The roll out of iOS 7 to your iDevice probably hasn’t been quite as smooth as most users were hoping for. The lock screen issues have been well documented, but now a new bug has popped up. A lot of iMessage users are reporting that messages are not being sent using the iMessage app and in fact sitting in the outbox before erroring out.
Personally, I’ve had this issue happen on my phone. In a lot of my podcasts we coordinate the shows using iMessage and the other day I noticed that all of my messages to my cohosts were not being sent. Eventually the message would error out and I could try to resend, but often I ended up having to send the message as an SMS. It gets rather annoying after a while. Through trial and error I have found that restarting the phone temporarily fixes the issue, but it will return.
Apple has acknowledged that there is a bug in iMessage in the following statement:
We are aware of an issue that affects a fraction of a percent of our iMessage users, and we will have a fix available in an upcoming software update. In the meantime, we encourage any users having problems to reference our troubleshooting documents or contact AppleCare to help resolve their issue. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes impacted users.
The Apple message boards are also full of solutions that other users have found to temporarily fix the iMessage bug. In addition to restarting the iPhone there is a slightly shorter process for fixing the bug. A user will have to turn off iMessages and then reset the network settings through the ‘General’ setting menu. After resetting the network turn back on iMessage. From this point iMessage should begin working again. Bear in mind this is a temporary fix though.
Rumors say that the newest build of iOS 7 will address the iMessage problem. But, until iOS 7.0.3 drops you’re stuck with having to fix the bug yourself. Apple says that not a lot of people have encountered this issue, however, it seems as though half the iPhone users I know are having an issue. Sound off in the comments below if your iMessages aren’t working.
