iMessage Not Working. Tried Everything. Probably iOS5 Bug

[magnus1986]

Hi. I upgraded my iPhone 4 to iOS 5 from the latest iOS 4 version, Everything seems to be working fine except iMessage. It will not work, no matter how hard I try.

Whenever I send an iMessage, it says delivery failed after a long while. If I tap the exclamation mark next to the bubble and select the try again option, I get no progress bar unless I go back to home, lock the phone, unlock and open Messaging again. The progress bar then shows and remains stuck at 90% for a long while before failing again. This happens again and again, no matter how many times I retry. I cannot receive any iMessages either. Every other method is working fine, including tweets, emails and text messages. If I add my own phone number as a contact and send an iMessage, it goes through and shows up in as received too almost instantly.

I have tried with 2 different people for whom it works perfectly when they send iMessages to each other, I have confirmed all settings and methods to be identical. I have confirmed that activation is successful and have reconfirmed my Apple ID and have viewed all details within the configuration options located in the Settings > Messages menu. I have tried over Edge, 3G and Wifi. I have restarted Messaging many times along with turning the iMessages option on and off multiple times. I have tried rebooting the phone and turning iMessages off before and on after and leaving it on during the reboot. I have also tried a factory restore with and without reinstalling my apps on it.

Nothing fixes the problem and I am very frustrated. How can I fix it? Please help.

 

[magnus1986]

Update: I have tried creating a new AppleID and using that. No use.

 

[britboyj]

Obvious question - Have you tried restoring?

 

[magnus1986]

As it says in my original post, i have tried restoring and using iMessage with or without restoring apps from backup, it does not matter. Won't work.

 

[magnus1986]

Update 2: Upon further testing, I can send to myself if I store my phone number but it fails if I store my email address. For others, it fails for both phone numbers and email addresses.


This is almost certainly an AppleID problem. What do you say?

 

[magnus1986]

OK So I have been investigating this and was finally able to get it working and replicate what's happening.

Some WiFi networks mess with the activation process used and the phone does not retry. To get your iMessages working,

1) Turn off WiFi
2) Turn on Cellular Data
3) Turn off iMessage
4) Turn phone off
5) Turn phone on
6) Turn iMessage on
7) Test iMessages
8) Turn WiFi on.

If you do it in that order and allow it to activate over 3G, it works without fail. I have done this twice to make sure and it works and doesn't work when done over 3G and WiFi respectively. Once it has been activated, it works perfectly on both.

Let me know if it works for you!!

 

[kevingoossens]

I have done all of the above!!! Impossible to get it going on 3G, while it works on WiFi, but other people are able to get it over my 3G network apparantly... I'm getting a bit frustrated hahaha - for now it's still all whatsapp for me...

 

[kevingoossens]

OK. I think I found a solution.

I tried all kinds of things like a new apple ID, restoring the phone... activating over 3G and over WiFi... you name it...

After 14 days of scr*w*ng around with imessage I think what I did today solved it... I removed the MMS settings from my carrier. It did look like the imessages over 3G got blocked on an IP or something... the only area where I could find a proxy and IP remotely connected to anything with the 3G settings was at the MMS settings... so I just removed all the MMS settings (I never send photo's that way anyway) and it did the trick... imessage is running like it is supposed to now...