Verizon slow/failing MMS

[90turbovan]

XT1060 on Verizon; right now on one of the later CM nightlies but I know I tried several other ROMs in the past (probably all CM based) to no avail. MMS messages sometimes send/download immediately, most of the time they take at least 30 seconds to send and received ones fail download several times. This happens regardless of mobile data settings, WiFi, 3G, LTE, Hangouts, Messaging, etc. I've yet to correlate anything with the success or failure.

I've been digging through logs and the CM sources and the issue seems to stem from initiating the mobile data connection for MMS. At this point I'm deep in the telephony stack and well out of familiar territory. I'm hoping that someone can verify that they're seeing the same issues on Verizon with non-stock ROMs and also hoping that there's someone out there more familiar with the whole telephony stack that can perhaps guide my search in more productive direction. APN settings look correct and the logs confirm that once a data connection is made the right APN is used and messages get sent/received. I've found some "unrecognized command" type errors in RIL logs during the connection setup phase, but haven't sorted out what they are yet.

 

[TheDiabolicaL1]

I can't be of any help to you with the programming stuff but I can say I have two DE cm12 exhibiting the same bugs.

I also get a soft reboot, where I lose 4g and I have a '!' next to the signal. I don't know if they're connected.

The MMS taking forever is annoying though. I've been considering going clean to a newer nightly than I'm on now and see if it's any better.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

[edthesped]

I had the same issue on a 1060 DE running Nexus Experience (CM based) and what worked for me was to disable the stock mms application and I believe MMSService. Then installed textsecure and all worked well. I can't remember 100% if I kept MMSService disabled or not as I'm back on stock Lollipop, but some combination of the above will definitely work.

 

[90turbovan]

TextSecure doesn't appear to use the same channels to send SMS/MMS as the stock app. As I understand, it's more of a mobile data thing than a true SMS/MMS app, which would explain why it worked for you. I'm 100% sure the issue does not lie in the stock CM MMS app, I've traced it well outside of there and the app appears to function just fine once it gets the notification that a MMS capable network is available.

I also sometimes run in to the service indicator giving a network that is strings of numbers like "00000" or "31000". I don't know if both of these are symptoms of the same problem or something completely different.

Apologies for the mis-categorization of the thread, thanks for moving it.

 

[90turbovan]

It would appear that APNs do affect this. CM's apns-conf has a "Verizon" "internet" APN that's listed for MMS. Not sure what it's there for and the stock 5.1 apns-conf does not have it. Logs showed RILJ messages of SETUP_DATA_CALL attempting to access this "internet" APN instead of the "VZWAPP" APN that stock would try for. Running the stock 5.1 apns-conf and then also manually removing the "Verizon" APN in settings has allowed first connection MMS messages to download and send fine i.e. ones that result in a SETUP_DATA_CALL RILJ message. It appears that if the MMS connection is already open, however, that it fails until timeout on a RILJ message of RIL_REQUEST_ALLOW_DATA. After 5 retries, we get another SETUP_DATA_CALL message and everything works fine. I am currently running a build of CM with Motorola's 5.1 proprietary binaries though, I'll have to verify that the older ones shipped with CM do not function differently.

 

[TeslaZap]

This may be related and not a device-specific issue but either a google play services or back-end issue. Reported here because of the mention of these appearing to be data services, not text services having issues.
VZW 1060 DE unlocked but not rooted and took the OTA to 5.1. Did not feel like I experienced any of these issues prior to the update
Now, in addition to tethering problems, having hangouts issues similar to the OP description... messages sometimes take forever to show that they sent, or to come in. I sent a photo 3 times and some text but never could tell from hangouts that I had sent them or got a reply until after I rebooted the phone.
Asus Zenpad: Same issue for hangouts, some hangouts NEVER get some messages - this is a wifi only device. On lollipop
friend's new iPhone: Same issue as OP for hangouts
friend's Droid Turbo: Same issue as OP for hangouts. Reports she leaves the hangout and comes back in to see updates

Edit: Found the LG-G3 is reporting the same issues after updating to Lollipop
http://forum.xda-developers.com/tmobile-lg-g3/general/lollipop-tethering-t3071188

 

[90turbovan]

This is 100% a RIL issue with this phone's chipset and vendor binaries. It may carry over to other hardware but it is certainly not a Google issue.

It appears that the libril binaries supplied with Moto's 4.4.4/5.1 do not support RIL_REQUEST_ALLOW_DATA. It looks like they support an older method, perhaps involving RIL_REQUEST_SET_DATA_SUBSCRIPTION.

 

[jco23]

FYI, i recently fastbooted back to stock 5.1, and MMS working quickly for me.

 

[90turbovan]

I'm able to get fully functioning normal MMS on CM 12.1 by hacking the DdsScheduler a bit. If I force it to transition to Idle after MMS releases its networkrequest, everything works fine. I'm confident this is a hacky way of doing it, but it at least narrows the issue down further.

As a side note, the whole DdsScheduler portion was added to telephony in 12. CM 11 appears to work fine, as do all stock versions, of course. As far as I can tell, this bug should affect Galaxy S3 users (probably among others?) as well. Can anyone weigh in on that? I don't have access to one with CM for testing. Anything running a Qualcomm RIL with a version less than 10 should be affected?