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

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

Manouk — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 07:26:33 -0800

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.

By: ajbattrick

ajbattrick — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 07:30:49 -0800

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?

By: ralawrence

ralawrence — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 07:49:57 -0800

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.

By: daver

daver — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 23:53:45 -0800

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.

By: Manouk

Manouk — Sat, 03 Sep 2005 00:50:43 -0800

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??