Help Garbled text messages? . . . ?t?e?x?t?

[dpaultx]

Last week I ran across a CraigsList bargain on a slightly used Optimus V and upgraded to it from my nearly 7 month old Intercept. The OV had a clean ESN, a fresh factory reset and a brand new blank 4GB SD card and after doing a phone-swap on my VM account everything came right up and worked perfectly.

I reloaded, from the Market, all of the apps that I had been using on the Intercept including the GO_SMS messaging app. I did a backup of all my SMS messages on the Intercept, moved those backups to the OV, restored them to the new GO_SMS app on the OV, and everything was working just fine.

Over the next couple of days I sent and received maybe fifty text messages, mostly between myself, my wife, and my son, with no problems whatsoever.

Then, on Friday night, my son and I had traded about a dozen texts concerning an item he had purchased on eBay, when for some unknown reason, my OV sent a garbled text messages to his phone. He's on an iPhone4 with AT&T if that makes any difference.

This is the message that I sent him;

You should probably "ask the seller a question

 

[mkbkr1]

This issue has been reported several times in different threads and forums. They all have one common link, texting between VM and ATT. Seems to be an issue with the way two communicate to each other. Not much you can do about it on your end.

 

[m-cman]

iPhone does not support as many characters as Android. I had the same problem sending the degree symbol from my V to my friends iPhone 4. If iPhone does not support the character you get the ? marks. You need to look at the message carefully and see what character he might not have on his keyboard.

 

[dpaultx]

You need to look at the message carefully and see what character he might not have on his keyboard.

Thanks for the suggestion m-cman . . . After looking a little closer at the phrase

"ask the seller a question“

I do notice that the closing quotation mark is indeed not a normal quote sign but is a backwards quote sign. Would that one errant character be enough to render the entire text string questionable in the eyes of the iPhone?

 

[mkbkr1]

Well it is an iphone

 

[m-cman]

Thanks for the suggestion m-cman . . . After looking a little closer at the phrase



I do notice that the closing quotation mark is indeed not a normal quote sign but is a backwards quote sign. Would that one errant character be enough to render the entire text string questionable in the eyes of the iPhone?

That is probably the problem. For some reason iPhone does not support a bunch of the weird/unusual characters Android does. It only takes one unrecognizabe character to cause the ? mess.

 

[cutterjohn]

Thanks for the suggestion m-cman . . . After looking a little closer at the phrase



I do notice that the closing quotation mark is indeed not a normal quote sign but is a backwards quote sign. Would that one errant character be enough to render the entire text string questionable in the eyes of the iPhone?

Pontifex Maximus Stevie hath decreed the character set that shall be used by and only those characters shall display correctly, anything else is a sin against the holy church of Apple...

Seriously? You have an OV and your sone has an iPhone4?!

 

[dpaultx]

Seriously? You have an OV and your sone has an iPhone4?!

Yup . . . He needs it for his job as Production Coordinator of one of those canned FM radio stations. He can actually run most of the station, long distance, from his phone. I suppose he could do the same thing with an Android phone, but the station pays for the iPhone.

And me . . . I'm just a cheap old fart who hates the telephone anyway. Up until last December I carried a Tracphone in my car and rarely ever even turned it on.

 

[cutterjohn]

Yup . . . He needs it for his job as Production Coordinator of one of those canned FM radio stations. He can actually run most of the station, long distance, from his phone. I suppose he could do the same thing with an Android phone, but the station pays for the iPhone.

And me . . . I'm just a cheap old fart who hates the telephone anyway. Up until last December I carried a Tracphone in my car and rarely ever even turned it on.

Heh. Gotcha. I hate phones as well, but after years of doing without and stumbling across the OV and VMUSA $25 plan. I had already decided that I really should get one in case of emergency, but wanted a smart phone(preferably Android) and so jumped onboard... I'm MUCH happier with the Triumph though. The screen just has so much more realestate size and pixelwise as to me the OV was next to useless for browsing but OK for most other things excepting it's teeny tiny onboard storage...

Won't help at all with the texting problem other than limiting yourself to the basic set... I'd suggest jailbreak the iPhone and add some fonts, but since he uses it for work he probably shouldn't muck with it...