How can I get texts from my iPhone-using co-workers?

May 20, 2015 7:19 PM

I used to have an iPhone. Now I have an Amazon Fire phone. I really like it...the problem is, I'm not getting texts from my co-workers' iPhones.

I've taken the following steps:

Turned off iMessages on my iPad
Turned on text messaging on my co-workers' phones
Checked the Apple webpage where you can de-register your phone number (it says my phone number isn't associated with iMessages)

Is there anything else I could do to fix this? I refuse to get another iPhone. Also, my last iPhone completely died, so I can't go back and change any settings there.

Any ideas?

posted by christinetheslp to Technology (9 answers total)

Avid Android user here, but I am pretty sure this is a known bug that happens when people switch from iPhones. Basically, all your friends who use iPhones and used to text your iPhone were sending them to you as Apple-only iMessages, not as universal SMS text messages. You need to tell their phones to start sending you messages as SMS text messages, basically. If you did this then I would call Apple and verify. Unless your iPad is connected to your phone number, that won't do anything. You could also try a factory reset on your Android phone. Sometimes that magically fixes things.
posted by AppleTurnover at 7:38 PM on May 20, 2015 [5 favorites]

The iPhone users need to change their message settings to send SMS messages when iMessage isn't available.
posted by hazel79 at 7:53 PM on May 20, 2015

The official way to resolve this.
posted by oceanjesse at 8:06 PM on May 20, 2015 [9 favorites]

And just an FYI, this week I started having problems with my imessages not working and it turns out I have 3 other friends (in 3 different countries) who are having problems with their Imessages too.
posted by catspajammies at 2:26 AM on May 21, 2015

Use oceanjesse's link. The problem is that your phone number is in Apple's database as an iMessage-enabled number, so it will always try to use iMessage first. You could have every friend turn on SMS as a backup feature, but you're still going to end up with delayed messages.
posted by mikeh at 6:59 AM on May 21, 2015

Yep, oceanjesse has it. I had this problem when I switched from iPhone to Android and nuking my iMessage account was the thing that resolved it.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 1:35 PM on May 21, 2015

Best answer: Meant to comment on this earlier, but I was on vacation and my phone didn't have my MeFi password: oceanjesse's link isn't a cure-all. It says my phone number isn't in Apple's database, but messages still very occasionally get sent to my ancient (1st gen) iPad, from people I met long after I ditched my iPhone (and the iPad has never had a net connection).

I suspect that the only way to really fix this is to burn every Apple datacenter to the ground, and salt the earth where they once stood.
posted by straw at 7:00 AM on May 27, 2015

(Duh, didn't mean "net connection", meant "phone network connection")
posted by straw at 6:17 PM on May 27, 2015

Response by poster: Yeah, everyone, it says in the question that I was already on the Apple website and I had de-registered my phone number. I think straw's answer is the closest one.

I did some more Googling and found that apparently now everyone I know with an iPhone has to delete our text message string and start a new one so their phone re-identifies my phone as an Android number. But that hasn't worked 100% either.

If I ever figure this out I'll post the answer.
posted by christinetheslp at 3:29 PM on June 20, 2015