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iPhone iMessage is terribly unreliable lately

W

wem521

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 17, 2013
4
0
long time reader, first time poster...

Is anyone else having constant issues with iMessage over the last week or so? It's gotten to the point where it's practically unusable. While I have posted this in the iOS 6 forum, since I believe it to be an iOS 6.1.3 issue, it is only happening to my iPhone 5, not my iPad (also running 6.1.3) or Messages.app on the MBP.

iMessages successfully send for some people, not for others. for some, i can receive iMessages, but cannot send them back (forces as SMS, even though the send as SMS toggle is off). Some folks are only "green", meaning SMS only, even though I know they are on iMessage, even at the exact moment where they are iMessaging with others but it won't work with me. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it.

I've tried a number of fixes, which sometimes fix it for a few minutes to an hour, and sometimes not at all... those fixes include:

power off then on, either immediately back on or giving it a few minutes to potentially "unregister" temporarily
airplane mode on then off
hard reset
turn iMessage off then on on iPhone 5
turn iMessage off then on on all devices (iPad, MBP & iPhone)
disable iMessage email addresses so it's phone number only

So far, the best one seems to be the "off then on for all devices" solution, but even that isn't perfect.

I've read some other posts, and it seems some folks are having similar issues, but not identical (ie: can send but not receive, or iMessage just doesn't work period). I was hoping we could get a thread going in one place to see if we can hash this issue out because Apple certainly isn't likely to acknowledge the issue.

Location: NYC & Long Island (although it was happening in California last week too, so I don't think it's necessarily region specific)
Carrier: AT&T (not unlocked/not jailbroken)
Device: iPhone 5

Apple: It just (doesn't) work.

Thanks to anyone who can provide some insight on this, or can just commiserate with me.
 
wem521 said:
long time reader, first time poster...

Is anyone else having constant issues with iMessage over the last week or so? It's gotten to the point where it's practically unusable. While I have posted this in the iOS 6 forum, since I believe it to be an iOS 6.1.3 issue, it is only happening to my iPhone 5, not my iPad (also running 6.1.3) or Messages.app on the MBP.

iMessages successfully send for some people, not for others. for some, i can receive iMessages, but cannot send them back (forces as SMS, even though the send as SMS toggle is off). Some folks are only "green", meaning SMS only, even though I know they are on iMessage, even at the exact moment where they are iMessaging with others but it won't work with me. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it.

I've tried a number of fixes, which sometimes fix it for a few minutes to an hour, and sometimes not at all... those fixes include:

power off then on, either immediately back on or giving it a few minutes to potentially "unregister" temporarily
airplane mode on then off
hard reset
turn iMessage off then on on iPhone 5
turn iMessage off then on on all devices (iPad, MBP & iPhone)
disable iMessage email addresses so it's phone number only

So far, the best one seems to be the "off then on for all devices" solution, but even that isn't perfect.

I've read some other posts, and it seems some folks are having similar issues, but not identical (ie: can send but not receive, or iMessage just doesn't work period). I was hoping we could get a thread going in one place to see if we can hash this issue out because Apple certainly isn't likely to acknowledge the issue.

Location: NYC & Long Island (although it was happening in California last week too, so I don't think it's necessarily region specific)
Carrier: AT&T (not unlocked/not jailbroken)
Device: iPhone 5

Apple: It just (doesn't) work.

Thanks to anyone who can provide some insight on this, or can just commiserate with me.
Click to expand...

It seems apple needs to focus a lot more on their cloud and infrastructure, because imessage seems to be having problems almost every month. Hopefully apple can get this figured out, because imessage usage is only going to increase and these outages just don't look good on apples part.
 
It's been spotty for my wife and I lately as well. Especially for my wife. She just complained about it yesterday.
 
iMessages has definitely been unreliable for us in the Twin Cities for a week or more. Maybe it won't send photos or it won't receive them. One minute my wife's iphone is available for an iMessage the next it's only SMS. Today it's been pretty good but then it decided to finally deliver the same photo three times that a friend unsuccessfully tried to send me over the weekend.

We are now a fully integrated Apple family with many devices. We were drawn to Apple products for their attractiveness, functionality, and reliability. However the past year and a half or so our confidence has really deminished. It doesn't matter how nice the product looks or their functionality promises if it doesn't work reliably.
 
Thanks all. Glad i'm not the only one, though i'm not glad it's such an ongoing issue. I remember having smaller issues over the previous months, but lately it's been worse than ever.

AOL had IM working back in '97 with fewer issues (as I recall), but arguably less demand and no mobile component, nevertheless you get the point. That's not even getting into gChat or BBM, both of which are pretty good in their own rite.
 
iMessages has never been very good for me, but it was terrible at the start and now works most of the time (though a little slow). How come AOL can do this well but not Apple? C'mon, it's a great service on bad servers :(

iCloud has always been good except for the backup and restore, which doesn't seem to work 100% reliably unless you go right next to the wireless switch or router.
 
besides the first outage last week,its been working perfectly here,both on my iPhone 5 and my MBP. I'm in Portugal,Europe so maybe its a location thing?
 
My iPhone 4S' iMessage seems to be working fine. However, my husband's phone will receive my iMessage's but his get sent as texts. This started this morning.

East Central Florida
AT&T

Edited to Add: Now I can't send him an iMessage. Seems to be ok with my other iMessage friends. Odd.
 
Last edited:
I registered just to post a reply as I was googling the iMessage issue as my wife and I have been having trouble for 2-3 or so. Pretty much what everyone else says in the thread. However for me when imessage is down on my iphone its also down on my ipad and Macbook pro. Whats really weird is my iphone is company issued and I have no TXT plan. However when iMessage is down and messages appear green showing SMS only, I can still send them.

Anyone else with the issue jailbroken? I'm still on 6.1. with jailbreak as I use MyWi extensively for work. Are people on 6.1.3 having the same problems?

ATT iPhone 5. 6.1 with Jailbreak.
 
I have syncing issues between my Macbook and iPhone. The Macbook will get some messages and they are usually jumbled up. But I guess that's because my Mac is asleep and I don't have powernap enabled.
 
watchthisspace said:
I have syncing issues between my Macbook and iPhone. The Macbook will get some messages and they are usually jumbled up. But I guess that's because my Mac is asleep and I don't have powernap enabled.
Click to expand...

Oh yea that happens to me too, I've just accepted that as reality. Never thought it had anything to do with sleeping the laptop during the day. I'm gonna try to keep my computer awake for a couple days and see what happens, then see if my MBP is power nap compatible. Good advice!

Also, iMessage seems better today, but I haven't reenabled my email address on it yet, just phone number... Not sure it really matters anyways.
 
I guess it's because I'm using iOS 5, but whenever someone sends me an iMessage, I get two copies of the same message - one as an iMessage and one as SMS.
 
Its been unreliable for the past two weeks, that is in addition to the Facetime problems as well. I hope they get their act together.
 
Same here in the UK....It sends about 2 out of 10...then offers to either send as text or email...It's been flaky for over a week now...I guess complaining won't get us anywhere...It's not like we pay for it....Super annoying though...:mad:
 
wem521 said:
long time reader, first time poster...

Is anyone else having constant issues with iMessage over the last week or so? It's gotten to the point where it's practically unusable. While I have posted this in the iOS 6 forum, since I believe it to be an iOS 6.1.3 issue, it is only happening to my iPhone 5, not my iPad (also running 6.1.3) or Messages.app on the MBP.

iMessages successfully send for some people, not for others. for some, i can receive iMessages, but cannot send them back (forces as SMS, even though the send as SMS toggle is off). Some folks are only "green", meaning SMS only, even though I know they are on iMessage, even at the exact moment where they are iMessaging with others but it won't work with me. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it.

I've tried a number of fixes, which sometimes fix it for a few minutes to an hour, and sometimes not at all... those fixes include:

power off then on, either immediately back on or giving it a few minutes to potentially "unregister" temporarily
airplane mode on then off
hard reset
turn iMessage off then on on iPhone 5
turn iMessage off then on on all devices (iPad, MBP & iPhone)
disable iMessage email addresses so it's phone number only

So far, the best one seems to be the "off then on for all devices" solution, but even that isn't perfect.

I've read some other posts, and it seems some folks are having similar issues, but not identical (ie: can send but not receive, or iMessage just doesn't work period). I was hoping we could get a thread going in one place to see if we can hash this issue out because Apple certainly isn't likely to acknowledge the issue.

Location: NYC & Long Island (although it was happening in California last week too, so I don't think it's necessarily region specific)
Carrier: AT&T (not unlocked/not jailbroken)
Device: iPhone 5

Apple: It just (doesn't) work.

Thanks to anyone who can provide some insight on this, or can just commiserate with me.
Click to expand...

I have found the fix for this. Start a FaceTime call with an iPhone you're having an iMessage issue with, after you complete a call your iPhone it will now see that you're starting a conversation with another iPhone and iMessage will take over.
 
I get a ton of problems with iMessage, not nearly as bad as you but it takes forever to send while it'll be in the exact same spot as usual, sometimes things go really quickly on the sending bar then it just stops and never sends, lots of annoying glitches, but (for some reason) I think that it actually has done it LESS for me after I jailbroke. (coincidence?)
 
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