Topic: General / Timeout configurable

I am having issues with BiteSMS on iOS4 when there is a bad internet connection available. The network is connected, but no internet is available. It then basically just ‘Hangs’ at sending.

Sometimes it times out, after a minute of 5, and a retry then works. I want the option to retry after 15 seconds however – if it didnt send in 15 seconds, its not going to in the next 5 minutes either.

My workaround right now is to restart the phone, since that force-cancels the sending. From that point on I can resubmit and successfully send the message.

Any thoughts on this? It would be nice if the timeout could be configurable, or, just turned down alot.

On the technical side, my suspicion is that BiteSMS opens a TCP socket to send the message to the BiteSMS server. This socket doesnt directly connect since no internet connectivity is available. However when internet connectivity becomes available, the existing socket does not use that – possibly since the Network interface changed (ie from 3G to Wifi). What needs to be done is close the existing socket after 15 seconds, and open a new one to re-try.

Possibly the best solution would be to close the socket after 15 seconds, and retry. This can be done, say, 2 times. Then it gives up and allows the user to manually retry again.

Alternatively what would work as well is ‘cancel’ functionality when sending, so that a hanging send can be interrupted and retried.

Thanks!

Topic: Releases / biteSMS 4.7

Does anybody know what might be causing this? The crashing of springboard is quite annoying, especially since when it happens no new-sms sound i played (aka I have no clue that an sms has arrived).

Topic: Releases / biteSMS 4.7

Thanks! Here we go.

The crashing of the bitesms app upon opening, this seems to be related to sqlite. This is the trace: http://upload.xandrios.net/bitesms_crash.txt

The crashing of Springboard seems to do with the hook that BiteSMS uses to intercept incoming messages. http://upload.xandrios.net/springboard_crash.txt

The only reason that I can think of that might cause this is that I skipped a few iPhoneOS releases, and skipped 1-2 biteSMS releases. Perhaps something that should have been converted during the successive upgrades did not happen?

Topic: Releases / biteSMS 4.7

I’m having issues with the 4.7 release. I’m running the latest iPhone OS version, and the database was restored from iTunes.

Every now and then (About 10-20% of the time) Springboard now crashes upon receiving a SMS. After restarting Springboard the message has been stored successfully and is readable.

Also, when not having used biteSMS for a while (few hours?) it crashes when I open the app. It starts, shows the conversation that was last viewed, and 2 second later it dies. (Before any interactions has taken place).

Is there any way for me to debug this, make a stacktrace or something?

Topic: General / Firmware 3.1 Trade practices Act

I’m sorry, but what a load of crap. You dont HAVE TO upgrade..it is your own choice. Nobody forces you to. And by choosing to upgrade you accept to not be able to go back to a previous version and so on.

Topic: General / PRICE INCREASE...sorry!

So is this announcement meant for people to stock up on old-price credits? ;-) Anyway I did as well..

Topic: New Features / (2009) Vote your favourite New Feature! (Superceeded)

Delivery notification for send via bitesms

The only feature that is really lacking imho, the rest is nice to have but in no way required.

Topic: New Features / Real Delivery Report

It would be nice if this can be integrated into biteSMS since this is the only proper way to day SMS notifications over the operator network.

I still believe that with Push messages or polling it would be very easy to implement notifications for messages sent using the biteSMS network as well, and I actually would prefer that over the operator network ones.

This hack doesnt seem to work on T-Mobile NL by the way. The prefix code trick does not either.

Topic: New Features / Delivery Report

So how about messages sent using the bitesms network? No need to fiddle around with codes – the bitesms servers already receive the delivery reports.

By using an appstore app for notification support (Which can fire a bitesms hook when it receives a sms-received-notification) they can even de delivered to the phone in realtime and for free.

Topic: Releases / biteSMS 4.0

Xandrios, is this occurring in the native Messaging app as well, as it handles saving of messages to the SMS database?

Actually it happens in the native app as well. Didnt know the adding to threads was done by the native app, since BiteSMS has all kinds of hooks for messages being received. Guess its an Apple bug then, thanks :)

Topic: New Features / Delivery Report

Perhaps the new push notification service can be helpful in some way? It will need an Appstore app as well to do the actual communication, but that might not be a problem..?

Topic: Releases / biteSMS 4.0

Hey guys,

I just upgraded to 3.0 and installed bitesms 4. Looks very good, i like the new features alot :) However im having a problem that my conversations are being split, ie messages from person X dont continue in the same thread but a new thread is being started.

Is there a way to merge those?

Topic: New Features / multiple outgoing numbers

I think he means that he could choose between a number of ID’s to use for a message to use as from-value.

Topic: New Features / bitesms/carrier setting per conversation

I would really like this feature. I sent about 50/50 between national (carrier) and international (bitesms). You have no idea how often in a reflex you hit that ‘send’ button only to find out while sending that you chose carrier instead of bitesms for instance.

If the button could remember per message thread that would be very nice.

Topic: New Features / Sending report

I think we should not mix the notification that you are talking about (SMS reached carrier’s network) and the notification about the SMS having reached the addressee’s phone.

If the message is sent successfully that means that BiteSMS has received it successfully. BiteSMS delivers it to another gateway and will be kept up to date with delivery report messages. So for biteSMS there is no difference between implementing that the SMS has reached the destination telecom-network (actually I doubt if that is at all possible) and when it has reached the actual destination.

For me the reports are important, but not so important that i need to be notified in real-time. After sending an SMS most gateways guarantee the message being delivered in 20 seconds if i’m not mistaken. So if biteSMS would poll once, after 20 seconds of sending the message it would work in 99% of the cases.

It also has an disadvantage, you would have to keep biteSMS running (waiting) for 20 seconds after sending a message. I don’t know about you but I close it pretty quickly after the message has been sent. So for this to work biteSMS has to support a background function as well, which it does not at this moment.

But like I said for me the timing of the reports is not so important. If biteSMS checks once when you open the application, and furthermore has a button somewhere to manually check/poll, it would be a great working solution in my opinion.

Topic: General / yellowsn0w

Is this still a problem at this moment? (With latest release of yellowsn0w & biteSMS)

Topic: New Features / Sending report

That would definitely be the ‘cleanest’ solution for sure. But like you said, the credits is the biggest problem. For a few messages that is no problem, but once you send a couple hundred per week the price does go up :P

Perhaps with a toggle to only turn it on for certain messages that might be better. (So you can activate it only for important ones). Still I would (as a user) prefer another solution, even though as a developer i think this is by far the nicest way.

The biggest problem is that the iPhone does not support a proper system for external events. Sending an SMS would be a good substitute since it can wake the phone and act as an interrupt/event that way. But it has downsides too, the costs.

Is there not a jailbreak project that aims to solve this issue? Many projects must face this problem. Perhaps there exist another project that offers generic Event support, in the way Apple once promised to offer events for developers. (Basically: Keep one connection open 24/7 and use only that to transport events through one of the apple servers that has an interface for developers to use).

Topic: New Features / Sending report

For me it would be more useful on the bitesms network, but I realize this is technically more difficult. However what if:

- Every SMS that is sent from a phone is returned an unique ID from the bitesms gateway. I am pretty sure every message has an ID already so that should be usable.
- Every report of delivery that is received by the bitesms gateway is saved in a temporarily space under the emei or other ID that identifies the phone of that particular user.
- Every time the user starts the biteSMS application a check is done for new delivery reports. The emei ID is sent as an argument. The gateway will return all the message ID’s of which delivery reports have been received.
- The biteSMS gateway deletes the temp. delivery reports. These are not so important that they need to be saved.

Basically it means that the phone keeps track of the status (delivered or not) which can be toggled once if the gateway returns the ID of the messages.

Downside of this approach is that you need to launch the application to retrieve the notifications. Upside is that it is easy(er) to implement. For me it would be enough though.

Another different option would be to charge 2 credits for an SMS of which a delivery receipt is requested. When BiteSMS receives the receipt it can send an SMS (the second credit) to the phone to let the user know that the message has been delivered. This would be the least preferred method though.

Topic: New Features / speed up application startup

How many processes actually keep on running by default when the phone is sleeping? I think it will be only a few, mostly related to being able to receive calls/sms. The other apps will be paused, even if they run in the background.

Topic: General / 1 hour fake delay

Could be a daylight savings time issue.

Topic: New Features / Forward SMS via E-Mail

So I’d like to email myself the entire conversation (of scores of hundreds of texts), print it on some colorful papers, make a nice folder and gift it to her on her birthday.

If this is a one-time thing, you could consider downloading the SMS database from the phone. With a sqlite client program on your PC you should be able to extract a list of all the messages in plain text. It might take a bit of time to figure out the database layout but it would definitely be possible this way.

Topic: New Features / speed up application startup

Im not a fan of the background option. While it does speedup bitesms, it reduces the amount of memory available to other apps, in other words the rest of the phone will become slower.

Topic: General / Delivery Reports ..

What I have understood this will take some time to implement. Its fairly complicated since if you want confirmations to be free, they have to be sent through the internet. And those confirmations will only reach BiteSMS if BiteSMS is running at that time. (Since apple only allows 1 running app)

Topic: General / Long messages mixed up

@Martin: Its not a clean solution, but how about you add a 30-seconds timeout after each 4 concatenated messages?

I’m guessing this doesnt come up too often since usually people would stay below 4…but if I go past 4 i would prefer a small wait and a big chance that my messages are received properly..

Topic: New Features / Quick reply

Doesnt that require BiteSMS to run in the background continuously?