Ok, i’ve managed to get to the test menu as AnotherElk described…it seemed to try and ring it before but should just appear as soon as you type the last *. In ‘Phone Info’, right at the bottom the ‘SMSC’ part is blank. If i press update then ‘update error’ appears in the text box. If i delete ‘update error’ and press refresh it brings up “+44[my number]”,145. If I try and send messages they just sit on ‘sending’ forever but I don’t get the formatted incorrectly error anymore…not sure if this is progress?
Thanks to whoever edited my last post to include the asterisks by the way 
Ok, your own number most certainly is not the SMSC. The “,145” part is not unusual, even if I don’t know what that does, I have that, too.
The SMSC is the “SMS Center” of your provider, and you can ask your provider to tell it to you. With well known providers you could maybe even google it.
If you can still receive SMS you could alternatively ask your provider to resend the initial config SMS. Perhaps that would do some fixing to the settings, too.
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Same problem here.
My FP2’s microphone and charge point stopped working, so have just received a new module, inserted it, all good. Started to receive texts and tried to reply to one and got the same error folks are getting here.
What to do? I’m confused by the tech speak above…
is there any way that we can ask the company what;s going on? There are lots of people working there, is there a number or email address that we can call and ask? All I can find is the troubleshooting, but that’s no help to an ignoramus like me. I just want to ask someone. Lots of other organisations have an online messaging service available to members. Why not Fairphone?
I don’t understand most of what’s been offered so far.
https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us
“Or call us: Monday to Friday 9:30 - 17:30 at +31 (0)20-788 4400.”
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Thanks; I’ll have to try those.
If anyone is with the Phone Co-op I rang them this morning and it sounds like the problem is with their network. Not resolved yet but they are working on it - if you ring them and give your number they’ll keep you updated when it’s fixed. I assume this will apply to most UK people with a fairphone.
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Hmm, strange as I have two SIMs in my phone (PlusNet and Talk Mobile) and the problem occurs with both of them, so I assumed it wasn’t a network problem. And it’s intermittent which is also odd.
I did a little “creeping” and checked the IP addresses of everybody who posted here (as a Moderator I can do that) and indeed you are all from the UK, so even if it’s not just a Co-Op issue it seems to be a UK issue.
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So hopefully it can be resolved by the provider, but if not, we are getting nowhere it seems.
I found this discussion from 3 years ago …
https://github.com/googlei18n/libphonenumber/issues/203
I take away 3 things from this …
-
Android parses phone numbers in a certain way and blocks numbers that don’t fit to a certain set of rules.
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Make sure there’s no “(0)” in your numbers as “+44 (0)…” for UK numbers (or “+49 (0)…” for German numbers, I’m reluctant to think of this as a UK only thing) might not work.
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As there is an Android component at play here, this can of course be updated and changed, so an update could have changed or still could change the behaviour of the number parsing.
If the problem is not caused by your provider, please tell us what exactly it says in Settings - About phone - Build number, so we can see which OS you are using, how up-to-date it is and conclude from that what stock message App is running.
The really strange parts that don’t add up at all (if the problem is not caused by the provider) are …
… with me counting Android updates as anything else …
A Google search suggests we are not talking about a Fairphone problem here, people get this error on every flavour of Android phone across the board.
Sony in such a case suggests checking whether messaging works in safe mode.
Here’s how to boot in safe mode, but use this with caution because you might lose some stuff along the way …
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Is it because of the way Android parses phone numbers that I can’t send texts to five-digit codes? As in, the kind that are used to send charitable donations or to find out when the next bus is due. I certainly used to be able to text five-digit numbers with my old Nokia phone.
I can phone a friend in Romania but when I try to send a text message it says that it can’t send - wrong format. If it was the wrong format I would have thought that I wouldn’t be able to phone either.
In which country are you and what is your mobile operator?
I am in UK. Phone provider is EE via Phone Co-Op.
In fact, it sounds strange to me. Have you saved your friend’s phone number in int’l format +40… ? If not, try this. If also for SMS you actually use this format, then maybe report to your phone company.
There’s a history of Android versions where the phone app has been able to handle more formats for phone numbers than the messages app. I’m not sure whether this still hasn’t been fixed by the Android developers, but what used to be an issue are formats that contain brackets or slashes, for example:
+31 (20) 788 4400
+31/20/7884400
would only work in the phone app, not the messages app. Spaces are fine in both apps, if I recall correctly. If you have any brackets, slashes, or other characters other than numbers, spaces and ‘+’ in the phone number, try removing those.
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On this note, I moved your discussion here, please have a look at several hints in this topic.
Thank you for your reply. I only have + and spaces.
Have been having this but just with one number. I wonder if in this case it is some sort of spoofing software that gives out a dodgy number as I get a tone I don’t recognise when I try and call back the number and if I put 44 instead of 0 in front of the number I get a message saying calls are not being connected to this number?
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