TextMessaging -- Engadget Mobile

TextMessaging posts

HTC Hero having intermittent text messaging problems?

by Donald Melanson posted Oct 26th 2009 @ 3:38PM

There's not exactly much in the way of official statements on the matter just yet, but it looks like support forums have been piling up with reports of text messaging problems on the HTC Hero over the past few weeks, and with no signs of a fix in sight. Apparently, the phone can send texts just fine, but runs into a little trouble when it comes to receiving 'em, with most folks reporting only intermittent problems, and at least some not receiving any at all. Interestingly, the problem seems to be occurring in both the US and the UK, so it would seem to be a problem on the phone's end and not the carrier's, and a few people seem to have had some (brief) success after resetting the device. Of course, there are also plenty of folks having no problems at all, but there doesn't seem to be any question that the issue is out there. So, have you been missing some texts on your Hero? Let us know in comments.

Head of Roman Catholic Church in England warns against the dangers of SMS, email, and social networking

by Joshua Topolsky posted Aug 2nd 2009 @ 11:58AM

In case you haven't been apprised of the situation, your addiction to texting and email is ruining your relationship... with god. According to Vincent Nichols, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, modern friendships built around (or involving) heavy SMS volley, electronic mail correspondences, and social networking sites create "transient relationships" which put users at the risk of suicide. Yes, suicide. According to the British man of the cloth, using electronic communication to build friendships is causing humanity to lose "the ability to build interpersonal communication that's necessary for living together." Sure, it may sound like heavy FUD talk, but there is sense in some of his points. For instance, the Archbishop of Westminster believes that social networking sites encourage people to concentrate on their number of friends rather than build actual relationships, and they tend to view that number as a commodity. Anyone who's seen the growth of Facebook and MySpace shouldn't have trouble making that connection, but when it comes to SMS and email, your friendship has likely moved on, and lumping that kind of one-to-one communication in with the broad relationships of social networking sites seems like an unfair characterization. We put the question to our typically calm and even-keeled commenter community -- are we doomed, or what?

SMS vulnerability on iPhone to be revealed today, still isn't patched

by Chris Ziegler posted Jul 30th 2009 @ 3:29AM

Remember that alleged SMS-based security hole on the iPhone allowing evil-doers to execute arbitrary code and do all sorts of nasty crap like create an army of mobile zombies ready and willing to execute a DoS attack? The guy who found it, security expert Charlie Miller, said that he'd reveal the details of it at Black Hat -- and Black Hat's this week. Sure enough, Miller and his cohorts plan to unleash details of the hack today, and while they claim they informed Apple of the problem over a month ago, Cupertino's yet to make a move. We'd stop short of suggesting iPhone owners all turn off their handsets and take themselves firmly off the grid and into a completely disconnected underground bunker the moment the attack becomes public, but if it's as serious as Miller claims, it definitely bumps up the pressure on Apple to get a fix out on the double -- preferably before 3.1 drops.

Apple dreaming of object identification, new messaging UI in iPhone OS patent

by Darren Murph posted Jul 9th 2009 @ 12:29PM

Seriously Apple, what's up with the patent application bender? Over the past week, we've seen a whole gaggle of new apps, though the latest few just might be the most intriguing. In essence, Apple engineers have outlined plans to integrate object recognition, face detection / recognition, a text message filter (for the parents, you know) and a new, smarter messaging interface that could remind you of unread messages before allowing you to make a call and spout off unnecessarily. Moreover, we're told of a new voice output selection that could enable Oprah or Cookie Monster to read your turn-by-turn directions, bedtime stories or recipes. Suddenly, iPhone OS 3.0 feels so... antediluvian.

[Via Unwired View]

Read - Unread messages application
Read - New messaging interface application
Read - Face detection application

Apple patching nasty iPhone SMS vulnerability

by Darren Murph posted Jul 2nd 2009 @ 1:01PM

Given the hype surrounding Apple's iPhone, we're actually surprised that we haven't seen more holes to plug over the years. In fact, the last major iPhone exploit to take the world by storm happened right around this time two years ago, and now -- thanks to OS X security expert Charlie Miller -- we're seeing yet another come to light. Over at the SyScan conference in Singapore, Mr. Miller disclosed a hole that would let attackers "run software code on the phone that is sent by SMS over a mobile operator's network in order to monitor the location of the phone using GPS, turn on the phone's microphone to eavesdrop on conversations, or make the phone join a distributed denial of service attack or a botnet." Charlie's planning to detail the vulnerability in full at the upcoming Black Hat conference, but Apple's hoping to have it all patched up by the end of this month.

[Via HotHardware]

California girl claims to have burned through over 300,000 texts in a single month

by Chris Ziegler posted May 7th 2009 @ 5:47PM

A 217,000-message record attempt nearly cost one dude $26 grand, which probably would've really bummed him out had he realized that the record attempt was going to be shattered -- seemingly -- just a few weeks later. A California teenager by the name of Crystal Wiski has apparently sent and received a mind-numbing 303,398 texts in a single month on an iPhone, and the most amazing thing about it is that she doesn't seem to have been gunning for a record on purpose. Her reason? "I am popular, I can't help it." It's not totally clear to us how 300,000-plus texts is biologically or technologically possible for a human / iPhone combination, especially without sending meaningless, one-letter texts to random contacts -- but then again, teenagers do strange, amazing things. Live the dream, Crystal.

[Via CNET]

Boost Mobile says SMS bottleneck to clear up by May 7th

by Ross Miller posted May 4th 2009 @ 6:21PM

So Boost Mobile's $50 per month free for all hasn't gone exactly as planned, with a surge in the carrier's customer base exacerbating excessive text message delays that have been known to plague Boost and Nextel in the past. The house of "Where You At" has acknowledged the issue, with spokesperson John Votava telling the Wall Street Journal there'll be a fix in place specifically by May 7th. He said the number of new customers that have signed up has overwhelmed the company, and with SMS a still growing trend, that iDEN network's gonna have to either get in better shape or wait for enough frustrated customers to leave and reach a more stable equilibrium.

Texting goes to hell in a handbasket on Boost; Seidenberg vindicated?

by Chris Ziegler posted May 1st 2009 @ 6:07PM

The knee-jerk reaction to Verizon chief Ivan Seidenberg's recent inflammatory interview -- saying he doesn't know "what Sprint thinks it is" in response to Boost's blowout $50 all-you-can-eat calling and texting plan -- was to call him out for slamming competition (because, let's be real, no one likes executives hating on affordable stuff). His belief was that Sprint simply didn't have the network capacity to support a plan priced that aggressively because it'd bring too many new subscribers on board, and drama over on the iDEN airwaves suggests he may not have been too far off the mark. Boost resellers and customers alike are apparently experiencing insane text messaging delays -- sometimes several hours' worth between sending and receiving -- that are rendering the service useless, and while voice and push-to-talk are still said to be performing flawlessly, a strong swing toward messaging in the past 18 months across all US carriers (along with the upcoming launch of the Clutch) puts the spotlight squarely on the problem.

Texting has never been iDEN's strong suit; it's simply not what the network was originally built to do, and when we approached Boost about this at CTIA earlier this year, we were told that the situation was under control. A company spokesperson says that they're working around the clock to get the delays resolved and expect to have it smoothed out by next week -- but with the $50 plan continuing to win conquest subscribers hand over fist and a network that's being stressed in ways it's never been stressed before, we have to wonder: is this every going to be fully resolved? Even more importantly, though, with Boost's pricing undercutting its national-level competition by a country mile, do they even have to fully resolve it to keep customers on board?

[Via mocoNews]

Nokia bringing Mobile-XL's SMS-based XLBrowser to African mobiles

by Darren Murph posted Feb 16th 2009 @ 7:59PM

In an effort to bring the wonders of the world wide web to more remote locations, Nokia is teaming with Mobile-XL in order to pre-load handsets with the latter company's XLBrowser. Unlike traditional mobile browsers, this one relies on SMS technology in order to deliver "useful information, such as news, currency conversion, finance information and games." The software was designed to bring snippets of the web to handsets where internet, WAP and GPRS services are "slow, limited, and unreliable." We're told that a "select series" of Nokia handsets shipping to Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania will be equipped with said browser starting as early as next month, though there's no indication of exactly which phones will have it and which will not. Oh, and you should definitely opt for an unlimited messaging plan should you choose to take advantage here. Just sayin'.

[Via mocoNews]

Nokia issues SMS Cleaner to cure 'Curse of Silence' bug

by Darren Murph posted Jan 29th 2009 @ 8:08PM

If your Nokia S60 handset has been stricken by the oh-so-cold 'Curse of Silence,' you'll probably want to pay attention here. Nokia has just loosed the SMS Cleaner on the world, not even a full month after the aforementioned exploit arrived on the scene. The handset maker claims that the application can "clean a Nokia S60 3rd Edition (Initial or Feature Pack 1) based device, which may have received a so called 'Curse of Silence' SMS message, and thereby restricted from receiving any new SMS messages." Installation looks to be pretty straightforward, and the file itself weighs in at a shockingly light 42KB. The read link's where it's all at, so head on down and get your sure-to-be-brief download on.

[Via IntoMobile]

Rogers Wireless $20 Value Pack adds unlimited text messaging

by Darren Murph posted Jan 25th 2009 @ 10:10AM

Nothing too exceptional here, but the texters in attendance should certainly have a listen. Just a week after Rogers Wireless launched two new unlimited packs for BlackBerry users, the Canadian carrier has upgraded the $20 Value Pack (for standard handsets) to include unlimited texting, up from 2,500 previously. Like we said, nothing too incredible -- unless you've been burned of late for sending over 2,500 texts in a month.

kwiry adds TiVo scheduling, social networking support

by Darren Murph posted Jan 14th 2009 @ 2:20PM

kwiry's been helping texters remember things for well over a year, and now it's about to help them schedule TiVo recordings and update their Facebook / Twitter statuses. A few new kwiry shortcuts have been announced to make the lives of text messaging fiends more enjoyable, with a one-time account link between your handset and your TiVo Series2 / Series3 enabling a "tivo 30 Rock" SMS to trigger that very action. Additionally, users can now tap into Yelp and email contact information on the go, and as always, the service is completely free to end users. Hear that? Free.

[Via CNET]

Girl texts 14,258 times in a month, has sore fingers, and only 3 friends

by Sean Cooper posted Jan 13th 2009 @ 11:50PM

In December, Reina Hardesty sent 14,258 text messages, which works out to 470 a day, or one every two minutes. Father Hardesty -- he's not a priest, we just don't happen to know his full name -- apparently caught on to his daughter's madness when he received a 440-page bill from AT&T, which, we're really hoping, was the electronic kind. This story does have a happy ending, mind you: the parents had wisely opted for unlimited texting for the youngster and have now applied an electronic muzzle on her texting after dinner.

O2 sees a record 166 million text messages fly during New Year's celebration

by Darren Murph posted Jan 3rd 2009 @ 5:07PM

If Americans really send twice as many text messages as Europeans, we'd hate to see the figures from the Big 4 here in the States. According to O2 UK, a record 166 million text messages were sent over its network in a 24-hour period that ended at 7:30AM on January 1, 2009. For those not exactly near their abacus, that breaks down to around 1,900 messages per second. Furthermore, over 16 million texts were saved by O2 subscribers using its own Bluebook backup service, though we can't imagine "HNY09!one1!1" messages being all that compelling to revisit, say, every day after 01/01/09.

[Image courtesy of Israelity]

'Curse of Silence' exploit squelches inbound SMS/MMS to Nokia S60 devices

by Ross Miller posted Dec 31st 2008 @ 10:37AM

Here's an odd one for you. Tobias Engel of the Chaos Communication Congress has discovered a rather nasty exploit that'll cause any Nokia S60 devices running versions 2.6, 2.8, 3.0 or 3.1 to stop receiving SMS and MMS messages. The "Curse of Silence," which has been independently verified by F-Secure, is triggered by sending an SMS that begins with an email address that's at least 32 characters long. The attacker must also change the protocol identifier to internet electronic mail before sending. Devices with versions 2.8 and 3.1 lock up after 11 such messages and still have some limited receiving capabilities, while 2.6 and 3.0 devices will go completely mum after just one attack. In both cases a factory reset is required to fix it, and he says there is no other known workaround for the user. We don't imagine this being a pervasive issue, but if you've got any tech-savvy enemies or malevolent pranksters in your life, you've been warned. Video demonstration is after the break, or hit up the read link to see if your device is among those listed at risk.

[Via Hack a Day]

Read - Vulnerability Advisory
Read - F-Secure Verification

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