Latest Google Voice update actually makes SMS worse
Even though sometimes it seems that Google has neglected it, I’ve been a longtime user of Google Voice as my main phone number. The app has been working fine for months, and even though there has always been a slight delay when sending and receiving SMS messages, it is usually fairly consistent and can be dealt with. However, in the last week, I’ve had many errors when sending SMS messages, and also noticed more of a delay in the receipt of SMS messages to the Google Voice.
Since a (rare) update to the Google Voice app came out exactly a week ago, I suspect that this is what’s causing the problems that I have been experiencing. On Wednesday of last week, the day after the update, I noticed that a few texts that I had sent from the app were still in the “Sending message” status, and that one had resulted in a “Message could not be sent” error. In addition, there also seems to be a bigger delay when receiving text messages to the app than before, although the difference may very well be coincidental.
Through the Voice app on my computer, SMS messages work perfectly, and the delay in receiving messages doesn’t seem to have changed at all. As a result, I’m even more inclined to suspect that the update to the Google Voice app, with the sole purpose of improving SMS delivery, has actually made it worse. I haven’t had a chance to test this on another device, but ever since the update my Nexus 4 has been having quite a bit of trouble, especially sending SMS messages. The error occurs about half of the time, and after dismissing the error the message usually goes through.
Apart from being a bit ironic, it does seem only logical that the new update is causing SMS issues with the Google Voice app at least on Jelly Bean. However, I haven’t seen any reports online of this problem with the update, which makes me wonder if it is just my Nexus 4 that has a problem. As such, I’d like to to hear from you if the latest Voice update is giving you trouble, or if you’ve heard of another cause of this SMS problem.
