IssueTracker

This issue does not reproduce with dev preview 4.

Closing this issue as per comment #2 from reporter.

I am getting it the other way round. When I receive long sms on my SE x10i, the incoming message is jumbled/mixed with messages from the same person I received ages ago.

I should of been more specific, we are getting the problem with texts received on the SE x10i. The same as Peter, when we receive long sms, the incoming message is jumbled/mixed with messages from the same person received earlier.

I'm on a Samsung Galaxy s2, running Android 2.3.3 , and I have the same problem. I don't have the previous mixed texts anymore, but the last one happened today. It cut out the last sentence, and replaced it with several sentences from a text from last week or so. I text a lot and I haven't had that old text since the day after I sent it. It's weird how it increased the text's size like that, it put in way more characters from the old text than was replaced from the original. I've seen several people with the same problem online, but can't find a solution anywhere.

i get this error as well on SE x10i..happens especially receiving long sms (more than 160 character) and from a frequent sender..
its not app specific..

also sometimes after the above symptoms happened,most of the time sms wouldnt arrived after that, unless i take out the SIM card and swap it to another phone then can i receive..
removing and placing SIM card on the same phone wont help, unless i use the SIM on another phone..

is there a fix to this??

I've had the exact same issue on a HTC Desire with Android 2.2, even though the old message was sent on a previous handset (same model) & with a previous SIM (same number), so no idea where it had got the old message text from.
I've also just had a phone call from someone I don't know, and whose number was not in my phone, but who had received a text from me. Again this was an old text I had sent months ago to people I did know, but prior to my handset/SIM swap.
This is a really serious fault which could be very damaging to both professional and/or personal relationships.

I get this all the time too!

I used to have the Samsung Galaxy S1 on orange sending to an HTC desire on 3.

Then I had same galaxy sending to different Desire on Vodafone.

Now have HTC sensation on Vodafone sending to Desire on Vodafone.

All running android. I have just tried to send same message 3 times-Everytime its been received mixed up, but with different endings!

Does anyone know what the problem is here?!

I get this quite frequently. It happens to me when receiving long texts from my girlfriend and only her. And it only seems to happen with received texts, although it has happened once on an outgoing text according my girlfriend. It always seems to be the beginning text I am meant receive and then the last part will be part of text from weeks, sometimes even months ago. I'm glad I'm not the only person having this problem, I couldn't work out if it was my phone, Android, my signal, my girlfriends signal, the network (o2) corrupting my text or my girlfriend's iphone. I was hoping it would be the iphone to be honest.

Update from my side.. I still have the problem. Recently I sent a text to my girlfriend and it got mixed up with one from at least 2 months ago. There was a big difference though, I didn't use my phone to send it. I used skype, from my pc. Only thing that connects my skype and phone is an app (that was off) and the fact that it uses my number to show as recipient when I send from my pc.

So I dunno where the problem is anymore.. She does run android, 2.1 i think, on a SE xperia x10 mini pro. I thought the problem was on my side.. but now it seems it's on the receivers side. But that doesn't count for everybody either..

And an update from me... I just sent a text and the first have was received ok, the second half was from a text when I was on a different network, from January this year!Does nobody have an answer to this and do Google not care?!

Today i've had the same problems several Times - always sending/receiving from the same Person.
I'm using Samsung Galaxy II GT-i9000S with FW 2.3.3

I get this same problem every time when receiving long texts on my HTC Desire HD, SO annoying. After a bit of troubleshooting I worked out on a 4 part message I get parts 1,2 and 3 fine, but part 4 is from the previous text message from the same person. I deleted all my messages and the problem went away for about a week but now it's doing the same thing. This time deleting the msgs has not cured it. This is definitely a bug. Whoever writes the code, sort it out, please.
Android 2.3.3 Build 2.50.405.2

Having this same issue, sending from a Galaxy S to a SE Experia.

Had one text from the Experia sent to my Galaxy S where this happened (first part fine, second part old message); Experia user has reported that it's happened multiple times (pretty much every time I send a multipart message) with messages I've sent to her from my Galaxy S.

The Experia user hasn't deleted any of our correspondence (Theory; possible she deleted the one message that sent multi-part to me?)

I've previously deleted the entire thread of conversation.

Theory; deleting text messages on affected phone only deletes the "Head" message and leaves the linked messages intact. New messages are created and sent with no problem. Multi part messages are created fine and display fine, but when sent collect the messages from the previous message with the same ID.

Diagram time!

Initial messages:

Head1.1     Head2.1     Head3.1     Head4.1
  linkto      linkto      -           linkto
Body1.1     Body2.1       -         Body4.1

Deletion:

  -           -           -           -
  prev        prev        -           prev
Body1.1     Body2.1       -         Body4.1

Creation:

Head1.2     Head2.2     Head3.2     Head4.2
  -           linkto      -           -
  -         Body2.2       -           -
  prev        prev        prev        prev
Body1.1     Body2.1       -         Body4.1


Displays on phone correctly: Head2.2 has Body2.2
Sends incorrectly: Head2.2 sends with Body2.1 instead.

...of course I could be barking up the wrong tree entirely.

I am having this problem too - sending from a Galaxy S2 to a Sony Experion.
With long txts - random older (deleted?) txt's replacing the end of the new txt.

Would be useful if someone could even work out is the problem with the sending phone, or with the receiving phone?

Obviously a fix would be good - but until then a work-around or explanation of the problem would be useful.

At least my contact now knows to look out for this and is no longer assuming that I just can't txt properly.

i got this problem too, but is not very often, i notice that this happens when i send long messages and the battery is less than the half, please try to reproduce this im almost sure that the battery charge has a lot to do with this bug!!!

for the moment i will not sent long messages i prefer to split them

thanks

It seems to make no difference how charged my battery is, it still mixes them up.

I used to think it would do it after a whole message. ie. The first message of a multiple message length sms would be ok, however the other day the first 20 characters were ok, everything after that was an old message.. From when I had a different phone, on a different network to someone else with a different phone on a different network (Same person, same numbers tho-If that makes sense!)

I think it must be the android os....

Are you sure there was only 20 characters, did you send any acent or wierd symbol, remember that simbols and and acents spend a lot of characters!! maybe thats why you got that problem, for the moment i never send acents or simbols because even when you use less than 160 simbols it spend more than one sms

becarefull with that!!

Yeah, I'm sure... It's not the first time either. The other thing, which has only happened twice in 12 months is the correct first part, a mixed up middle part, and the correct end!

This issue has been really bad since yesteday morning, I sent the same message 3 times last night as I was then switching phone off, it arrived mixed up all 3 times, with different messages attached to each one..

This morning it's been really bad too, I have taken to sending the message and if it gets mixed up I split it into individual messages. What an unecessary waste of time for something that should be right in the first place and quite frankly Google don't seem to give a crap about!! :O(

Just had this for the first time. SE X10i running Android 2.3.3. I was in a text conversation with a friend and sent a long text, which shows fine on my sent messages but was received mixed with another text at the end. it then happened again a few texts later. The messages it mixed with were very old messages (over 6 months ago) which have been deleted. Battery at time was very low.

Same issue here, from SGS2.. it would be nice if we had a feedback from google regarding this issue. Because splitting long messages doesn't fix this very well since it will be sent in disorder of number of parts is superior to 4...

I get newly sent messages mixed up with messages from months ago when sending from HTC Sensation to Samsung Galaxy S and vice versa. Really annoying. Never experienced this with non-Android phones so come on Google - some feedback please.
Splitting long messages is already frustrating without having to consider this as well because beyond a certain size (not massive and perfectly feasible on other handsets) the phone automatically converts it from SMS to MMS. Beginning to wish I'd been more patient and waited for Nokia to finally get their act together.

I am getting the same problem as everyone else on my HTC sensation long texts have the first part of the message correct but the rest of the message shows an old text from months ago only happens on one of my contacts. It's also quite random but annoying now!

I would also like feedback from Google on this problem....

Same problem here between two Samsung phones. Samsung Galaxy Fit and my girlfriends Galaxy Gio.  Only happens when the message is long and changes into an MMS.  The first part of the message is correct, the second part of the message is from an old sms.  

These are messages that have been deleted on both phones and are months old.  
This happens nearly every long message. Out of the last 20 long messages 18 have been mixed up.  

How is this even possible when there should be no trace of old messages after deletion?   Is it the network provider?  we are both on '3'

Same problem here between two Samsung phones. Samsung Galaxy Fit and my girlfriends Galaxy Gio.  Only happens when the message is long and changes into an MMS.  The first part of the message is correct, the second part of the message is from an old sms.  

These are messages that have been deleted on both phones and are months old.  
This happens nearly every long message. Out of the last 20 long messages 18 have been mixed up.  

How is this even possible when there should be no trace of old messages after deletion?   Is it the network provider?  we are both on '3'

I'm experiencing the same issue and I have the HTC incredible.  

Curious how this is only a "medium" issue since it's android specific and texting is now a main form of communication.  This issue has been going on for months and should be considered a critical issue at this point...

I have again had a message where only the middle part is mixed!

The first 153 characters were from the message I sent.
The next 152 characters were from an old message.
The last 291 characters were from the message I sent!

There was the correct number of characters in total, just the 152 in the middle were wrong....

Luckily I'm on unlimited texts, frustrating but not costing me anyting other than time and sanity.....

I also have this problem on Samsung Galaxy S I9000.
Before the firmwareupdate from 2.2 to 2.3 the problem got worser and worser. After the update the problem disappeared. And from month to month the problem got worser again. Today I updated to the newest available firmware 2.3.3. I hope the problem will disappear again. Does anybody know a workaround or anything else?

I am experiencing this issues for few times on my HTC Desire. First I thought it was my phone are acting up, but after google-ing around, found out that this has been going for months!
Agreed with #26, this issues shoudl be considered as critical at this point.

I also thought this was a problem specific to my SE X10mini pro and my boyfriend's htc until I googled it this morning. It's only messages from him and not from anyone else, we've both deleted the messages that are arriving in the message that was sent and it doesn't happen in the other direction. Deleting our conversation helps but only for a few hours. It's very annoying and I wish someone would tell me how to fix it before I lose a vital bit of information!

I'm having the same problem with my Samsung Galaxy S2 (GT-I9100) using Android 2.3.3.

I've had the phone for 3 months and it only started happening a week ago. It only happens with texts from one particular person.

It is very frustrating and annoying!

Has anyone found a solution yet?

Here's the relevant part of the source code from what I can work out:
http://grepcode.com/file/repository.grepcode.com/java/ext/com.google.android/android/2.3.7_r1/com/android/internal/telephony/gsm/GsmSMSDispatcher.java#GsmSMSDispatcher.sendMultipartText%28java.lang.String%2Cjava.lang.String%2Cjava.util.ArrayList%2Cjava.util.ArrayList%2Cjava.util.ArrayList%29

For background, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concatenated_SMS

So basically the Android source code always uses an 8-bit CSMS reference number (meaning there are only 256 options). The code later has a TODO about setting concatRef.isEightBit to true "since our messaging app will never send more than 255 parts"; this seems to be a misunderstanding because the isEightBit switch is actually used to determine whether the CSMS reference number is 8-bit or 16-bit, not whether that many parts are supported.

It's my guess (without looking further into the source) that if the same reference number is used for multiple SMSes from the same user, that the mis-matching occurs. This can happen with fewer then 256 message from that user, since the reference numbers are shared across the whole system.

Thoughts from developers?

My Samsung Galaxy S1 (GT-I9000) has been suffering with this issue since June 2011 on Android 2.3.2, I am now on Android 2.3.5 and the problem is only getting worse with every update. It's incredibly annoying and was at first limited to only when there were 200+ messages in a thread. I'm now deleting all messages after about 50 messages and the problem is still occurring 2/3 times a week! I was going to get another android phone when my contract renews in april, but if google don't hurry up and solve this ludicrous bug quickly I definitely won't and will recommend no-one else does either!

[Comment deleted]

I am having the same problem with the Nexus S. It does only happen when the message is over 160 characters, and the second half gets mixed up, and it does only happen between one person, however it has to be the recipient because it does the same thing when I use a very old Sony Ericsson.

Also, referring to comment 11, it does seem like it is the recipient that is encountering the problem, maybe it is their phone or maybe it is their network, I have no idea

did anyone find a solution to this? any response from google? would updating android to 2.3 solve the problem? i'm currently running froyo on a zte blade/orange san francisco and this problem has been ongoing for several months now. did anyone try a fresh install? any workarounds?

I have same problem on my xperia x8, deleting SMS has no effect and it sends it only from my girlfriend. She has xperia x10 mini.
Google, please fix it somehow.

So we have no fix for this? Just a list of people here with the same problem.

I have a Samsung galaxy S2 and have the same issue. If this isn't fixed in ICS then I will sell the phone and get an iPhone and jailbreak it. I'd rather not but that will be my only option, this is too annoying and there doesn't appear to be any solution available online.

I have the same problem and would really like a fix! This happens to me all the time when I receive texts from my boyfriend and another friend who sends me long texts quite frequently. It is very frustrating to have to keep asking them to resend their texts!

Is it a problem with the software? I am thinking of buying an S2 but I see that people using galaxy s2 have the same problem..so is a new android no better?

SAME PROBLEM HERE. Galaxy S II running the latest 2.3.6 update on T-Mobile USA. It's _really_ annoying and I text message a lot. From what I gather, it seems like it only happens if you repeatedly send long text messages with people -- which is what I do.

I bought a Radar 4G and Windows Phone 7.5 is a breath of fresh air. No force closes and no stupid bugs like this. My Galaxy S II is the best phone I've ever had but this bug in Android just completely ruins it for me. Please fix this in the ICS update or I'll have to leave Android for good :(. I was a BlackBerry user for years and years and text messaging was very reliable and easy to use.

I am having the same issue with my texts getting mixed up with a friend.  I text her often and the mixed texts are usually long ones with an old text in the middle.  Right now we both have HTC Rezounds on Verzion, but if I recall correctly, we also had this issue when we both had Incredibles.  I have never recieved a mixed text from her, it is always my texts that get jumbled.  I know we are due for an update to ICS soon and hopefully it will be addressed there? Otherwise, a fix would be greatly appreciated Google!

Has there been a fix to this does anyone no? Really fustrating

I have the same problem with a Sony Xperia 10 mini with android 2.1.
Is there any solution ?

I was using a samsung galaxy ace, but I'm now switched back to an old LG phone. I text my boyfriend the most frequently and the messages are longer. He receives the half messages from me with half of an older message after it. He says that my texts are the only ones that ever get jumbled like that, and it happens once every few weeks I'd say. I'm with Telus. Strange!

Im having the exact same problem with my Galaxy S II to another Galaxy S II, however the same happened with my old HTC Hero to the same Galaxy phone. It's always to the same person as he is the only one I send particularly long messages to. Both of us are on Orange. I've been searching the web for a long while and I just can't seem to find any way of fixing the problem? It doesn't bother us really anymore, I just know to resend my txt when he replies "mixed txts". I guess it's just something we'll have to live with.

I'm seeing the same problem, I'm using Galaxy S II i9100 unlocked/carrier unbranded, running 2.3.4. Problem occurs when I'm receiving long texts (from Blackberry Bold), messages jumbled up with older texts. On very few occasions (maybe 3 times in the last year) I haven't received a short text sent at all. Needs adressing adap

I have a Sony Ericsson Xperia on T-Mobile with Android 2.3.4 which is doing this quite frequently with long messages that are received. It happened today with 2 messages from the same person.

The same problem... (T-Mobile to T-Mobile)

Long Messages "SMS" from a Windows Phone to the

Samsung Galaxy W.

Often the first part is the new message and the second part is an old message (same person, same device). Need a solution/update/fix whatever..!

Also getting this error, only from received texts though. (To me)
Im on UK O2 - Samsung galaxy S2 (GTI9100 / 4.0.3)
the sender is on UK Virgin Mobile and an LG model (not an android, afraid I don't know the model number.
This problem sure is irritating! Hope there is a fix soon.

getting this problem too, using Samsung Galaxy Nexus i9250 4.0.3

I have the same problem. Phone HTC Senstaion Android 4.0.3. Vodafone CZ.

When I recieve long message from my girlfriend, It gets mixed up with the previous ones, but if she send me long sms from different phone number, it's displayed correctly. I realized, that this problem happens only when you have a long conversation with specific number. If I clean all the data from phone, I will be able to recieve long messages from hear without any problem. That's my observation.

I too have this issue, using an Xperia mini pro. Carrier told me it's due to the phone and an update to next Android would likely fix it (they should be out in late may/mid june for Xperia mini pro X10). But seeing ppl having problems here with ICS 4.0.3 gets me worried

called Sony Ericsson support today, they told me to do a "repair" of the phone by using PC Companion and then follow on-screen instructions. Did so, and the sms i received worked fine so far. Havent been able to test more than one text message so far tho. Support tech also said if this didn't help, I should file a warranty request.
I hope this helps someone else having this problem.

same problem between me and my girlfriend, samsung galaxy s2 and galaxy s

Ok so, potential 'fix' although not ideal, it seems to have worked thus far for me.

I have found that when deleting a bunch of messages this problem clears up for a period of time. Armed with this I decdided on experimenting with limiting my conversation size. The ideal size for me is 300. I haven't noticed any more problems since doing this (about 5 weeks). The person the other end who was also missing messages has an iphone so has to manually remove messages but thats her punishment for travelling with the sheep I suppose.

I realise that this is not a perfect 'fix' as people like to keep conversations but I weighed up the situation and when I was honest with myself I realised that, I just did not read old messages at all. I am using goSMS and set the limit within that but I believe that also alters the stock android settings anyway so should work if anyone isn't using it.


Hope this helps you guys.

i get this problem with LG phone running android.  Its crazy.  The only way this could be happening is for the text to get stored someplace in your phone and then becoming part of the incoming text.  I get old texts that are 3 months old sometimes.

[Comment deleted]

I'm getting the same issue as well and was wondering if anybody else on here is using the sms backup and restore app to see if that might be causing the problem

Getting this issue daily on SGS2 on ICS. Really annoying, recipient either gets a mixed message or no message at all. Having to send every text twice just to increase the chance of them getting what I have actually sent.

I'm getting this problem on an HTC Vivid. Android Version 4.0.3, HTC Sense version 3.6. The Carrier is ATT. I tried using multiple texting apps: The default, Go SMS, Handcent SMS. My phone had beenb jumbling the new incomming text with an older text from the same person. The person I was having the problem with also had ATT. I wiped my phone of every single text and the problem still continued. I hope this information will help find a solution.

Hi peeps! I'm using a SG2 and this happens mainly with the bf who uses an iPhone4s! Though it has happened with one other person on one occasion. Happens quite frequently and seems to be occuring more regularly! :( Any answers/solutions would be fab! But seems like its quite the issue across a lot of different phones!

I have this problem on a SE X10i with 2.3.3. I only see the problem when I get texts sent by a BlackBerry.
Anyone with a more recent phone? Is it still frequent on 4.x?

Same issue with my nexus S, android 4.0.4. I used to send / reveive long messages, never happened before but yesterday I received a beautiful mixed sms. First half was on old already deleted sms (not found using search feature) hope we get a solution, it's quite deceiving, offical google phone & OS :(

Also having this problem.
Galaxy nexus
4.0.2

Same problem here with Galaxy Gio...
is there any response to this issue from Google ?

I am having exactly the same problem when texting my boyfriend from my mini pro x10 sony erricson. Running on android 2.1

It happens both ways though. Sometimes it is me that receives the mixed messaged sometimes him. I have also found deleting long conversations helps... a bit.

Wish there was a proper solution to this.

I also get this same issue with my SE Xperia Arc running unmodified 2.3.4, it only seems to happen (or I've only noticed it) when texting my girlfriend, who has a Galaxy S (unsure of software version but it'll probably be whatever it originally shipped with). It can be really confusing as it sometimes can splice together two messages so that they almost make sense, we've got so used to it happening we tend to spot it straight away now.

I have this issue con my Huawei Ideos and on my Samsung Galaxy Nexus. The only solution i've found on Ideos is to delete the sms db periodically

[Comment deleted]

[Comment deleted]

Same problem with my LG-E510, Android 2.3.6
I had the same problem with my old phone, getting tired.

Same issue, Galaxy S2 android 4 (even after the update)...

FIX THE DAMN CODE, GOOGLE.

Same as above.  However, I was originally on Orange with a Sony Ericcson Xperia X10, then transferred to Three and have a Sony Xperia S.  Whilst on Orange, it would send the first part of message from months back and the end would be the recent message.  I thought this would stop once I got a new phone/changed network.  I did NOT transfer my old messages across.  However, now, my phone is sending the mixed messages again, but the bizarre thing is, its sending mixed messages from when I had my old phone on Orange (still have old phone so was able to check back) mixed with the new message on Three with my new phone!!  As Ive already said, I definitely did NOT transfer any messages across, although I did transfer numbers via the sync.  I wondered at one point if it was a bug attached to my actual telephone number as i ported my number across.  This appears to happen to 3 main people i send a lot of texts to (or used to send a lot of texts to when i had my old phone).  Its beginning to really irritate me now.  Please sort it out Google

It happened to me last night. having a great conversation with girl friend. and boom she says why am I talking to some body else. I was going what r u talking about and she sent the text back to me.  It looked like it was sent with and old text I sent along time ago.  Luckily she beleived me when I said I had not sent anything. It happened once before. I called up my provider and they said it could not happened. I did not think so too. But boy I feel a lot better knowing I am not the only one. She gets 95 percent of my texts and have not erased the history since april.Maybe erasing every once in awhile is not a bad thing.

Hi guys i think i might know whats going on here.

I was sending out texts and my bf was recieving them muddled. I phoned Samsung (handset= samsung galaxy ace GT-S5830i) and asked if they knew why this was happening.

It turns out that if you send an SMS longer than 160 characters it is converted into a MMS (multi media message).

This is then solved by either sending texts less then 160 characters (not so easy) or possibly changing some settings on your own phone or the other persons phone. First, try and make sure that the phone recieving the jumbled texts is compatible with multimedia texts. (In my case, the phone recieving my jumbled texts is, we believe, set up for this.)

I am hoping, waiting on feedback, that changing the settings on my own phone has sorted this. I don't know how each of your phones are set up but for me, i accessed the settings for my text messages. Under Multimedia message settings, there is a 'Creation mode', (MMS creation mode for compose) under which you can select one of three options: 'restricted', 'warning' or 'free'. I have currently changed my settings to restricted and am hoping for success.

Hope this helps anyone out there with the same problem... Actually i hope it sorts mine too!

[Comment deleted]

My phone doesn't convert to MMS but the problem is there so that's not the solution. It does as you say only happen with long chained texts. Link to this on Facebook, ask friends to complain and star it. Anyone that has a friend working at some newspaper or techblog that can build some attention and pressure?

As comment 77 says, it's not conversion to MMS that's the problem, but that long SMSes are sent as multiple SMS messages and then chained together. See my comment 32 above (http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=17769#c32) for an explanation of why this happens in the source code - an Android developer should be able to fix the issue with that information...

How is this issue not resolved yet? I have a Samsung Galaxy I running 2.3.5 and I have the exact same problem. When is someone going to address this issue?

I am gettin exactly the same problem & its driving me mad..i send txts to my best friend in newcastle but when he recieves them they are different to the ones I sent from my phone..theyre mixed up with earlier messages i sent him. I am sure he thinks i am going mad.Tonight he got one about woods & showers ...totally random!!!  He now thinks i am a looney !! Frustrated Samsung owner from Haughton!

Frequently having this same problem when texting my girlfriend. Happens more when I text her, but occasionally when she texts me too. Becoming seriously irritating. I often have to send messages 4 or 5 times for them to make sense. Becoming seriously irritated. We will both leave android completely soon and buy those horrible fruit phones I guess. Can't believe this has been ignored for so long!

Since this is happening with al lot of phones. I even have a friend with
iPhone 4s who's having the issue when sending texts to her mom's old Nokia
mobile phone (not even a smartphone)... I think that the issue is maybe not
in the phones, but at the provider....

 Op 19 aug. 2012 09:14 schreef <android@googlecode.com> het volgende:

Same issue with my HTC Legend ( Vodafone SIM ). Not sure if the problem is me or my girlfriend ( Galaxy Ace with Vodafone SIM ). SMS longer than 160 sometimes get mixed with other long sms ( New sms has NPart1 and NPart2. Old sms has OPart1 and OPart2. She recives Npart1Opart2 ). The issue looks not to be related with the network provider ( a lot of people has the problem on other providers ) and neither with the phone. I'm running Android 4.0.4. I'm using stock Messaging app. I've backed up sms with SMSBackup and Restore. Now I'm going to look what's happening in mmssms.db .

Just for record - I observe this issue frequently with SMS received on my SE Xperia Arc S, with SMS-es sent *from my operator's web gateway*. I use the same network and never observed such behavior with my previous phones (HTC Desire, iPhone, Nokia N73...).

I have the same problem with my SE x8. Like some of you, this happens during conversations with my girlfriend who doesn't use a smartphone. This happens regardless of conversation size and battery level. For a month I had no call credit so I used vodafone webtext, every reply I received to my phone was in order during this time. At first I thought it was a problem with Handcent SMS so I uninstalled it but the problem persisted with the stock messaging app. I will be changing to a non-smartphone soon largely because of this problem.

Add me to the list...  Galaxy skyrocket on AT&T.  It only happens with my wife on iPhone 3, and only on my end of the conversation (she sees everything correctly).

my problem started a few months ago, after having to do a factory reset because I wasn't receiving ANY texts.  I'm getting mixed up texts from her several times a day now.

it has to be a network issue because mine does the same thing im on 4.0.1 LG optimus L7 and it splices really old messages that were never sent from this phone i only got it a month ago and it sends messages from over 6months ago. it is there for a network error.

I have the same issue, it's really annoying, obscure and horrible! If anyone has a solution, please tell!  

I should give an update.

For obscures reasons my phone ereased mmssms.db ( the file where the messages are stocked ). So the file has been re-written entirely, from nothing. After few days, my girlfriend recieved a message mixed with another one that I sent before the "destruction" of all my messages ( sigh ). Let me explain better : a sms has been mixed with another that IS NOT STORED IN MY PHONE. So the problem may be a wrong tag in the second part, and the reciever mixes the message because of wrong tags.

I wish i have helped.

See my comment at http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=17769#c32 for what I think is going wrong in the source code.
So comment 89 - yes the explanation is that the receiver's phone is combining the wrong message parts, because of the tags being the same, because there aren't enough bits to distinguish between messages...

If I understand you properly, you suggest the problem is on the sender side. However, there are many (including me) observing this problem with SMSes sent to Android from non-Android phone, or a web SMS gateway.  

Comment 91 - good point; let me clarify after investigating further. It would help to read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concatenated_SMS ...
* The problem in distinguishing texts is more likely when an 8-bit CSMS reference number is used (a 16-bit reference number is possible, and will decrease the likelihood).
* The decision of the size of the reference number is made by the sender, not the receiver. However it's possible that multiple sender implementations use the 8-bit number
* However, the way that the messages are tied together again on the receiver side can result in issues
* The `mmssms.db` file stores contatenated SMSs as single entries in the `sms` table. It stores individual parts in the `raw` table - however I think these are intended to be cleared out once the contatenation has taken place and the message has been delivered into the `sms` table.
* The `raw` table contains the raw `PDU` message (various decoders exist including https://github.com/pmarti/python-messaging) - the `reference_number`, `count` and `sequence` are fields 4, 5, and 6 of the user data header described on the above wikipedia page.
* Therefore, the number of unique reference numbers is not so much an issue if the messages are received, processed properly, and converted. I suspect that the issue happens when parts are being left behind and then recombined into other messages, but I haven't proved that yet.

So the above isn't conclusive but I'm beginning to understand how this works more...

Looking at the `raw` and `sms` tables would certainly shed some light on the problem. The topic is quite interesting, and I'd really like to dive into `mmssms.db` myself, unfortunately the phone I use on a daily basis is not rooted :-/

Alright, so I have some code to analyze this with: https://gist.github.com/3726604

This is Python code and needs you to get the `mmssms.db` off the phone (which requires it to be rooted). To do this, run `adb shell`, then `su` on the phone, then `cp -a /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/ /sdcard` (this copies it onto the sd card to make it easier to get off), then `adb pull /sdcard/com.android.providers.telephony`). If you're looking at debugging this on your phone over time, I'd recommend doing this in a timestamped folder, and fetching it every week or so as deleted smses mean you can't analyze what's happened. It also helps that on my system I'm been running SMS Backup+ so I have a searchable mail archive of all the SMSes...

You then run the code and it searches all the current raw messages, and tries to find smses that match them by date, and shows them to you so you can see if there's a muddle.

What this shows is that I can clearly see messages where the correct second half of the message is still in the database, and the previous second half has been connected with the message. I'll investigate further to see if I can see how that's happening...

I too have this problem and totally hate it.
Has anyone found a solution yet? I'm considering ditching this phone and buying an old Nokia. Are there any files I could erase to fix this (at least for a bit) or will a factory reset work?

Completely deleting the conversation thread fixed it for me.

No luck for me, I've already tried. It's got to about 50 in the thread again now and I'm getting loads of messed up messages already. Thanks though.

I'm testing deleting the contents of the raw database - this may need to be done periodically though... so this is still under investigation. Nobody should conclude that it's fixed based on some anecdotal experience alone :)

Same issue with my Samsung Galaxy S (GT-i9000), with stock 2.3.3 and 2.3.6 ROM by Samsung, and also with TeamNyx RC5 (ICS). Deleting the thread causing the problem seemed to solve it, but in a month or so it came out again. Something I found quite weird is that the wrong parts of the message sometimes came from messages that shouldn't have been on the phone anymore since I deleted them. It's a really annoying issue... I hope someone sooner or later will find a fix.

Same here on an ATT HTC One X. Can't seem to recreate the issue on command but it happens all of the time.

I backed up with sms backup & restore. Then from within sms backup & restore I deleted all messages. Then I checked I had no threads at all and it's been ok for the last day or so. I expect it'll come back when I get to about 50-100 texts again though. -.-

Yep... and moreover I think that deleting threads is definitely NOT a solution. I want to keep all of my messages until the phone memory is full. This issue is marked as medium priority, but it made me root my phone and try a community ROM because I thought it was ROM dependent. It makes me want to buy an iPhone ;-)

Yes, this has been around for over a year and is quite a crippling issue. I really want this fixed soon. Just to check, changing the ROM didn't help did it?
I tried changing the program I used for my text messages but that didn't help at all.

Same issue here. This has happened to me over seven times in the past two hours.. I recieve completely messed up messages. It has been going on for about six months, happens almost every day, always with the same person. I'm not gonna delete my threads if this won't change anything. Google should do something about this! I'm pissed and if this doesn't go away, I'm just gonna go back to an old school nokia because this is so annoying!

Hate this! Has been happening way too much lately! Every text I recieve from my boyfriend is completely mixed up with another, old message. PLEASE FIX THIS, Google!

At the moment, nothing helped. Neither the ICS ROM nor changing the default SMS application to Handcent SMS. This is quite expectable, though. From what I've read through this thread, this issue seems to depend on how splitted messages are recorded in the message database.

This is incredibly frustrating and needs looking at asap. It's a fundamental tool of the phone to be able to send and receive messages properly...I was singing the praises of android but this has put me off it knowing that it's been going on so long and nothing's been done about it yet! We're talking years!@

On a phone that was having consistent issues with:
 * This bug (mixed messages)
 * Messages not being received (a significant proportion, say between 10% and 30% of SMSes)
 * Some messages being received more than once
I backed up all the SMSes and then removed the mmsssms.db file (which was 5MB in size). Since then (10 days ago), there have been no issues with missing messages.
The reason I think this is relevant is that it's possible that duplicate deliveries or leftover half-messages from missing deliveries contribute to this, since they're more likely to result in leftover messages in the RAW table that then get mismatched to a subsequent message.

Note that simply deleting messages would never clear the RAW table (and in my experience on the above phone, simply clearing the RAW table didn't solve this particular problem which seemed to relate to a large database not being handled well)

@david

I had your same problems, not receiving a lot of sms too, now I've changed phone because I was fed up.
Let me know, if this is a conclusive solution I will return back to Android.

A friend told me that texts to me fail to send (and have to be resent) a lot more frequently than texts to other non-android phones. I also don't get some texts people sent. Although no where near the 10%-30% David reports. David how did you remove the mmsssms.db file? Can I just search for it in the file browser and delete it or do I have to root my phone first? Thanks.

Can someone please tell us how to fix this issue? It happens to me a lot.

Okay, I am having the same issue.  It has been random over the past few months, but seems to be becoming more frequent.  It only happens on long messages and so far (knock on wood) has only happened with two recipients.  I send a long message, and they receive one part of the new message and one part of a months old message that has since disappeared off of my phone.  I am using a Motorola Razr Maxx on Verizon, running stock 4.0.4.  I did not notice any app install that seems to coincide.  One of my recipients is also Motorola Razr Maxx stock on Verizon, and another is GSII stock on T-Mobile.  I receive all of their messages as sent, but they are left confused by some (not all, fortunately) of my messages.  I do use SMS Backup and Restore, but I don't believe this is the issue.  I have read about this occurring on multiple carriers, multiple devices (Android, IOS, MS, "dumb phones"), and it does not seem as though anybody has found a cause or a solution.  This needs attention, as it is getting extremely frustrating.  I'm tempted to try the rooting method, but I'd really rather not have to root my phone, and I definitely don't want to try a clean install of Android or a warranty replacement phone.

I have been experiencing this error in the last couple of days. I have a large SMS database now and I was suspecting that this was the fault. But it appears not as the other comments on here describe how clearing the SMS database does not fix the issue. It is very crippling when communicating via long messages. Conversations become ridiculously hard to read. Please increase the priority of this issue and work towards fixing it. It has left me very displeased with my brand new Galaxy S3

Is anyone else using Handcent? I want to rule the app out as the culprit.

I did not have Handcent and still had the problem. I then switched to using handcent in the hope it would help. It did not. Is sms backup and restore to blame? Has anyone had this before before they ever used sms backup?
Deleting my message thread will stop this until the thread reaches around 100 messages. Then this issue resumes. It's pretty crippling for the phone.
I would like to ask that we all link to this page/tell friends about it on Facebook/wherever and try to have it gain more stars in the hope it will get fixed soon.

I don't think backup/restore has anything to do with this issue - I never done any SMS backup :) I've rooted my phone in the meantime, essentially doing factory reset, and I no longer observe the issue. I suppose that SMS inbox must grow first...

Just to clarify some of my theories:

1) So far this is just theory and some experimentation
2) I have no suspicion that SMS Backup and Restore can cause this problem. I mentioned them as a way to retain your data as accessible somewhere, whilst clearing the messages from your phone. SMS Backup+ is great, use it!
3) Simply deleting messages from the text database is not likely to help; removing the entire mmssms.db (after backup) file is what helped my test case; this does generally require root rights unfortunately.
4) The mmssms.db removal definitely does not fix the bug, but it may make it much less likely to occur. If your database grows, you may end up having the bug again.
5) The only thing I am pretty sure of is that corrupted messages are caused by leftover message pieces in the RAW database table getting joined with new messages that arrive. The only evidence apparently to the contrary is in comment #89; however it is possible that messages are being redelivered by the provider and received only in segments - this could have to do with Android not handling acknowledgement nicely or in a way that the providers agree with :(

@david

As the user in comment #89, in my phone sms get mixed with sms not stored in my phone too. To be more exact, with sms not stored in the messagging app, but stored with SMS Backup and Restore. And the user of comment #89 is the same user of comment #83, he uses SMS Backup and Restore too.
Hope this helps.

Disappointed to read the first comments about this problem on Android 4 too.

@sara

Thanks for the feedback. Can you clarify for me; has the phone been completely reinstalled since the messages that are getting mixed in were deleted from the phone, or was the mmssms.db completely deleted? Or have the messages simply been deleted so you can't see them in the message threads?

@david

I had simply deleted them from the messaging app.

This happened to me on my Droid Incredible 2 and is now happening on my brand new Samsung Galaxy S3. I use Handcent. The old messages being mixed in have always been gone (deleted) for a long time before they randomly appear again. Luckily, so far, it only seems to be sending old messages that I previously sent to the person I'm texting. If it starts mixing them up, I'll have to stop texting. That could be disastrous, and the possibility of it happening really scares me. I'm afraid to send anything personal to anyone.

@sara (comment 120) - OK, that makes sense then
@teh... As far as I now, this error occurs on the *receiving* person's phone only - are they using an Android phone? If not, then it's a separate error that definitely warrants investigation!

Yes, only the person receiving the message can see it. I suppose what I meant was... for example, if I'm sending "Joe" a message, the old message mixed with the new is one I previously sent to "Joe" and not someone else. I was thinking that if that changed, it would be really scary.

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Such a big bug is reported with Priority-Medium: Android does not care that it's OS is mixing messages and people get the wrong information. It seems Android developers are quite happy with this bug. It should b fine until somebody decides to go 2 war with them because they missed something important.

Android 2.3.4 on Samsung Galaxy S2 i9100

Same issue with Samsung Galaxy S3. Message received from friend in Oct 2012 - it included the last two sentances of the message that they intended to send, but started with the first two lines of a message sent to me back in August 2012.

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Update:  I called AT&T with my problem.  After jumping through their hoops (hard reset, update OS), they took it back under warranty.  Fingers crossed,  but with the new phone it hasn't happened again in the last 1.5 weeks, where it used to happen several times a day.

I have the galaxy s same problems! Best way to solve this is for allllll of us to bombard our providers with the same complaint and let them know if it's not handled the news stations would love to hear about this bug. If anyone knows about privacy laws this somehow could be illegal privacy acts. Ever since google changed their privacy acts this has been happening more.

Good idea but I'm not convinced this would make good news or break privacy as it only breaks the receiving of messages rather than the sending so it could not cause unwanted information to be released.

Feliciam is right. By complaining to your service provider, they will open tickets with Android and Andoid R&D team or something in turn should actually work on the issue if enough people complain. This mixing of messages can cause real trouble. No privacy issues here miss.rut but more of a wrong message at the wrong time thing.

Imagine U get part of a message for work from your boss which says "urgent meeting in an hour" when U had to get something else... or "your uncle passed away" or something like that(fictional examples).

For the time being I have been able to clear any misunderstandings that have arisen from the bug.

Samsung Galaxy S2 GT-i9100

I've been having this extremely irritating problem as well on my SE Xperia Mini Pro. I've tried semi-regularly deleting long text threads, but it doesn't seem to have any effect. I tried to delete a long thread just now and the very first message I received after the deletion had a mismatched second half from a month-old text.
This is very frustrating, and it seems to be affecting a lot of people. Something needs to be done about it.

I tried to send a photo to Olivia 80 from my Galaxy S3 and it got jumbled xoxo

Hey Olivia HOW ARE YOU?!?!

HI SAM! good thank you how are you?!

Hey this is me and my mate :)

Thats a very nice photo of you and your friend italian_69er :)

Thank you Olivia&&Kiara, you should add me on Myspace and comment on my photos!

Guys !!!!!! I think I have found the solution !! well, searching on the system files, I found a 3.99 MB text file and opened it and there were my more recent SMS and many many MANY more of them that I had erased days or even weeks ago ! so, I erased that one and another one suspicious that was there (just in case) And I didn't get this problem in about 1 week, and then it happened again, so I erased the again and it got fixed again, I know it's not a complete solution but at leats it works.

Your phone has to be rooted
You need to go with a File manager (I used root explorer) to data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases/

You need to erase the mmssms.db file and mmssms.db-wal and then you restart your phone !

TRY IT AND COMMENT IF IT ALSO WORKED FOR YOU !

I am also having this problem. I have the Galaxy Nexus on Verizon, it only happens with one contact who is also on Verizon with a Motorola Android device. We are both running ICS. It does seem to be only when I send longer messages. I was running Go SMS but uninstalled thinking that some odd update to that is causing it, but while using the boring stock messaging it happened again.  

I've just started having this same problem. I'm on O2 with iPhone 4S   My dad has android an sis n law has one too. My messages read fine in my sent messages but they receive the mixed up ones in theirs. How bizarre.

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vreed as you have an iPhone there's likely nothing wrong with how you sent the message.
It's your dad's Android phone that is at fault and is mixing up the message.
At times like this I wish I'd gone with apple. I'm currently looking for a new phone. Mostly because of this as well as sometimes just not receiving messages at all. If I get another Android this might just happen again though right?

I have the same problem, only when i'm texting with my girlfriend. Sometimes it is verry funny but at the same time verry anoying. Are you working on this problem?

I have a Samsung Galaxy s2 , Android 4.0.4

Great job, David (comment 117)!

You're absolutely right with your theory. The problem is definitely because of the old sms parts that are located in 'raw' table. If you have rooted phone copy mmssms.db to your computer, open it with SQLite editor, clear the 'raw' table, save and copy the database back to the phone and problem will gone for some period.

Anyone ever receive 2 messages combined, that had "2 MESSAGES COMBINED" as a heading, that was no written by the sender??

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also having this problem. just with my conversations with one particular number. VERY annoying

OK, up until now this has just been annoying.. Now for something really scary. I have just received a message from someone that was mixed up with a message sent earlier in the day to someone else. Does anyone know how to contact Google about this as its gone beyond a joke this time...

This happens to me all the time with texts to my girlfriend. As with everyone above, new texts get mixed up with old texts to varying amounts, happens with around half the texts I receive from her. Really annoying, please fix. Strongly considering ditching Android now I know it's an Android bug, it's basic functionality for god's sake....

This happen to me too on my SE Xperia Arc S. It's really annoying!.It's an old problem since Gingerbread. WTH Android? even basic phone function can't be done properly.

I encounter the same issue with my friend texting me. She is sending from a Windows Lumia and I have an HTC Amaze, both on T-Mobile. I only ever see this from her text messages, and it happens about twice a month.

Just started to get this issue, over the last few weeks Attempted deleting all messages and didn't work. Majourly annoying glitch!

Same issue here. Only with my gf. Both on android. Its happening a 10x a day.

Same problem, very annoying, please find something!

Same problem, im french user. I search issue in every french forum for it but nothing.
I have this problem mixed with one other, if someone send to me a sms more 160 character, i don't receive the sms. This problem appears after i received a mixed message like this problem. So i thought the problem is mixed...
After, I apply one fix listec (delete mmssms.db files) and 20 min after, i received 52 long sms awaiting...
I thinks this 2 problems is linked. And if one fix of mine first problem (not received sms with more 160 character) allready done, could you give it to me? (im sorry with my english it's hard to found technical keyword for search in "search mode" ...

Regards,

WHAT THE!!! How on earth has this not been fixed!!!!!!!!!

Really hope this issue can be resolved soon. Very annoying. Been having this issue for quite some time now but never saw this page until today.

I had this issue with my Sony Ericsson Mini Pro, I purchased a Samsung Galaxy Note to solve this problem and its still happening on that!!!

GOOGLE!!! SORT THIS OUT!!!!!!! I AM LOSING FRIENDS BECAUSE OF THIS. I CANT CONVINCE THEM THAT I DIDN'T SEND THESE TEXTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I **really** don't like Apple and I **really** don't like Microsoft, but if it'll mean I have a stable phone, that I rely on for *business* and personal use, it might be worth stopping fan boying up Android and jumping ship.

This is definitely a huge security issue.
I convinced my girlfriend to jump ship from iphone to android last year because her iphone accidentally sent wrong emails to the wrong people. That was a huge security issue for her. Android is not looking much better. Google really needs to fix this issue soon or as the comment above me mentioned, people will be forced to jump ship. Given the new Windows phones and blackberry phone, people do have other options now other than iphone.  

Does anyone know if this is an issue with the sender or receiver of the text?
I only notice this with my gf's texts. Seems like the issue is mainly when I'm the sender. I seem to receive hers fine.

This issue is becoming annoying.

I find I have the problem from people Ive texted a great number of times. IE Girlfriend mainly. When she sends me a message over a certain length the tail end of the message is replaced with part of an old message.

This old message can be months old, and Ive deleted all my texts on my phone, and all the texts on hers. This makes me worry about where the hell they are being stored in the meantime.

Its affecting me 99% of the time now and im having to get my GF to message me over whatsapp instead.

Actually to answer my own question I believe the issue is coming from the receiver in my case. I had this problem when I owned my Samsung captivate. I remember when I bought my new galaxy s3 in November this happened within the first week of my new phone. The only difference was my gf received part of a text from months back that was sent from my captivate. I remember thinking it must be an issue with my carrier storing old messages on a server and sending the wrong ones. But since this appears to be across many devices and carriers, it appears to be a Google Android issue.

This issue needs to be addressed and put under the spot light. If the media made a big issue out of this and it made the news I'm sure Google would find a fix immediately!

This needs sorting ASAP just happened to me and caused a row this is not a joke Google sort it!

I changed my Android phone because of this issue and I didn't get this error on my new Android phone for a few months, now I am, so I think this is a problem with the sender's phone. Heck, it may be both sender and receiver's phone!

seriously how difficult is it to make a flipping text message send correctly? what a total load of crap, I've been having this issue for ages and it is a total pain in the a$$!!! If this issue has so many responses since 2011 how is it still not fixed on any of the updates??? its a damn phone OS and it cannot even do text messages!!! This is driving me off my nut, I think I'll be moving back to apple, makes me cringe but it was a much better experience than this boll@(&5!!!

If this issue continues many people will be jumping ship. I still don't understand how this can be a medium priority.
Text messages are a HUGE feature of smart phones. And it simply is not working properly. Documented since 2011.Google has added how mmany features and pointless crap into android since, yet they won't fix this. Having been a part of that whole nexus 4 fiasco of a release, then this, Google is looking like it is going downhill.

I have the same issue with my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 (GT-N7100) running android 4.1.1 :( I had also the same issue with my Galaxy SII... It's been years but this defect is not fixed...

judging from the code and other helpful comments of many people, I've come to the conclusion that "line 186" in  protected void sendMultipartText(...) method is defective, because it says a referenceId to be logically and'ed with 0xFF, causes messages to have the same ID with old ones probably... Although It's just a guess..

Just had this happen for the first time but it caused a massive argument between myself and the sender. I received a text message and the last sentence was the end of message that is 7 months old and has been deleted off my phone for at least 4 months. The sender cleared all of their messages months ago too. It was longer than 160 characters but battery levels were fine on both phones. It was from a Galaxy S2 to a Galaxy S2 on 3Mobile in Ireland. I just discovered this thread now and can't believe it hasn't been looked at by Google in over a year and half. Sort it out!

How can we raise the priority level from medium to high?
Obviously this should be a high priority. Text messages are a huge part of cell phones and this is clearly a widespread issue across all android devices.