Apps Max timestamp between messages for threading

[tareqhs]

Hi all,

Does anyone know what's the maximum timestamp difference between SMS messages from the same sender Android uses for threading?
I need to know for applying threading to the 800+ SMSs I'm importing into my Android device... flat messages looked horrible

Thank you

 

[28064212]

As far as I know, there isn't one. All messages from the one sender are grouped together. There's threads on mine with 5 months between messages

 

[tareqhs]

What the .. !!!

My method was to put a max diff of 6 hours... 5 MONTHS !!!
My android device is still new and most of the SMSs I have received are from frequent contacts
I'm staying with time diff way..

Thanks for the reply..

 

[28064212]

Not sure I'm understanding you right. Are you saying that if you receive two messages from the same sender that are more than 6 hours apart, they should be in different threads? Why?

 

[tareqhs]

I mean Android should group sequential messages into a thread only if they are not far from each in time. This makes more sense.. a thread should group messages which are direct replies to each other (like forum posts)...

After all in Android's message database sms and threads are two different tables and the application doesn't scrumble when there are several threads from the same contact, tested it.

Maybe they should enable users to decide about that through settings. I'll try suggesting this in their site

Actually I have several complaints about the built-in messaging application!

 

[28064212]

I'm sure it's possible, but can't ever see Google adding it as an option to their app, it sounds like a horrible way to organise messages. What's the advantage? Why would I want more than one thread associated with a sender?

 

[KeithG]

I'm sure it's possible, but can't ever see Google adding it as an option to their app, it sounds like a horrible way to organise messages. What's the advantage? Why would I want more than one thread associated with a sender?

The use case tareqhs is envisioning necessitates looking at the message stream as converstations instead of discrete unconnected messages. Where the threading model has a semantic component (time between bursts) as the conversation delimiter.

Its something that could be also done for GTalk, however the interface would probably need to change to have an intuitive view of how the data is being structured.

@tareqhs, you should suggest it as a feature request the worst they can do is say WONTIMPLEMENT .. and you can go write your own

 

[tareqhs]

I'm sure it's possible, but can't ever see Google adding it as an option to their app, it sounds like a horrible way to organise messages. What's the advantage? Why would I want more than one thread associated with a sender?

If you are correct about google not adding such setting this might be due to their principle of minimalism against the user. But what I'm suggesting has an effect only on the developer side.

Why would they do that? imagine Gmail threads change so that they become like Android's: all emails from a sender are threaded. Is that good? wouldn't it be better if actually Android's threads become like Gmail's ??

The use case tareqhs is envisioning necessitates looking at the message stream as converstations instead of discrete unconnected messages. Where the threading model has a semantic component (time between bursts) as the conversation delimiter.

Its something that could be also done for GTalk, however the interface would probably need to change to have an intuitive view of how the data is being structured.

@tareqhs, you should suggest it as a feature request the worst they can do is say WONTIMPLEMENT .. and you can go write your own

Right
BTW implementing this isn't any harder than adding a condition to an if-else clause as I noticed.. a small code patch might be enough.
The only problem is that SMS messages contain almost no data other than content, sender and timestap. This isn't always reliable for forming a thread. In emails for example a direct reply is clearly indicated by preceding lines with '>'...
Who knows they might go crazy and accept it

 

[28064212]

Why would they do that? imagine Gmail threads change so that they become like Android's: all emails from a sender are threaded. Is that good? wouldn't it be better if actually Android's threads become like Gmail's ??
...
The only problem is that SMS messages contain almost no data other than content, sender and timestap. This isn't always reliable for forming a thread.

If SMSs had subjects, then I'd agree with you. But if Gmail didn't have subject lines, I'd much prefer if every email from the same person was on the same thread. I would find timestamps to be almost completely irrelevant in terms of grouping threads, and would be highly dependent on which contact (i.e. some contacts might always reply instantaneously, but others mightn't reply for a day or more)