Android sucks at deleting messages

[DFA1]

I've been enjoying my phone so far but now its running kinda slow in the message department, so I figured I'd clear out all my messages, all 3000+ plus. Android just doesn't want to delete them, I've heard that it can take 5+ minutes to delete message threads 500+, I'm screwed because one of my threads has over 2000!

This phone should be storing older txt messages to the sdcard anyway, not sure why it wouldn't.

Basically this thread was made to complain how crappy clearing out messages was.

 

[MOS95B]

Not sure how to say this without sounding ruder than I want to, but you can't blame the tool for your lack of housekeeping.

Based on my PC experience (I am a hard drive hog. I hate using space unneccessarily) I have gotten into the habit of cleaning old data on a weekly basis (phone and comps). I clear any unneeded call/text/cache data every Sunday morning.

 

[Frisco]

I've been enjoying my phone so far but now its running kinda slow in the message department, so I figured I'd clear out all my messages, all 3000+ plus. Android just doesn't want to delete them, I've heard that it can take 5+ minutes to delete message threads 500+, I'm screwed because one of my threads has over 2000!

This phone should be storing older txt messages to the sdcard anyway, not sure why it wouldn't.

Basically this thread was made to complain how crappy clearing out messages was.

You waited too long (thousands of messages? whoa!).

No disrespect intended, but an analogy is in order: instead of de-icing your refrigerator's freezer when it only had frost in it, you waited until thick, hard ice formed so much that there is no space left for anything and you can not even open the freezer door because it is "welded" shut with ice, and now you're blaming the manufacturer of the refrigerator.

 

[smacky]

I'm in the same boat as you too. I save texts but now I realized I can back em up and im stuck with huge ass threads.

 

[Ryobi]

All of my previous phones had a delete limit on messages, in other words how many to save (days, number, etc) before deletion occurred. Not that I'm saying having thousands of messages if right, but it's really wrong!

Coming from a Nokia E71, I thought symbian was a joke. Android is really not that much better.

 

[DFA1]

Not sure how to say this without sounding ruder than I want to, but you can't blame the tool for your lack of housekeeping.

Really, I waited too long to delete my messages and now I can't delete them? Wow, its a good thing computers are not like this with files, or other cells phones. Seems to me I remember my Windows Mobile phones not having a problem deleting large amounts of files. Come on dude, seriously, my housekeeping skills are not to blame here. This is a problem that shouldn't even be happening in this day and age.

God forbid anyone date a bunch of text happy girls.

@Frisco,
Freezers don't do that anymore, so cell phones shouldn't either. Thats why I have a nice fridge that I requires next to no maintenance. Why can't my phone be the same. Even my first cell phone I ever had 10 years ago didn't have this problem. YES! It is a problem with the phone, not the user.

This is happening with many text messages, you wouldn't be saying this if it was happening with many phone calls. "Whoops, you allowed people to call you too many times... now you can't delete your call history."

Not sure how to say this without sounding ruder than I want to, but do you guys put your little french maid outfits on when you "housekeep" your phone?

For an update, I downloaded an app fast sms delete, or something like that. I had it set to delete all 3000+ messages, let it run 6 hours while I slept. When I woke up, it was still running and hadn't deleted anything...

 

[superchaos]

Really, I waited too long to delete my messages and now I can't delete them? Wow, its a good thing computers are not like this with files, or other cells phones. Seems to me I remember my Windows Mobile phones not having a problem deleting large amounts of files. Come on dude, seriously, my housekeeping skills are not to blame here. This is a problem that shouldn't even be happening in this day and age.

For an update, I downloaded an app fast sms delete, or something like that. I had it set to delete all 3000+ messages, let it run 6 hours while I slept. When I woke up, it was still running and hadn't deleted anything...

I have came to the conclusion and accepted the fact that I bought a "Not So Smart Phone"

 

[hrbib21]

Not sure how to say this without sounding ruder than I want to, but do you guys put your little french maid outfits on when you "housekeep" your phone?

Yeah, that will make people want to help you. Thanks for proving that it's definitely a user problem.

 

[DFA1]

Yeah, that will make people want to help you. Thanks for proving that it's definitely a user problem.

I'm not getting any help... just being told I need to manage myself better, and that it's my "housekeeping" skills. Nor was I asking for help. I've already researched this problem and know there is no solution to this other than wiping the entire phone. Thus I stated it was a thread to complain.

Ask yourself this, does it make sense that wiping your entire phone and restoring it to it's previous state would be 1000x faster than clearing out your text messages? In some cases texts can't even be erased, as in my case. So a phone wipe might be coming.

In most ways this phone is a big step forward, but the way it clears/stores it's texts is a big step back, further back then where cell phones even started.

 

[superchaos]

Are all the texts from one person or do you have threads from different people? In chompSMS, I am able to long press the conversation with a person and get a menu of Call, View contact, delete conversation, blacklist, and set ringtone. I delete my wife's conversation about once a week and have had no problems but it has only been 100-200 texts.

On a regular cell like a Glyde or Dare, the inbox gets full after 250-300 texts so it forces you to delete if you want to receive anymore.

 

[Frisco]

Ok DFA1, (one more try), it is an analogy; the concern is not about freezers, etc, it's about you abusing your equipment by neglect.

You're making enemies here; is that what you do in your life to get help with a problem you ask about? If not, then why are you doing it here?

If "enemies" is too strong a word, then replace it with "members here who are beginning to not care about your posted issue with your phone."

 

[kobel1up]

Good call Frisco, sounds like some people need to take care of there phones a little better.

I joined here to make friend's and to learn more about my phone and how to do thing's on it, not to start trouble and take advice when given. We all have the same phone in this forum and others may give us the tricks to keep the phone working smoothly and sometimes others need to learn to listen. If you got that many people texting you than you need to do more to keep your phone clean.

 

[Heliotropic]

I think I have to side with DFA1 here. One wouldnt think it would be such a big deal to erase a bunch of messages, and I doubt he would have had any way of knowing otherwise. The fact that he came here to complain and bring up the situation just kinda gives everyone else a "heads up" on letting their messages stack up. Maybe a better reply to his thread would be "Try this app, or try that one, and if that dont work you may have to wipe your phone. Oh, and you many want to clean out your messages more often". But thats just my opinion.
I am still dumbfounded by the whole freezer analogy though.

 

[Podivin]

I have came to the conclusion and accepted the fact that I bought a "Not So Smart Phone"

I think it should at least qualify as a 'really clever' phone.

 

[DFA1]

Ok guys I'm not trying to make enemies, I don't understand why forums have to be so touchy feely. I understand your analogies, I just don't agree with them.

You have to agree though that this something that other operating systems don't have to deal with. Why get a task manager when the user should manage the tasks he is using better, that's basically what I'm being told.

Deleting messages, it should be as easy as it sounds.

 

[MOS95B]

Why do people keep comparing their phone to a computer? Just because it has computing capabilities, does not mean it had the same properties as a real computer. It is still just a smartphone.

If you want a computer, but a computer. If you want to treat your phone the same way you do your computer, expect it to choke on occasion.

 

[smacky]

Yeah, I gotta side with the OP. He just wanted to know what could be. Hell, I wondered the same thing, I got texts up the wazoo that I need to delete but for me, the "Done" key stays green after I select multiple threads and "done" and just sits there. Eventually it asks to "wait" or "force close" and then my phone goes into standby like it should after 10 minutes. It really is stupid how deleting 500 texts, supposedly, takes 5 minutes. Took 3 seconds for 100 on my EnV.

One day, this Eris is gonna find itself as my dog's chew toy, this POS.

 

[DFA1]

Why do people keep comparing their phone to a computer? Just because it has computing capabilities, does not mean it had the same properties as a real computer. It is still just a smartphone.

If you want a computer, but a computer. If you want to treat your phone the same way you do your computer, expect it to choke on occasion.

Maybe I should have elaborated when I said operating systems, I meant other phone operating systems. Clearly none of us would be trying to use our phone as if it was a computer. But ya know, these things are becoming mobile computers, if they are not already. My last 3 posts here are from my eris.

We're not expecting it to be like Windows 7, but when it takes 30 seconds to delete a thread that only has 14 messages, that's worth complaining about. Especially when wiping your phone is the easier/faster way to clear text messages.

 

[Frisco]

Good call Frisco, sounds like some people need to take care of there phones a little better.

I joined here to make friend's and to learn more about my phone and how to do thing's on it, not to start trouble and take advice when given. We all have the same phone in this forum and others may give us the tricks to keep the phone working smoothly and sometimes others need to learn to listen. If you got that many people texting you than you need to do more to keep your phone clean.

It takes all kinds of folks to make a world, and a forum.

In the long run, everybody here is ok, just differing opinions about things; in this case, about cell phone/device care. It's cool.

 

[DFA1]

It literally took me less than 5 minutes to hard reset my phone and have it back to the state it was with my contacts, wallpapers, ring tones, etc. Phone runs 100% faster now and deleting messages is 1000x faster. This has even given me 40+mb of available phone storage. The phone is running super fast now.

PS. I still believe that this is a problem with the the Android OS and not a user house keeping problem. Something this simple is bogging down our phones, and who knows how many people out there that don't constantly clear their text messages, are getting frustrated with their phones and replacing them with something else. An easy solution with the next update would be to store messages older than 2 days on the storage card, problem solved!

 

[Frisco]

Why do people keep comparing their phone to a computer? Just because it has computing capabilities, does not mean it had the same properties as a real computer. It is still just a smartphone.

If you want a computer, buy a computer. If you want to treat your phone the same way you do your computer, expect it to choke on occasion.

Absolutely, not to mention any other device we use "choke on occasion." Lawn mowers. TVs.

 

[preludepunkster77]

Maybe I should have elaborated when I said operating systems, I meant other phone operating systems. Clearly none of us would be trying to use our phone as if it was a computer. But ya know, these things are becoming mobile computers, if they are not already. My last 3 posts here are from my eris.

We're not expecting it to be like Windows 7, but when it takes 30 seconds to delete a thread that only has 14 messages, that's worth complaining about. Especially when wiping your phone is the easier/faster way to clear text messages.

Ya I totally agree there, I mean my old ass flip phone from like 5 yrs ago could delete 200 some txts in less time than this phone can do like 10... Really? How is this even a problem like this. I am on the same boat... I have over 4000 some txt in the inbox, and it just keeps building up cause I cant delete them.. without doing an entire wipe of the phone which I would rather delete every txt one by one then do that. If this was a "housekeeping" problem dont you think the phone should have a limit so that you cant go over, or it could of told me I should delete them before it gets to be to much for this "smartphone" to handle...

 

[Frisco]

Why is one person here posting under more than one user name?

 

[superchaos]

Why is one person here posting under more than one user name?

DUH! Dissociative identity disorder

 

[erisuser1]

You folks have read my posts - you know that I'm pretty happy with my Eris; but I will say that I mostly agree with the OP.

But I probably would also try to lose any "friends" that sent me more than 100 texts a month, too - no matter how cute they are. (That's one of the few privileges of age.)

My old dumb phone (I'm too embarrassed to admit what it was) had three boxes for texts: Inbox, Sentbox, and Drafts. I couldn't sort any of them (they were ordered by chronology), nor organize any of them into "conversations", or search them by contact name. And when the time came for deletion, I had three choices:

- individually,
- a whole box at a time,
- Delete Everything.

Dang, I miss that "Delete Everything" button - even though it would take a minute or so, and occasionally nuke an incoming text that I hadn't seen yet.

I have a feeling I know why deleting stuff is so slow and painful on the Eris: the data is being stored in database where different fields are indexed to allow all those clever ways to view the data (sorted by user, by "conversation", etc)... and is probably transactionally safe, too (to avoid that problem of nuking an incoming message, and other similar hazards).

I'm not sure if the problem is a generic Android problem, or something specific to Cupcake (Android 1.5) - but really, if we are only talking about SMS data - then 1000 texts at 160 characters each is only 160K of data. DFA1's expectations are pretty reasonable, all things considered.

Can anyone using a different Android 1.5 ("Cupcake") phone, or someone who is using both an Eris and a Android 1.6 or 2.x phone make some comments - do we have reason to believe that it will be better for Eris users in 60 days or less?

eu1