96-day text lag

[PPCGeeks4ME]

Yeah, you read that right. Now I've heard of text lag, but this is ridiculous!

I used to have a lot of problems with Sprint's text lag (i.e. messages not going through until hours after being sent), but recently the problem has been pretty much nonexistant. I think it's fixed now. But then this happened...

Two days ago I flashed NRG's latest ROM (at the time, 28004 with Manila 2.5) and did a MyPhone sync as always, which downloaded my text messages among other things.

As a test, I sent an SMS to another phone and got a bunch of errors (known issue with m2.5 and/or NRG, since fixed), but the message went through.

I then got a message from one of my contacts with the text, "meet me?" Confused, as I hadn't sent this contact an SMS in weeks, I scrolled up in HTC Messaging and saw that I had apparently sent her a message. She was replying to a message with the text, "where should I meet you?" The date of the message was August 23, 2009 8:06 PM. I suddenly understood her confusion.

Looking through my MyPhone archives, this girl had, in fact, sent me an SMS suggesting that we hang out (but not specifying where) on the night of Aug. 23, at 8:05 PM.

So yes, I can confirm that I have just experienced a text lag of 96 days. Well done, Sprint. You completed the delivery, just like the FedEx man in that commercial.

There is still one mystery I cannot figure out, though; on Nov. 10, I archived all of my texts on MyPhone before that date. Between Nov. 10 and Nov. 27, I reflashed my phone countless times. So I'm pretty sure there is no way the phone could have had a record of that message in it. But when this girl replied to the message after finally receiving it on Nov. 27, the message she was replying to suddenly showed up on my phone, complete with the Aug. 23 date. How is this possible? When you reply to an SMS is a copy of the original somehow sent as well?

[mulhiny]

I don't know about the lag, but sometimes when I text my friend who has Nextel, the original text also comes back.

[fenixjn]

It is likely that the message was received on the specified date but you never got the notification for it until now.

[Block]

same thing happened to me but using pimbackup, what happens is when u restore ur msgs they get resent. so I had ppl texting me replying to msgs I sent out months before lol...

[frazell]

I know my wife had a similar situation just a few days ago. She got texts repeated to her that she sent in August or something.

It happens...

SMS isn't a super reliable form of communication.