iPhone - Voicemail Notification
Sat, Sep 15, 2007
I’ve noticed some weird issues regarding certain kinds of SMS messages not being delivered properly to my iPhone. Specifically, voicemail alert alerts sent by SMS never land in my inbox at all. After doing a little digging, it seems that the iPhone’s baseband has trouble interpretting incoming SMS messages coming from short codes.
Since short codes are used quite a bit in Europe for promotions, banking and the like I should think that the firmware shipping on European iPhone’s will have fixed this. In the meantime we’ll have to keep digging to try to find a workaround.
September 28th, 2007 at 8:25 am
Hi, I was wondering if the new firmware 1.1.1 will fix this problem? I notice a delay in my msn to iphone text messenging, a delay of days!! however my voicemail notification doesn’t come at all. weird.
September 29th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Very interesting. How did you know it was the baseband that was at fault?
A bunch of people are discussing it here:
http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1238325&page=1&pp=15
September 30th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
@joedornan
Baseband AT logging shows the voicemail SMS messages incoming, but they aren’t stored.
October 1st, 2007 at 12:27 am
my iphone is not receiving sms from the network.
like bills, bank notifications,
if anyone has a solution
October 1st, 2007 at 5:59 am
anyone from fido Canada try this and let me know if it works. I tried it and it didn’t but apparently it’s working for others.
http://www.modmyiphone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5507&highlight=voicemail+notification
October 1st, 2007 at 7:30 am
Jason, I’m having this exact same problem. (unlocked on Rogers Wireless in Canada) yet others are reporting that it works perfectly for them… therefore it seems that this problem cant be entirely the phone’s fault it must have something to do with the sim or such since some ppl on rogers in canada say its working properly…
Here’s a link to a post of mine regarding the subject and someone saying that it works ok for them…. weird…
Please don’t give up on this! I’d really like to find a solution!
Thanks
October 1st, 2007 at 7:31 am
oops forgot the link … http://modmyiphone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7715
and here’s one containing some seemingly useful info too… http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=40&TopicId=14383&page_no=13
October 1st, 2007 at 11:55 am
I’ll look into this further, since I personally miss receiving these messages as well. I’m very curious as to what changes to the baseband firmware Apple has introduced with 1.1.1, but without a working jailbreak for 1.1.1 I can’t do much. I’ll have a root around and see how others have managed to get short messages working.
October 1st, 2007 at 2:48 pm
jason said “Baseband AT logging shows the voicemail SMS messages incoming, but they aren’t stored.”
this is consistent with reports by one user (sorry lost the original thread) that he heard his speakers buzz as if a message was received, but nothing appeared in the SMS app.
Also you implied that others have gotten short message SMSs working… is this true or are you just being hopefull?
Thanks for looking into this. There are a lot of people out there hoping someone figures this out.
-Joe
October 1st, 2007 at 4:12 pm
The root of the problem is that messages from short codes typically don’t come from a number as such, they come from a string of characters. The baseband sees the incoming SMS, reads the sender’s number but then craps out because it can’t interpret a string where it was expecting a number. Anyone who has gotten short codes working is receiving them from a number, not a string.
October 1st, 2007 at 7:16 pm
I have been experimenting with all sorts of different texting. voicemail notification doesn’t work at all even after that baseband flash method. However, when I text myself from my msn account something funny happens. I sequentially sent a number of texts starting from 1-10 in the body of the message and I would start receiving them in no particular order the next day and on. I’m still receiving random texts I sent to myself 3 days ago! The message origin for these MSN texts art “+001020″. I get timely messages from facebook mobile which the senders origin address is “326-65″. I’m really hoping the new firmware fixes this.
October 1st, 2007 at 11:42 pm
Dunno if this means anything or not but I am recieving “Who Called” texts from my provider which originate from +8888… One would think that the VM notifications would be from a similar source… so I wonder why they aren’t being recieved?
October 2nd, 2007 at 1:29 am
getafix assumed that VM notifications come from a similar number to 8888… but in the case of Fido in Canada it appears to come from +18 ( so it appears on my old sony ericsson…) so maybe apple’s baseband has a minimum number of digits it is expecting…
October 2nd, 2007 at 6:13 am
right and certain handsets dont accept less than 4 digits
October 2nd, 2007 at 6:15 am
but some people on both networks ( fido and rogers) are reporting it as working. So I dont think that’s the problem.
October 2nd, 2007 at 3:29 pm
getafix: actually, I’ve not seen any reports that say VM notification SMSs have ever been received on the Fido network. (please link if you find any). People may be referring to regular SMSs. On Rogers, I gather that the voicemail indicator notification seems to mostly work but I’ve not followed whether they are able to receive VM notification SMSs.
October 3rd, 2007 at 2:58 pm
Here’s something interesting. This fellow identified clearly that the issue may not just be about the short code…
http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/showpost.php?p=67778&postcount=67
and this one suggests the culprit is “Flash” SMSs
http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/showpost.php?p=71060&postcount=5
October 3rd, 2007 at 3:24 pm
I can confirm on what joedornan linked, I’ve just received a banking SMS notification message from number (format) : 123-45 (those r fake obviously)
October 3rd, 2007 at 7:24 pm
I can receive the test SMS messages from FIDO customer service which originate from +8 and “who called” comes in from +8888 (also delayed like msn texts). If you look at my earlier post you’ll see that the only SMS that doesn’t come in AT ALL is voicemail notification, so far. I would like to know if an iphone with 1.1.1 can receive msn texts in a timely manner.
October 3rd, 2007 at 8:58 pm
this confirms that 1.1.1 does not help:
http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/showpost.php?p=72101&postcount=10
October 5th, 2007 at 7:24 am
I think we may be stuck waiting for a fix from apple for this one. I dont know why it works for some people and not others but it really sucks.
October 5th, 2007 at 9:33 am
Yeah, this isn’t something that can be fixed by issuing an AT command or editing a plist. There’s very little anyone, myself included, can do about it.
October 5th, 2007 at 9:46 am
although I would be interested in seeing a dump of the bb from a rogers user who’s vm works and
one whose doesn’t. This may shed some light on what’s going on.
October 5th, 2007 at 10:58 am
Well, the baseband firmware from the two would be exactly the same - it’s checksummed, and if a checksum fails the baseband won’t load.
October 5th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
But there must be something different in the two phones internal files and/or firmwares in order for one to work but not the other. Maybe if we could figure out what that is…. Or maybe the problem is SIM related. I know that the iPhone doesn’t use a sim card the way a traditional gsm handset does, could it be pulling or requesting information from the sim that certain types of sim cards dont support? That would explain why people with older sims seem to have less problems…
October 5th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Yeah. I am figuring out how to regularly call in to check messages given that not only does apple have to fix their BB, but the community then has to figure out how to re-activate that updated software. Not something that’ll happen tomorrow.
I suspect the SIM doesn’t have anything to do with the success of VM notifications SMS sent out by Fido:
http://www.howardforums.com/showpost.php?p=9966541&postcount=31
The one dangling thread from my research has been the concept of a “flash SMS” which implies a difference from normal SMSs.
http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/showpost.php?p=71060&postcount=5
Do either of you know what this poster was talking about?
October 5th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
This is very interesting:
http://www.howardforums.com/showpost.php?p=9988575&postcount=44
I can confirm that if you hit ‘1′ while listening to one’s Fido VM greeting, it offers to send a numeric page. That page appears to be sent from the same number as Fido’s VM SMSs (+18) and yet it comes through no problem. What could possibly be the difference between these two SMSs? It would seem the problem might have nothing to do with the origin number?
October 5th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
The reason I suspect it may have something to do with SIM cards is because, like in this post( http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1241072 ), people have been reporting less weirdness and everything working with older sims. I dunno if it makes any sense or it’s just a coincidence but maybe it’s relevant.
October 9th, 2007 at 6:27 am
@ joedornan
Flash SMS is just a term some like to use when talking about the messages your provider sends you that you never see, like in this instance, voicemail alerts. The network operator sends out a very small SMS that alerts your phone of the VM state and its then your handsets job to interpret that and turn it into a VM notification.
October 10th, 2007 at 10:47 am
A Flash SMS is a broadcast message of sorts. These messages are treated differently than normal SMS. The primary difference is that a Flash SMS will spray a message across your screen; unlike standard or hybrid SMS (will return to this point). With standard SMS, the phone will store the message in the BB until such time as the firmware receives a withdraw message from the firmware to delete the message (normally right after it has been populated in the SMS.db). Flash messages are treated differently. They are received by the BB and then copied to the SIM where they remain until either 1) another Flash SMS is received or 2) a normal SMS is received, at which point they are lost forever. The iPhone does not act upon these messages since it has been instructed not to. This is not a bug and this is not an oversight by Apple, rather, it’s totally intentional for reasons that I’m not certain of – have my ideas though. This statement is proven if you minicom to the BB and examine the AT command that controls the iPhone’s reactivity to these messages. Clearly during the pre-flight launch procedures of the CommCenter this value is set to a value that has been defined in the pre-flight if you change it manually, it’s erased after the CommCenter is reloaded.
As for those out there who receive VM Notification (mostly in CA it seems), the reason for this is simple. It’s because the VM Notifications which are sent are structured similarly to that of a standard SMS – what I call above a hybrid SMS – then a Flash message. I’m sure that these messages are not saved to the SIM, but it’s hard for me to check since I’m here in France…..
October 15th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Hi folks,
strange behavior of my 1.0.2 used with e-Plus here in Germany: Everthing fine with sending and receiving text messages. My VM informs me in two different ways:
+ VM reports, that somebody has called and not leaved a message
+ VM reports of message
The strange think is, that the first VM notification will be received and displayed correctly !
The second one will not be received / displayed.
Regards,
Chris
October 18th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Chris, (from Germany) did you chabge your number format so that you can see for example (+49) 233…… instead of 0233…….. ?
I would like to know if this format has also any thing to do with SMS receiving.
What kind of SIM card you use ?
Thanks,
Haim
Holland
October 30th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Well. it seems that rogers may indeed be rolling out the iPhone in Canada some time in the near future, they appear to be getting their network in line to work with the iPhone because mine all of a sudden started to work over the weekend.
I never used to get VM notifications and some text messages would be either delayed or not come thru at all, but over the last wek or so it all just started woking, as if by magic. Maybe Rogers is prepping their network for an upcoming Canadian launch!
November 19th, 2007 at 6:36 am
I can confirm that firmware 1.1.2 DOES fix the problem with receiving Flash SMSs that came from Fido in Canada!
More info here:
http://hackint0sh.org/forum/showthread.php?t=15681