Visual voice mail

[patseguin]

I had an iPhone 5s with visual voice mail working and destroyed the phone. I got a brand new one today through insurance and when I press voice mail, instead if going to the list, it disks voice mail. How do I get visual voice mail working again? Carrier was no help.

 

[eyoungren]

I had an iPhone 5s with visual voice mail working and destroyed the phone. I got a brand new one today through insurance and when I press voice mail, instead if going to the list, it disks voice mail. How do I get visual voice mail working again? Carrier was no help.

My understanding is that VM is stored on the phone. I'm not certain it can be backed up to iCloud or with an iTunes backup, but if it can and that was not included in any backup you made prior to replacing your phone, then you will have lost any VM you had because it would have all been on your old phone.

 

[patseguin]

Well first, I think voice mails are stored on a server. Second, I don't care about existing messages, I just want visual voice mail back.

 

[Intell]

For iPhones with visual voicemail, messages are only on the carrier's server until the iPhone has a chance to download it locally. Once it downloads it, there is only one copy on the iPhone itself and it is in the ARM (not the CPU, the audio format like MP3) format. The server's copy is removed and it is not backed up by iTunes. What carrier do you have?

 

[DMaki650]

Well first, I think voice mails are stored on a server. Second, I don't care about existing messages, I just want visual voice mail back.

When I got my iPhone the samething happened to me. I called VM and put in my password when asked and then hung up. Upon tapping VM again brought up Visual Voicemail. It literally took like 15 secs.

 

[Appl3FTW]

i was just talking to an agent about this today.

you should have Visual Voicemail feature on your plan and phone. Ask them to sync your account.

ok here's what they told me. There's one central voicemail server. Either you access it by Regular Voicemail which means you press 1 on your phone, OR Visual Voicemail. Whatever way you access it, Regular Voicemail or Visual Voicemail, you're basically going to the same voicemail server from your provider. Now, if you delete, you're deleting from the server itself. Also, the server only hold saved Regular Voicemails for 30 days. However, I realized that if you do Visual Voicemail, it gets saved in your phone itself. So basically right now, i have Visual Voicemails older than 30 days saved on my phone. If i saved this on my Regular Voicemail, I would've lost em after 30 days grace period.

That being said, you cannot bring old Visual Voicemails from your old phone to the new phone because it is stored in the old phone itself. So in my case, my Visual Voicemails saved from my iphone 5 cannot be transfered to my 5s. i tried back up and it didn't get backed up.

 

[patseguin]

It's AT&T and I've spent a better part of the night talking to 3 different agents to see if any of them could fix it. Still, whenever I press voicemail, it just dials it up instead of going to visual voice mail. I'm finding this quite irritating.

 

[Consultant]

It's AT&T and I've spent a better part of the night talking to 3 different agents to see if any of them could fix it. Still, whenever I press voicemail, it just dials it up instead of going to visual voice mail. I'm finding this quite irritating.

Go to General > Reset > Reset Network Settings

After you do that when you click voice mail you'll get enter passcode prompt.

You have to re-enter all wifi passwords though.

 

[patseguin]

I've reset network settings probably 4-5 times and it helps nothing.

 

[jav6454]

My understanding is that VM is stored on the phone. I'm not certain it can be backed up to iCloud or with an iTunes backup, but if it can and that was not included in any backup you made prior to replacing your phone, then you will have lost any VM you had because it would have all been on your old phone.

No. Visual Voice mail requires carrier back end server services as well. Apple worked with AT&T for 6 months to get this feature up and running.

Remember, VisualVoicemail was one of the many features touted in the original iPhone's release.

 

[Intell]

No. Visual Voice mail requires carrier back end server services as well. Apple worked with AT&T for 6 months to get this feature up and running.

Remember, VisualVoicemail was one of the many features touted in the original iPhone's release.

eyoungren is rather correct in his statement. Visual voicemail works a lot like POP email. Most of the internal services are even named the same as their email counterparts. The iPhone checks its inbox, downloads the voicemail, then stores it locally for playback.

 

[jav6454]

eyoungren is rather correct in his statement. Visual voicemail works a lot like POP email. Most of the internal services are even named the same as their email counterparts. The iPhone checks its inbox, downloads the voicemail, then stores it locally for playback.

True, but like I stated earlier. It requires server services on the carrier end to work. No such service, no VVM support.

 

[Intell]

True, but like I stated earlier. It requires server services on the carrier end to work. No such service, no VVM support.

This thread is about visual voicemail and his recent lack of it on AT&T. Unless there was an outtage, of which none was reported, the service is there and working correctly. Taking into context the thread's first post, eyoungren's statement has no fallacy when using the context of visual voicemail.

 

[eyoungren]

No. Visual Voice mail requires carrier back end server services as well. Apple worked with AT&T for 6 months to get this feature up and running.

Meaning no disrespect, but is this the same for Sprint as well? I know using iFile I can see my saved VM so this is why I assumed it was saved locally.

Remember, VisualVoicemail was one of the many features touted in the original iPhone's release.

Again, meaning no disrespect, but I came in with the iPhone 5. And that's that I waited a year because I wanted to avoid the iPhone 4 and 4s. I've been a Sprint customer (the only carrier I have ever been on) since 1999, so I totally missed the entire introduction of the iPhone on up until the iPhone 5 in 2012. So, my experience with VisualVoicemail is only recent.

EDIT: Note, in the first post I misread the OP to mean that he was not able to access previous voicemail via VisualVoicemail. At the time I hadn't realized that the OP meant the entire thing wasn't working.

 

[jav6454]

Who knows what Sprint does. I am only reporting what is widely known when AT&T and Apple launched the iPhone back in 2007. The framework for VVM did not exist back then. It was entirely created for this sole feature.

Quite the commitment on AT&T's part given that the iPhone could sell well and pay off that investment, or flop and be just a write off.

 

[Intell]

Sprint's VVM follows the more common of the two VVM implementations in that it's of the original 2007 AT&T email type where the message is downloaded onto the iPhone. The other is uncommon and is being phased out by request of Apple and it similar to how Blackberry does email.

 

[eyoungren]

Sprint's VVM follows the more common of the two VVM implementations in that it's of the original 2007 AT&T email type where the message is downloaded onto the iPhone. The other is uncommon and is being phased out by request of Apple and it similar to how Blackberry does email.

Thanks Intell! Good to know!

 

[Michael CM1]

I had the same problem when I got my new iPhone 5S. It took me a few weeks to realize it. Last night I called 611 and got it fixed within maybe 15 minutes. The lady had me turn off and back on cellular data and then I believe did something on her end. I had already reset carrier settings and all the other stuff you've probably read about. Working fine for me now.

 

[patseguin]

I got up this morning and took my phone out of the charger and it was promoting me for my voice mail password. After entering it twice, visual voice mail was active. So either there was an outage or it took a long time to provision.