breaking sms receipt on the op8p

a couple days ago my SMS chats were delayed. this happened regardless of sender, carrier, etc. the delay ranged from 10-30 minutes. particularly frustrating because TFA on all the things 😩 eventually i got annoyed enough to troubleshoot it yesterday and found that i am yet again the cause of wanting to defenestrate a computer ☺️

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this was an issue reported back as early as november for all android users, and hit OP devices in december with a release. the issue was isolated to Google Play Services, and a workaround was to uninstall that update. goog rolled back that update and forcibly uninstalled it from phones, and indeed, i don’t have it.

clearly something else was afoot and all that noise was a red herring 🧐

searching the net some more, i came across this excellent post (alt). the outline didnt look all that interesting at first, but it turned out to actually be quite the helpful read.

First, you should try to remember when the problem started. When did you notice that you keep having delayed messages (whether sending it or receiving it)?

After which, remember if you actually had downloaded anything during that period of time. This might be an application, a ringtone, a wallpaper, etc.

So, do you remember anything now? Did you download any app, wallpaper, or ringtone around the time when you had the problem? Well, write down these apps (or whatever it may be) in a small paper.

After which, uninstall them one by one. After each app is uninstalled, check out by sending and receiving text messages deliberately.

Are you use a non-default messaging app? The one that didn’t come with your actual device? Well, you can possibly remove that too. Or, you can check for app updates to ensure that this particular messaging app isn’t the root of the problem.

i wasn’t feeling very enthused about troubleshooting at first, but seeing the familiar process laid out like this reminded me of the pleasantly curious and calm mind i assume when problem solving that drove me to attain the knowledge of computers i have today. so down the rabbit hole i went!

• disabled automatic system update application on restart
• disabled some system apps and limited their functionality from app details/settings
• enrolled in beta program for a ton of apps, including…
  • Google Messages - last updated 2/3!!
  • Google (now/search) - last updated 2/5!!
  • Google Play services!! - last updated 1/13

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i thought i was on to something when noting the recently updated beta apps that could be related to the issue, but no. disenrolling from the beta for messages and google didn’t pan out.

• ✗cleared all Google Play Services caches, rebooted
• tried system update - no update available despite there having been OTA releases of feature updates on OP forum???
• disenrolled from Google Messages beta program
• took a system backup of SMS through OnePlus Switch app
• uninstalled beta version of Google Messages
• received text messages send from carrier and GV 10 minutes after sending at carrier number
• installed stable channel release of Google Messages
• sent SMS from carrier and GV to carrier
• disenrolled from “Google” app beta program
• ✗received SMS tests from both lines 5 mintues later

that left perhaps the permissions changes i made to system apps and services. meticulously and boringly, i went back through system, google and OP apps, checking their permissions and all the advanced menus.

because i cant resist myself, i made a bunch of unrelated changes that in retrospect could have confounded my experiment, but didnt thankfully 🙃

h o w e v e r,,, a facepalm moment was finding that i had restricted the OP messages app from the SMS permission, and ‘modify system settings.’ at the time, this seemed reasonable, since id been used to changing the default messenger app meaning the stock messenger essentially got bypassed entirely.

i dont know if that hadnt been the case the entire time with this handset, but now, looking in OP messages, i saw that all my SMS were actually there in addition to in Google Messages. wild.

sooo, probably that’s the issue right? yep, it was. both settings had to be enabled for SMS to be received in a timely manner

• ✓gave stock messages app SMS and modify system settings permissions, tested SMS carrier-to-carrier, received immediately 🤯
• noticed was disenrolled from Google beta and wondered if it downgraded, couldn’t tell
• changed permissions back to restrictive for stock messages, sent an SMS carrier-to-carrier
• granted only SMS perm, sent an SMS carrier-to-carrier
• granted additionally modify settings permission, sent an SMS carrier-to-carrier
• ✓received last two SMS ~20 seconds later, but not the first
• tested SMS once more from both carrier and GV, received immediately
• ✗removed SMS permission, tested SMS again, no receipt within 2 minutes

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what’s sus about this is why tf the delays happened now rather than initially. it’s not like i didnt notice…

since then, RCS in messages was re-activated. it had been broken when on the Goog beta. so i ran through the test again, and receipt was delayed by about 30 seconds to a minute. didnt really like that tbh… the former delay was carrier-to-carrier, and the latter GV-to-carrier.

i switched the default SMS app back to OP messages, and tried again. instant receipt✓ from both sender services. notably, OP’s app doesn’t support RCS. curious. wouldnt really expect it to be less efficient than using the aging SMS technologies but uhhh, okay

i was unfortunately able to verify this in Google messages too… switching the default app back, and disabling RCS again had my messages being delivered✓ near instantaneouslyfrom both sending services. Tragic 😞

maybe RCS is to blame? nope✗, removing those permissions from OP messages with RCS still disabled (and still on stable channel of GMessages) = delays, regardless of default/receiving messenger choice!

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i dont have an answer as to the root cause, unfortunately, and this bugs me 😡

i know there haven’t been any OS updates recently, but maybe some OP system service was asynchronously updated. that is a feature that i have enabled, and it does so silently.

maybe ill keep thinking about this later, and update the post, but for now,,,

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