iPhone group chat with iOS and Android users gets messages out of order

[sirk98]

Hi!

Been on Xfinity Mobile for a few months now.  Very happy with service excepting one very annoying item: on a group text message chat my friend's messages arrive very out of order.

Me: 'Hi everyone'

Friend 1: 'Hey'

Me: ' yada yada yada'

Friend 2: 'Hey Sirk98'

Friend 1: 'yada back at ya'

Friend 3: 'Hi friend 2'

.... 1am the next morning

Friend 2: 'yada yada to all'

This is a simplistic example, but I think it illustrates the problem.  Never had this issue on my prior cell phone service (VZW), I have tried restarting phone, updating iOS, the works.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.   This happens almost every time.  Not clear if its specific to this particular group or all group chats

[bald271]

Out-of-order message and/or hours-delayed message is to be expected occasionally/arbitrarily but if its consistent there is a specific reason such as the "Friend 2" device being wifi-only and/or at edge-of-cell and/or cell-data disabled and/or the entire cell-radio disabled.    Also, a single Android person on an iPhone group chat can cause issues like you see, or worse.     A super-nerd best friend is a great dad but insists on android so his wife and kids exclude him from all their group chats!      Possibly consider that one way to mitigate the issue you saw and/or confuse everyone to the max, is to set your phone to 'no-group-messaging' in which case the group-messages arrive to your device as 1:1 and your outbound originated group messages will go to every recipient as 1:1.   Often while using zero cellular-data, especially if you are on wifi.   Costs less -  but confuses people on group-threads even more!

[sirk98]

Thanks for reply!

Oddly, I am the only one in the chat that gets these out of order. We are a mix of iPhone and Android.

I keep coming back to one simple observation: this only started when I swung over to Xfinity Mobile.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m otherwise quite happy with the service. I just want to get this fixed.

Hoping there is a solution that doesn’t require draconian measures such as 1..1 messaging or excluding people 🤷‍♂️

[bald271]

You are most welcome and I sure do see what you mean.   If you are on your home wifi or other good wifi, here are some more ideas for your consideration: turn off cellular data on your iPhone and/or try putting your iPhone in airplane mode with wifi ON.    (Today I am observing a nice improvement on xfinity mobile with my iPhone SE.  It can now send & deliver MMS/multimedia messages with cellular data OFF via Settings.     Previously this was a function that android could sometimes do reliably but not iPhone.)