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iPhone 3Gs Text Stress Test

millertime021

millertime021

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 28, 2010
640
0
AZ
So a few months back, a coworker and I were curious how the iPhone text message badge would handle large numbers of text messages and how the phone would react.

Basically, my coworker wrote up a program to send texts to my phone via email. (Fun fact, gmail only allows 500 sent messages a day ;))

After a few weeks of spamming my phone, it felt like my phone was getting slower with the crazy amounts of unread texts. So anyway, here are the pics.

iPhone was running 3.1.2 (maybe 3.1.3)

As you can see, it craps out after 9,999. Even 10302 would look like 10...2.
 

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You have inspired me to write an applescript to test how long it'll take for my iPhone 4 to slow down. Luckily I have more than enough gmail accounts to get this done in a matter of days if not hours.
 
Sadly, it's Windows based so I can run it on my MBP; I had to use my desktop PC.

Basically, it has a real simple interface:

email:
email password:
Recipient email: phonenumber@txt.att.net
Subject:
Body:
Number of times to be sent:

It works wonders for people trying to prank you. It's a great way to get them back. It locks up old phones due to the stream of alerts and for iPhone users, it makes it almost unusable due to that stupid popup box.

I'll get more details in a sec. I have to go look at it as it's been a while.
 
ROFL.. just think if you messed up your account and didn't have unlimited texts! lol

Interesting experiment.
 
SDub90 said:
You have inspired me to write an applescript to test how long it'll take for my iPhone 4 to slow down. Luckily I have more than enough gmail accounts to get this done in a matter of days if not hours.
Click to expand...

Do it, post some results. I didn't feel much lag on my 3Gs until a few thousand texts had been received. Then when I'd open apps, I could feel some lag while using them. Also, the OS just felt bogged down.
 
Wow, doesn't show 10,000? Apple is going severely down hill, this is arguably worse than the antenna issue, unbelievable
 
jlake02 said:
ROFL.. just think if you messed up your account and didn't have unlimited texts! lol

Interesting experiment.
Click to expand...

I have unlimited :D
and I only sent just over 13k that month. Since it was started halfway between cycles. I've sent just under 13k normally, so I wasn't concerned haha

but now its a more reasonable 1500 or so.
 
Can't wait to see what happens when I charge my phone once the battery dies. Over 100 emailed text messages sent to my phone and down 1% so far.
 
Code: 
repeat 1000 times
	set mail_dest to "XXXXXXXXXX@mms.att.net"
	delay 1
	set subj to "SMS Script"
	delay 1
	set the_content to "Hello!"
	delay 1
	set from_acct to "MYEMAIL@ACCOUNT.TLD"
	delay 1
	tell application "Mail"
		set theNewMessage to make new outgoing message with properties {sender:from_acct, subject:subj, content:the_content, visible:true}
		delay 2
		tell theNewMessage
			make new to recipient at end of to recipients with properties {address:mail_dest}
			delay 2
			send
			delay 15
		end tell
		delay 5
	end tell
	delay 10
end repeat

I have a bunch of these open with different "from" email accounts, [ignore]but I can't remember exactly how to change the "from" email address correctly. It seems to launch mail with the correct address the first time, but then stays with whichever opened mail first.[/ignore]

I'll probably just turn on my old home server so I can send unlimited amounts of emails later.

I had to unlock my phone at around 600 messages and a lot were marked as read. I'm going to start over when I go to bed I guess.


edit: fixed it :)
 
At first, I had the issue of accidentally opening a few hundred. However, when I started using the number@txt.att.net, it would send each one as a new thread of messages and then overlap every couple of hundred.

Basically, I had to wipe my phone and restore once I finished. Luckily I had prepared to do just that. :cool:
 
I had a little under 4,000 messages as of this morning and I do not notice any change in performance (see below for the exception to this). If there is any speed change, then it's probably negligible. It may take an extra half second to open the messages app, but that I'm not even sure of. Couldn't let it keep running all day, but I'll let it run some more this weekend.

Here's what I did notice though:

After a while I stopped receiving messages (at about 100 or so within a short period of time) and then I wouldn't receive another message for another half hour, during this half hour I would get a message every second and I would lose service for about 10-20 seconds.
 
Can someone post the windows version and how to use it :) This is perfect for messing with my friends.
 
This is actually pretty dangerous: sending massive amounts of texts to a phone user is pretty much sending them a DoS attack. The user's phone will be unusable while it is being pummeled with texts, and if they don't have unlimited texts, then damn, you just cost them a whole lot of money.
 
winninganthem said:
This is actually pretty dangerous: sending massive amounts of texts to a phone user is pretty much sending them a DoS attack. The user's phone will be unusable while it is being pummeled with texts, and if they don't have unlimited texts, then damn, you just cost them a whole lot of money.
Click to expand...

Kinda like "jumping off a cliff" dangerous? Or more like "actually not that dangerous" dangerous
 
Lostanddamned said:
That is really odd, as you aren't actually "using" anything - simply receiving something. They wouldn't ask you to pay for incoming calls would they?
Click to expand...

yea they actually would, if you use all of your monthly minutes, and don't have any rollover minutes, it will cost you 45 cents per minute (incoming or outgoing)
 
Simgar988 said:
Kinda like "jumping off a cliff" dangerous? Or more like "actually not that dangerous" dangerous
Click to expand...

I think it's very dangerous because someone malicious using that program could cause another user's cellphone to become inoperable. Sending a concentrated burst of texts at once is the same as a Denial of Service attack; in other words, it's the same as spamming a cellphone to death.

Furthermore, the user will incur heavy overage fees if they don't have an unlimited plan. AT&T would probably waive the fees for you if they see that they all were sent with malicious intent, but I think that they should definitely take measures to ensure that they only way to send and receive an SMS is through a cellphone.

OP I don't mean to demean your script or anything like that, I just thought that the idea of sending a text via email using a script is potentially dangerous.
 
One of my email accounts I don't really use / check. It's a throw away account full of spam that's been collecting for years. That STILL has less than 10,000 unread messages.
 
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