How to fix the Motorola DROID MMS bug

Posted by Dan Hughes Categories: Smartphones, Google, Handhelds

We recently reported an issue regarding the Motorola DROID and it’s MMS problem, and it looks like we’ve tracked down the issue.

After some hefty research (read: lots of Googling and failed MMS messages,) we finally stumbled upon a post over on Howard Forums from a user who seemed to identify this issue.  We have tested it successfully, both purposefully breaking and then fixing our ability to send MMS.

The culprit: parentheses around your contact’s area code.  If your contacts have parentheses around them when they are synced to the phone, the Droid faithfully preserves that.  However, when the address is used for an MMS transmission (and ONLY MMS, for some reason), it glitches out and fails. [Ed. note: What an absolutely ridiculous bug!]

Here’s how to fix the DROID MMS issue, if you are experiencing it:

1. Delete any open threads containing the user you want to MMS, including any text message threads.  Otherwise, it will pull the address form the thread instead of using the new one.
2. Edit the contact, removing the phone number and retyping it in.  Notice the Droid will type the hyphens in itself, but will not place parentheses.  Make sure to do this on EACH form of data this may synchronize from (e.g. Corporate AND Google contacts, if this person is in both.  Haven’t figured out if parentheses coming from Facebook can cause a problem.)
3. Soft reset the phone.
4. Attempt the MMS.

This worked for us.  Drop us a comment and let us know if it worked for you.  There have been some reports of the problems reoccurring, and so we’d like to know your circumstances.

Personal note: Make sure you edit the information that syncs to your phone so it has no parentheses.  I know I exported my contacts from Outlook, and imported them into Google, and Outlook puts parentheses by default, so that is why none of my contacts worked in the first place, but we COULD send to the guy at Verizon Wireless (because we typed in his number directly.)  I’m wondering if somehow the parentheses data is somehow being synced back to the phone.

We’ve reported the situation to Verizon’s Wireless Data Technical Support team, who thanked us for the information. (Direct quote: “Awesome.”)