Text bug - Working on possible solutions

Ok now i'm pissed.  After I talked to AT&T I went four days without the text issue, and today I have had it happen twice, so now I don't really know what to do.  I could complain again but I don't know if it will help.  On the bright side, I have noticed getting a much faster GPS fix recently.

I found this forum searching for info about the texting problem on the Impression. I've talked to AT&T and Samsung about it. It amuses me that they both say the haven't heard of this issue when in my search I found a discussion about this very issue on the AT&T forum..

http://forums.wireless.att.com/cng/board/message?board.id=samsung&thread.id=72708&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

and even found discussion about it on Samsung's site on a "check out our new phone" info page on the impression, which has a place at the bottom to post reviews...

http://www.samsungusanews.com/2009/03/samsung-impression/

When I had the lady at Samsung on the phone, she said she'd never heard of this problem and only had the T-9 problem with the virtual keyboard documented. I think I convinced her this was not the same problem.

I'm on my 3rd phone and the problem has followed. On the Samsung site where you can register you phone, when you type in your IMEI # it displays the manufacture date beneath it. Just to have some info posted related to dates, here's the dates of my three phones.

1st phone (new out of the box on Oct. 15th)
mfg. date 9-23-09

2nd phone - reconditioned (I was outside my 30 day window...long story)
mfg. date 4-16-09

3rd phone - reconditioned (only had it a week)
mfg. date 11-9-09

I've been watching the phone closely and comparing it to what other people have posted about the problem. Here's what mine does....

We all know that the first 30 incoming messages go to the SIM and then starting with message 31 they start saving on the phone (all outgoing appear to only get stored on the phone) There's no way to change the setting for the first 30 going to the SIM.

Today, as soon as I received incoming message #30, my very next message send attemp put the phone in the 'sending..sending...sending' mode that I had to escape from, with my message getting dumped in the outbox and not sent. I could call up existing received messages and attempt to reply, but those attempts would just get dumped into the outbox. If I tried to create a new message, I could type the message but when I hit the "Send to" button nothing would happen so I couldn't assign it to anyone.

I left the phone in this mode (didn't power down and re-boot) and started looking at other functions that people have complained about while having this problem.

The phone still makes and receives calls in this stuck mode..

As far as receiving messages... I called someone and told them to wait a couple of minutes and then send me a text and I backed out to the home page and put the phone down and let it go to sleep...and waited and watched the phone. (I have it set to play a sound and vibrate when a message comes in) After a couple of minutes, I see the screen light up, no event window, no sound, no vibration, nothing but a momentarily lit up home screen for about 5 seconds (like it does if you hit a button when it's locked and asleep) and it went back to sleep. I went to messaging and there was a new message in my in box, which I could open and read. This was incoming message 31 and when you select 'More' one of the options is "Move to SIM card" so I know this new message was saved on the phone. So in this stuck mode, you can still receive new messages, you just won't know you got them unless you look. I tried to send a reply, but to no avail, it just immediately went to the out box.

I tried to delete my inbox messages, but it only said  'deleting...deleting...deleting" and never deleted anything, so in this mode you can not delete messages.

Others have mentioned that in while in this stuck mode (before re-booting) that they can't get out on the internet. I was able to go out on the net, went to google and did a search that came back with results, so it seems my internet is fine.

Another problem mentioned is the alarm clock not working while in this stuck mode. So, I set an alarm for 5 minutes away, made sure I had a sound selected for the alarm and made sure the volume was all the way up, and waited and watched. The alarm did in fact go off, the screen lit up desplaying the alarm, BUT the phone produced no sound. Not sure if it would have vibrated or not since I only had it set to play the melody. My guess is it wouldn't have vibrated. So...unless you're awake and looking at your display, your alarm clock wouldn't wake you up...which I guess it wouldn't need to if you were awake and looking at your display....

Everything else I tried to do seemed to still be working. One simple power down and everything is back to normal again. Tomorrow I plan to call Samsung again (1-888-987-4357 as the admin guy posted over and over again on that samsung site in the link above) I'll try to get past the phone answering person to get to someone technical. I'll post what I find out. However, I have my doubts that it's the handset that is the problem. If it were, it seems that in the process of trading out phones you'd eventually get one that doesn't have the problem. It's almost like those of us that have the problem just have it, regardless of what Impression phone you have in your hand. But I've been an AT&T customer for a long time with this same number and never had this problem with my Motorola V3XX. It seems like it it were some kind of connection problem between AT&T and Impression phones that we'd all have the same problem.

The fact that the trigger seems to be hitting 30 incoming messages saved to the SIM and then having to change the save path to the phone makes me think it's a handset issue, maybe software or firmware in the phone itself.

What I don't know at this time is once you get past the 30 message mark and re-boot, does everything work OK after that until you reach the maximum number of stored messages (whatever that is)? I didn't have one problem at all until that 30th message came in.

Sorry to be so lengthy but if we all keep sharing and diagnosing when and how and what's going on when this happens, maybe we can all start calling Samsung or AT&T and pushing harder for them to fix it.

AT&T told me:
Mary Rich: These phones need to be powered off and back on >during the day daily<. Just power off then back on.  Our systems send out updates to the phone and the SIM card daily and like a computer the device needs to be powered off and back on when the signal is good to get the updates loaded to the device.

Mary Rich: If the device is left on for a long time it also casuses the device to loose contact with the towers. The signal gets weak and can also cause the phone to stop working correctly. By rebooting the device the phone will send out a strong signal and the memory is refreshed much like a computer.

Which means the problem supposedly isn't a problem. Except if you text more than what someone who doesn't usually texts texts.

And I for sure power off my phone every day.  Actually, I end up doing it every couple hours, especially if I have been texting a lot.  And I think the whole power off thing is stupid anyways.  I had a Blackjack II before this and I never powered it off.  Like maybe every two weeks and it was always just fine.

Lol they gave me the update too and i saw that power on/off thing too but still have the bug.

My 1st phone started with the problem the first week I had it. I went back in and they said they had never heard of that problem. I didn't do it much, only once or twice a week, but I don't text a lot. My kids are grown and out on their own so what texting I do is usually with them. Anyway AT&T's first attempt at solving my problem (at the store) was to removing texting and data from my account and then add it back. This was at 3 weeks into the new phone. Things were fine for a week or so, and then we hit the Thanksgiving holidays and the problem occured a few times over the holidays. When I went back in I was out of my 30 day window and they sent me to the service center and they traded my phone out. No one told me in the process that they could only trade me with a reconditioned phone. I wasn't too happy about getting a reconditioned phone, but decided if it fixed the problem I could live with it. That phone had the same problem and I was really bummed out when I logged on to the Samsung site and plugged in the IMEI number to find out the phone was about 5 months older than the one I originally purchased.

This last time back, I told them if I couldn't have a new phone, then I wanted on at least as new as my original phone. I took them to the Samsung site and made them bring out a handful of reconditioned phones and we plugged in IMEI numbers until we found one newer than my original. I work for a low voltage electronics contractor doing fire alarm, sound systems, nurse call etc. and I know for our products 5 months can make a big difference in board components, software and firmware, especially with new products. So I wanted the newest phone I could get out of them.

I'm happy with the phone, except for the text problem of course. I didn't want a iphone, for me, I don't need all the stuff that comes on them. The Impression is a good fit for me. I plan to use some of the info on this board to do some minor mods to it, like upping the volume a little, particularly on the bluetooth audio level.

I agree with what Agoattamer said in another post about having to hold the tech support people's hand trying to get them to do things. We're kind of being their quality control group I guess, but the more accurate and specific info we can give them to work with the more likely they are to nail down the problem.

As I mentioned earlier, it was when I hit 30 incoming messages and the phone had to make the decision to stop saving messages to the SIM and start saving them to the phone that it stumbled and the messaging program crashed. I didn't have any problem up to that point, and I didn't delete the inbox so I can let the messages build up to see if the problem comes back and how often.

So when is ATT gonna start paying us for quality support? 

Exactly. Even if we replace our phones we still dont have it. But those that do still have it even after replacing their phones. And that says it all right there.