When the Galaxy Nexus was released numerous individuals noticed that the stock Android Messenger App was lacking a Group MMS/Reply All option. As it stands, Android can send a "Group Message" but it is sent out as *n* number of individual texts (n being the number of people in the message). When an individual replies to this message, it is sent back to the original messenger as an individual reply message instead of being messaged to the entire group.
This feature has been available to phones for almost 5-7 years now with the very beginning introduction of text messaging. When an Android phone receives a group message, Android recognizes that the sender has "other recipients," but it does not offer a "reply to all function" or even a "group message" function. As a result, if an iPhone/WP7/Blackberry/Symbian user sends a group message to a Stock Android user, the Android user is bombarded with an individual user message instead of it all being grouped, resulting in out of order, incoherent, texts. As a parallel, imagine that someone puts you on an email list. Everyone else can press "reply all" but you. Also, whenever someone replies all to that message, you only get *their *message and not the replies from every other user on that email list. So, what you are left with is literally parts and pieces of the conversation that make no sense because you don't know the context to that email, or who they are responding to. *This prompted a response from HUNDREDS of upset users: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=24468. To date and to the group's knowledge, no one from Google has really commented on the issue, or looked at the problem in depth. The code group received a response (after tweeting him) from Jean-Baptiste Queru, who told a user to post something on the Android Contributor's Group which was done here: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/android-contrib/Oh254kDdCas. After a follow up, he informed us that that was the wrong forum, and that we should post it here on Android-Discuss (hence this post).* Now then, Robert Nye (the person who started the original Google Code and Contributor's post) has done a much better job at describing the issue as a whole, so I'll quote his post: "Android desperately needs to add a group MMS messaging support to the stock messaging apk, a la Verizon Messages (and iPhone and BB natively support this). Some Android phone manufacturers do make this modification to the source code, as I have read that the Droid Bionic has this feature. This change needs to be baked into the AOSP Code so that all users have the option of this feature, including users that run custom ROMs based on AOSP. Current problems: 1. If one receives a group MMS, it shows up in that individual contact's thread and not in the original group thread. If you read the message info, you can see that the message was sent to multiple people, yet it does not show up in the group thread. 2. When sending out a group message to say (5) people, a separate SMS is sent out to each contact, resulting in 5 SMS messages showing up in the group thread. 3. When you reply to a group message, the reply message is only sent to the original sender and not all members of the group. Said reply message does not show up in the group thread on either the sender or receiver's phone. This results in my group message (of 5 people) consisting of 6 different threads when it should all be contained in 1 thread. Currently Verizon Messages is the only application that has this functionality [See below for changes]. Verizon messages has an ugly UI and is slow, so the functionality needs to be baked into AOSP. Not all phone manufacturers make this modification to the Android Code, so I think it needs to be included in AOSP. Solution: Group MMS needs to be implemented into the stock messaging apk. A "Reply to All" feature needs to be added, so that when checked an MMS is sent out to all members of the conversation and all responses are contained within the same thread. Other features that may be included: Enabling Group Messaging using Groups in "Contacts" or "People". If I have a certain group of people that I would like to message at once, I could select the group from the Contacts or People app and then all numbers would be automatically added to the message instead of having to enter each individual phone number." In addition to the above post, there has been two changes. OEM's, such as Motorola, recognized the flaw in this and added Group Messaging to their non-stock ROMs. As a result, only really Nexus devices have had this issue, which is why it hasn't "blown up." There are also two other alternatives/solutions to the issue through 3rd Party Apps: The first (as mentioned) is Verizon Messages which is by all standards terrible carrier bloatware. Not only is it really not compatible with LTE GNex, but it also lags, is ugly, doesn't use stock android keyboard by default, doesn't always recognize the group texts, and is generally unpleasant to use. The second is HandCent. While a perfectly fine app, several users (myself included) do not want to use the app for various reasons. It also has issues grouping the text messages, very much like the Verizon Messages app, thus increasing the need for an update to the Android Messenger APK. There is however a sorta Google work around, and that's to use Google+ Circles. This is completely impractical because not everyone uses them. You can also theoretically use Google Voice, but that requires using your Google Voice number instead of your cell number. Which leaves people not only confused, but most people use their primary cell number for texting. So, why is this being posted here? Well as posted above, JBQ stated this is the place to do it. So I did it here to hopefully get Google's attention to resolve this issue. It is an extremely serious issue for Android, and as the posters in the Google Code group have posted, has actually pushed people AWAY from Android. More and more people are using group texting on iPhone leaving users of stock OS Android to suffer from lack of communication. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/android-discuss/-/oQnDgya0wj8J. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en.
