Why do my Android text messages (SMS) take minutes to send?

Question

I recently bought my first Android phone, HTC Desire Z with Android 2.2 (Froyo).

I imported all my old Nokia E71 SMSs using the Athg2Sms Android app (after converting my Nokia CSV text file to unix-ending format). All 2,000 incoming messages and 200 outgoing messages were imported.

When I try to send a message my phone practically pauses with a modal dialog box saying "Please wait...". This message can appear for 30 seconds to several minutes.

Naturally waiting this long is ridiculous. If I press the Home or Back button the message sending is cancelled and the message goes into "Drafts".

My Nokia phone would accept a message and transmit it in the background.

Have other people encountered this unacceptable sending freeze and have they found a method to fix it? (Note, no answer recommending me to clear out my inbox is acceptable - a tiny inbox is not required for a Nokia phone, neither should it be for an Android phone).

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Update

(I'll edit this section as more evidence comes to light).

As per @Michael Paulukonis 's recommendation below I deleted my e-mail accounts and switched to K-9 for e-mail. Since then I've noticed that some of my SMS sends are extremely quick, like 3 seconds. However some are not - some still take over a minute. I still have 2,000+ SMS messages on the phone but perhaps the time-to-send is related to thread length - if I know any more I'll update here!

Update 2

After a month of having the phone was getting ready to throw it at a brick wall with the frustration of being forced to stand like an idiot waiting for the f*@#ing phone to unfreeze when sending messages. I'd even tried backing up all my messages using "SMS Backup & Restore", deleting all messages, and restoring again. Finally gave up and switched to Handcent. Shame on HTC for developing a truly horridly buggy application.

Update 3

I've been using Handcent for a while. This program masks the problem in that it accepts a message as soon as you press "Send" - however the message still takes a long time before it is ready to be sent over the radio - so it appears that the underlying problem must be with the Operating System (is my guess). The good news is that messages are not turned into drafts but it can still take a long time before a message is actually sent.

Update 4 On Christmas Day 2010 I downloaded a system software update v1.72.405.2 onto my HTC Desire Z in the UK. Sent ~30 messages so far, maximum delay has been 6 seconds. Seems like this system update fixed this major bug! I will update over the next week or two to confirm/deny.

Answer 1

This is update to my earlier post.

Everything went as PP01 updated in his/her original post. I changed to Handcend SMS, but problem was still there, sending messages could take several minutes. Also when testing this with friends I noticed that also receiving messages could took 1-3 minutes when there was couple messages coming at the same time. Handcend SMS freezed several times and I think that was related to the sms system bug.

Then I updated to 1.72.405.2, and seems that the problem is fixed. Sending messages with the original HTC sms application takes max 5-7 seconds and the program is less buggy now. Thanks for HTC programmers for fixing this issue.

Scandinavian letter bug I mentioned earlier is still there, but that is minor problem. There exist unofficial fixes for this but I think I wait for the official fix.

I notify if the problem with sending messages occurs again.

Answer 2

The HTC Mail and Messaging apps may have memory leak issues -- if this is the case, having a large DB of messages could cause a slowdown.

I had some system slowdowns and freezes. After I started using the K9Mail/Gmail and Handcent SMS apps -- I had no more slowdowns or freezes.

Since HTC apps cannot be uninstalled or turned off (unless you root), you can only set them to never poll for messages and never alert upon receipt of message. Which it shouldn't get. But you never know.

Answer 3

I have the same problem, with Desire Z, 2.2 and HTC's sms application. Sending messages seems to take minutes. I had HTC TyTN and I imported my messages (~4000 of em) using Sprite Migrate. I backed up my SMS to my gmail account using SMS backup, and some point I'm going to nuke all my sms messages from my phone and see if that helps.

HTC sms application is buggy and it lags all the time, it reloads my facebook picture many times when I'm scrolling through messages and when I try to write message, the screen is scrolling up and down so I cannot see what I write unless I keep scrolling the page back all the time.

HTC has also minor bug related to forced foreign capital letters when using fysical qwerty keyboard (for instace, my keyboard is giving onlu capital letters when writing scandinavian letters Ä, Ö or Å) but it usually passes when I use touch screen keyboard.

I haven't used email application so much, but if this is related to some kind of memory leak problem as suspected, I will brick my HTC phone before summer I swear. Or calm down and start to use different programs for sms and email.

Answer 4

If it is thread-length related, i.e. because you have so many SMS's saved, you could try backing them up to your email (search the Market for SMS Backup - there are several good apps that do this really well) then deleting the SMS messages.

Good luck!