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Help Text Messages

Hi,

My dad recently received a new phone for Christmas.

We are having problems with the text messages.

When he is sending a text he sends it using the contact name "BILLY" but when he receives a message back from "BILLY" it only shows his telephone number not his name.

His phone is Levovo A916 model .
 
Is it one of these? http://detail.zol.com.cn/cell_phone/index386215.shtml
24651411702465.png

4.4 Kitkat, so I don't think this is a very recent device.

I assume you're not in China. Where did you buy it, Ebay?

Possibly it's having issues with non-Chinese phone numbers. I did read about something similar happening with certain Oppo phones a while back. Basically if the phone number wasn't 11 digits beginning with "1", which is mobile phone numbers in China, and/or was prefixed with +86, The phone wouldn't recognize them from the contacts list.

I know from experience that phones specifically meant for sale and use here in the PRC, like my Oppo R7 Plusm insisted that my dad was in Nanning, Guangxi Province, when he's actually in Weston-super-Mare, UK.
 
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Is it one of these? http://detail.zol.com.cn/cell_phone/index386215.shtml
View attachment 114070
4.4 Kitkat, so I don't think this is a very recent device.

I assume you're not in China. Where did you buy it, Ebay?

Possibly it's having issues with non-Chinese phone numbers. I did read about something similar happening with certain Oppo phones a while back. Basically if the phone number wasn't 11 digits beginning with "1", which is mobile phone numbers in China, and/or was prefixed with +86, The phone wouldn't recognize them from the contacts list.

I know from experience that phones specifically meant for sale and use here in the PRC, like my Oppo R7 Plusm insisted that my dad was in Nanning, Guangxi Province, when he's actually in Weston-super-Mare, UK.

Yes phone was purchased from ebay.

Is there anything we can do to fix it?
 
Yes phone was purchased from ebay.

So it probably did come from China.

Is there anything we can do to fix it?

I know the problem with certain Chinese Oppo phones was in the UK, with how phone numbers are formatted there, with and without international prefixes,

In China mobile numbers are something like 12345678901 or +86 12345678901. For both, the phone knows it's the same contact and shows the name, e.g. Billy.

Whereas in the UK, a mobile number might be 07123456789 or +44 7123456789, if it's got the UK prefix +44, and the leading 0 is dropped. And the China phone isn't recognizing it as the same contact, and not showing the name.

The only fix suggested was to store the contacts with both with intentional prefix and without, i.e. two phone numbers per contact.

Even though this isn't international messages and calls, some carriers and depending on how messages and calls are routed, numbers are sometimes presented with the international dialing prefixs, and this is possibly what's happening with your Lenovo not showing names.

What country are you in?
 
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