Why does my NOKIA 6820 say that some SMS are Unreadable?

September 2, 2005 7:26 AM

Why does my NOKIA 6820 say that some SMS are Unreadable? When I receive SMS from some phones, the phone says that it cannot show the message, or that the message is unreadable.

I know the problem is in my device because if I change my SIM to another phone the message can be read perfectly. I called NOKIA Argentina (where I live) and they are clueless. Any ideas?? ever happened to you?
More info: The software on the phone is the one that came loaded but it's version number is supposed to be the latest. The phones from which I cannot receive are on the same carrier.

posted by Manouk to technology (4 comments total)

Are they over the single SMS limit (of 160 characters IIRC) where it has to stitch 2 real SMS messages together to display 1 virtual SMS?

What if you try your SIM on another phone of the same make/model?
posted by ajbattrick at 7:30 AM on September 2, 2005

Are there any non-western characters in those messages?

If not, then it sounds like a plain old bug in the software to me. People are always told they have the latest version (so avoiding having hundreds of people wanting their phone reflashed) so use *#0000# to find out yours and see if Nokia technical support really does have a later one available. You won't be able to do it yourself but they will point you at an authorised service centre that should do it for free.
posted by ralawrence at 7:49 AM on September 2, 2005

The 6820 is a messaging phone, so I doubt it's the multi-part thing that's got ya. Ralawrence's guess is a good one. The specs for the device say that it supports SMS, EMS and a few other messaging types.

There are two other types of SMS style messages which might cause the problem. Class 0 and 2 SMS messages could be screwing things up. Similarly, it's possible this phone doesn't support Nokia SmartMessaging, although I think that's unlikely given that it's a Nokia phone (although you never know).

Best bet: What's the carrier that's sending you the messages? Are you sure they're GSM? It's entirely possible they're CDMA, I know much of S. America runs CDMA and the messages they send are more or less 1-offs for each mobile operator.
posted by daver at 11:53 PM on September 2, 2005

The software is version 4.83 from 19-05-04. I know that some of the unreadable messages have been sent from a CDMA cellphone, but some from a GSM one. Thanks anyway, I'll keep trying to get NOKIA to help, does anybody have a support mail for them??
posted by Manouk at 12:50 AM on September 3, 2005