How can I slow iMessages on my iPhone 5C?

Dec 28, 2015
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slow imessage on iphone 5C

I'm trying to diagnose some slow imessage issues. It's very slow on my mother's phone (iPhone 5C), and I've done a number of things to resolve it that haven't helped.

My 'normal' experience - imessage works quickly and has no delays. Example devices I have to compare against are my own and my wife's iphone 5Ss, which send and receive messages instantly, and my brother's iPhone 4S. We are all on the same wifi network at my home, with high speed Verizon FIOS.
My mother's experience - imessage has a blue bar that creeps it's way across the top when you send a message, taking sometimes several minutes to send. Receiving messages also can take anywhere from 1 to many minutes, and she has no idea if imessage will work or not. This happens even when she is at my house on our high speed FIOS wifi. Once in a while

I tried a number of troubleshooting steps, (reset network settings, etc) and finally did a full backup and restore of her phone and then restore from backup (just taken). I guess the next step is to restore without restoring from backup and see if something is interfering along the way. Even after a full restore (and then restore from backup) it reacts the same way - slow creeping blue bar when sending a message, and no indication that a new message is being sent (the wiggly dots when somebody else is typing). I have her phone and mine side by side and I can send and receive to other people instantly, while her phone is slow... both get the same results from speedtest, both using the 'phone number' as the imessage send and receive number. Both iOS 9.2.

The 5C isn't full, it has about 4 GB free (16GB model), so I don't think that's related. I'm running out of ideas. What else could interfere with imessage? We are all using AT&T, and speedtest.net comes up with fast results (25+Mb/min) when I check the cell data connections on both devices. The 5C acts the same whether it's on wifi or cellular (as do all of our devices) - just pointing this out to say that we have good signal strength and speed with AT&T around here - Boston, MA area.

Thanks for any ideas!
 

Just_Me_D

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Re: slow imessage on iphone 5C

Is she low on storage space? Have you tried restoring the device and setting it up as new? Have you tried going to Settings → General → Reset and then selecting "Reset Network Settings"?
 
Dec 28, 2015
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Re: slow imessage on iphone 5C

Is she low on storage space?
The 5C isn't full, it has about 4 GB free (16GB model)
in addition, the storage for imessage is about 190MB - not much at all.

Have you tried going to Settings → General → Reset and then selecting "Reset Network Settings"?
I tried a number of troubleshooting steps, (reset network settings, etc)

Have you tried restoring the device and setting it up as new?

and finally did a full backup and restore of her phone and then restore from backup (just taken). I guess the next step is to restore without restoring from backup and see if something is interfering along the way.

I guess my next step is to do a restore as new, just log into her icloud account and see how it works. Suppose that does work - then what do I do to get the rest of her stuff back? It's not like you can just restore one app at a time. If I do a full restore from backup, it works the same as before - that's something I already tried.

Thanks
-Derek
 
Dec 28, 2015
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I should also mention that she has an ipad mini(2) wifi+cellular, logged into the same icloud account, which does not exhibit the same delays with imessage.
 

Just_Me_D

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Re: slow imessage on iphone 5C

If it were "me", I'd restore the device and set it up as new, and not from a backup. Yes, it's an inconvenience, but it's worth it on more occasions than not in my experience.
 
Dec 28, 2015
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Thanks for the advice. So tonight I restored the phone from scratch and set it up as new. iMessage, mobile data and everything else works great. The question now is - how do I figure out how to restore some of the things from the backup but not all. Or how do I step by step add things back until I find the 'corrupt' or whatever part of the backup data?
 

Ledsteplin

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Thanks for the advice. So tonight I restored the phone from scratch and set it up as new. iMessage, mobile data and everything else works great. The question now is - how do I figure out how to restore some of the things from the backup but not all. Or how do I step by step add things back until I find the 'corrupt' or whatever part of the backup data?

If you restored as new, you don't use the back up. You pretty much start over. Your apps, including paid apps, are still in your purchased list in the App Store. Download what you need. Some, like Facebook and Dropbox you can sign in to and everything will be there. Games you start over. You should still have notes if they were iCloud. You may need to turn Notes on in Settings> iCloud. Did you back up photos to Dropbox or OneDrive? If not, they are in your iCloud back up I guess. If you want them, you'll need to restore again and set up with the iCloud back up. Then if need be, back photos up to Box, Dropbox or OneDrive. Then restore as new. LOL
 
Dec 28, 2015
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So there's no partial restore options. Got it. Will restore again, sync things that can be synced, erase it and start over. Seems a shame to have to ditch the entire backup but I guess that's how things work now.

Thanks for the reply.
 
Dec 28, 2015
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Just wanted to follow up with a thank you to everyone who helped out. We made sure everything was sync'd this morning, erased the phone and set up as new. Signed into apple ID and wherever else we needed to, got most everything back except game data, just like you all planned for us!

My mother relies on her phone as she's eliminated the computer from her life, she's only using an ipad mini and iphone for everything these days. We were all set to buy a new phone (newER, a used 5S from Gazelle that she can now return), but this last effort was enough to make everything work great again. She was a little miffed about some of the games being lost, but happier to get everything working great again.

So I thank you all and she thanks you too (even though she doesn't know it)! I wish we could figure out what the real cause of the problem was, but I guess there's only so much we can do for these things. It seems like a bit of an extreme way to go about fixing problems... but it worked and in the end that's all that matters.
 

Just_Me_D

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Just wanted to follow up with a thank you to everyone who helped out. We made sure everything was sync'd this morning, erased the phone and set up as new. Signed into apple ID and wherever else we needed to, got most everything back except game data, just like you all planned for us!

My mother relies on her phone as she's eliminated the computer from her life, she's only using an ipad mini and iphone for everything these days. We were all set to buy a new phone (newER, a used 5S from Gazelle that she can now return), but this last effort was enough to make everything work great again. She was a little miffed about some of the games being lost, but happier to get everything working great again.

So I thank you all and she thanks you too (even though she doesn't know it)! I wish we could figure out what the real cause of the problem was, but I guess there's only so much we can do for these things. It seems like a bit of an extreme way to go about fixing problems... but it worked and in the end that's all that matters.

On behalf of everyone who responded, you're very welcome...
 

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