So... I get several texts from my gf today. In particular, she sends four more or less in a row.

Later I realize that the third one, which is a photo with a text, has a time stamp on my phone more than an hour later than the first, second, and fourth.

She has an iPhone and uses AT&T. I have a Samsung Galaxy S4 and use Verizon.

This is just run-of-the-mill phone company imperfections, right? Okay...GO!

Even on the same carrier (and same account) using the same hardware, this isn't too uncommon. A perfect example of why wired is so much more reliable than wireless.

She is sending iOS to Android, so I'd guess it's just the larger photo file taking longer to transmit in this case. Especially noticeable in poor signal areas. But there is also a known bug in iOS to iOS instant messages at the moment, which can scramble the order of texts, sometimes with amusing results when Q & A get reversed: [Link: thenextweb.com]

Wife and I both have iPhones. When you look at my text thread, her responses show up before my question. Then i get in trouble for not responding correctly:)

So what were you and your girlfriend arguing about?

Fins,
You KNOW you're asking me to open a can of worms. That's okay.

She was stating that my texts arrived out of order. That is true.

I was stating that the text with the image took a lot longer to arrive than the other ones did. That is true.

Her point of view was that the image text took a lot longer to arrive because the order of the texts was somehow changed. My point of view was that the order of the texts was changed by the image text being delayed.

She characterized this as something about my phone. I said the phone couldn't receive a text and then wait for some time before displaying it, putting a later time stamp on it. Instead, I said it was caused by the transmission system: the delay was caused either by AT&T, Verizon, or a combination of the two. Also, since we've never seen this before, it's not typical.

Note that I have to assume that the issue is a delay in order to express those possible reasons. If, instead, the issue is that order of the messages was changed, then one has to seek out the means by which the order was changed.

This shows why philosophers are still in business and why most people don't read philosophy. I just ran across something written by the guy I quote in my RC signature, George Bernard Shaw. The article is described as "an excerpt from Shaw's preface to R.A. Wilson's 1941 book." (See [Link: digitalcomposition.org].) The excerpt has indications showing that the entire thing was more than forty pages long -- and that was just the introduction! You've gotta wonder how long the book is!

The scrambled text is not just an IOS issue.

I take it you use "scrambled" to mean "arriving late" or "out of order," right? The texts themselves were intact, so not scrambled.

It's not JUST an IOS issue... so it's an IOS issue, but it's something else, too. Is that what you're saying?

Wit Verizon I sometimes get voicemails days and days after they were sent. Often I get them after I have listened and deleted them.


Verizon is some kind of f'ed up.....

If the message was sent through the SMS channel, the image would need to be sent as a series of blocks, possibly 160 characters at a go, then reassembled as the full image. This will take some time and explain why the image arrived later.