Verizon Doesn’t Like Google Android’s +1

A while ago, I was having problems sending texts to my brother. Everytime I tried to send the text, it would fail to send it, giving me an error “message could not be sent” message. This troubled me for some time, but I was able to overcome the problem by using another texting app that used data instead of the regular text messages.

However, the problem still persisted with other random contacts. One in particular that I was texting a lot. I found that if I manually entered in her number she would get the text. But if I got out of the app, and then returned to reply, it would fail.

I started looking at the contact number and found that in each instance of the failed messages the number had a +1(area code)(phone number). It was the “+” symbol that was throwing it off. Any number with +1 in front of it dousn’t work for Verizon.

Apparently during the Android coding for Verizon, someone made a mistake, and symbols like “+” are not supported for texting. You can still call the contact, but texting always fails. This has been a problem for well over a year, and still persists on most (if not all) Verizon Android phones, as there hasn’t been a patch developed yet.

This is very annoying if you like to use the  +1-234-56789 format. Especially if you sync your facebook contacts, many numbers will have that +1 in front of them, and you can edit facebook numbers.

Maybe the new Android 4.0 will have it fixed. I’m not sure as I have not tested it out on a 4.0 device. But I do hope Google fixes it soon. People have been complaining about it for well over a year to Verizon tech support. You would think they would have listened by now.