(2013-05-01) Android Group Messaging Broken

Son been complaining about Group Messaging in his Android Galaxy S. 2013-04-01-SonDroppedNexusOneReplacedWithGalaxyS

It turns out this has always been an issue in Android! Or more precisely, SMS was never intended for Group Messaging, but Apple did a non-standard handling, so IPhone users get a nice feature but others can't play along.

Tried Hand Cent but it seems like you need a plugin to handle the Group Messaging any better.

We tried GoSms but he said it's no improvement.

• I think his point was that his friends would all receive individual messages, and then if they replied it would only come to him.
• Maybe he has the settings wrong? Or maybe it's a version issue? Needs to enter an APN for MMS?

Maybe try Pow Wow?

Supposedly this is fixed in Android 4.2. But how long before you can install that without jailbreaking in a non-Nexus phone? Right now just 2% of Android phones have it.

Of course, you could also argue that they should be using group Instant Messaging instead of Text Messaging. I'm going to look into IMessage changes a bit...

• nope, IMessage features only works with IOS/MacOs X devices, if trying to communicate with something else it reverts to stupid SMS.

Of course, they could all just install some other Group Messaging app, but that's not very realistic if he's the only one (and non-hacker kids, like most people, don't care about supporting more-open systems...).

Sept'2014: My HTC One S still only has Android 4.1.1!?!? Looks like that won't change. I wish I had bought a Nexus Four (it came out a few months after I bought the HTC One S). I'm very tempted to dump this thing for a Nexus Five.....

2021: the old problems were solved long ago, but they still haven't fixed the issue where Android takes forever to send an MMS when you're on Wifi.