site about it. I would find them for you but I am on my iphone right now.

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Really? I don't really know anyone else with an iPhone, except for my sister... And the messages always seem to be the same. I think I've seen the "SMILE " message twice now, always in the same format...

How do I send the messages?

Tokiopop said:

It's flash SMS. Each carrier has a little 'code' that goes before a text, and it makes that sort of thing appear.

There are a few of these threads on here, the most recent is one where some guys friend sent him one saying "Scanning for Jailbreak".

For O2 UK you have to put *go before your message. Eg "*goScanning Device for Modifications" would appear as "Scanning Device for Modifications on the screen.

It's how they display the "You have £x.xx remaining" messages on PAYG phones after you've sent a text/had a phone call :

Search the forums, someone posted all the message codes for different carriers.

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Wow, thanks. I had no idea you could do this. Only thing left to figure out is who exactly is sending me those messages. Haha...