Sometimes, your Android phone might not work as it should. When this happens, Telerivet often sends you an email with guidance to help you fix the problem. Here are the most common things that go wrong, and how to fix them:
No messages are being sent/received on Telerivet
This typically means that your Android phone does not have internet access, is powered off, or the Telerivet Gateway app is disabled. If your phone is using mobile data for its internet connection, it may not have internet access because it does not have sufficient credit with your mobile network.
To check if your phone has internet access at all, open the Browser or Web app on your Android phone and try to open any website.
To check if your phone has access to Telerivet.com, open the Telerivet Gateway app on your Android phone and click the refresh button.
To improve the reliability of your internet connection, keep the phone stationary in a location with good connectivity, and keep it plugged in to electricity. We encourage you to set up both Wi-Fi and mobile data so that the Telerivet Gateway app will continue working if one of the two networks is down.
Errors sending any messages (but receiving messages works)
One of the most common errors encountered using the Telerivet Gateway app is the "generic failure" while sending messages.
This usually means that your Android phone does not have sufficient credit with your mobile network. Make sure that your Android phone has enough credit to send SMS messages and try again. (Telerivet account credit is completely different from Android phone credit, so it doesn't matter how much you have in your Telerivet account.)
Another common cause of the "generic failure" is that the mobile network doesn't understand the format of the phone number you're sending messages to. For example, when sending messages in international format (with the country code), some mobile networks require the recipient phone number to start with a "+". If you try to send messages to a phone number like 910123456789, you may get a "generic failure", while sending messages to +910123456789 might work.
You might get a "no service" error when sending messages if your cellular signal is not strong enough.
If you are using a dual SIM phone, you might also receive "generic failure", "no service", or "radio off" errors when sending messages if the primary SIM is out of credit (or the primary SIM slot is empty), even if the secondary SIM is working. The Telerivet Gateway app always sends SMS messages from the primary SIM, so you may need to switch which SIM is the primary one.
If you receive a "generic failure" while sending messages, check your phone's incoming messages. Often the mobile network will send you an SMS explaining the reason why your phone was unable to send the SMS.
To debug problems sending messages, try sending messages with the Android phone's standard Messaging app, without using Telerivet. If sending messages fails from the Messaging app, then you can be sure that the problem is unrelated to Telerivet itself, and you can fix the problem the same way you would with any mobile phone.
Timeout while attempting to send message
The "Timeout while attempting to send message" error occurs when the Telerivet Gateway app tries to send a message but the Android phone does not notify the app that the message was sent or failed.
In some cases, timeout errors can occur even though the message was been sent successfully, but Android did not notify the Telerivet Gateway app.
When using SMS Expansion Packs, timeout errors can occur if the expansion pack used to send the message does not have permission to send SMS. When using the current version of the Telerivet Gateway app (3.20.0 or above), the "timeout" error message will contain the number of the SMS expansion pack that triggered the error. To fix this issue, open the Telerivet Gateway app, click Increase SMS Rate Limit > SMS Expansion Pack # > Permissions, then make sure the SMS permission is allowed.
Sometimes, timeout errors can occur if your Android phone is displays a prompt that needs to be accepted. For example, Android will prompt for confirmation the first time the Telerivet Gateway app or each SMS expansion pack sends messages to an SMS short code. Try opening the Telerivet Gateway app and checking if the Android phone shows any prompts for the user to click.
In other cases, timeout errors may be an internal problem with your Android phone. Rebooting the Android phone may resolve the timeout issue, at least temporarily.
Occasional errors when sending messages
It is normal for the Android phone to encounter occasional errors when sending messages, especially when sending a lot of messages at once. The Telerivet Gateway app expects this, and automatically retries sending messages up to five times, with increasing delays between messages to avoid overloading your mobile network.
Problems sending a lot of messages at once
By default, Android limits apps to only sending 100 SMS messages per hour (on older versions of Android) or 30 SMS messages per 30 minutes (on newer versions of Android). If an app goes over this limit, Android will stop the app from sending messages until the user confirms that they really want to send more messages. The Telerivet Gateway app keeps track of its rate of SMS messages in order to avoid going over this limit. However, occasionally Telerivet Gateway's count may become incorrect, which can cause Android to display a prompt like "A large number of SMS is being sent. Click OK to continue or cancel to stop".
To avoid this limit, install SMS Expansion Packs. There are 29 SMS Expansion Packs, each allowing Telerivet to send an additional 100 SMS messages per hour (on older versions of Android) or 30 SMS messages per 30 minutes (on newer versions of Android). With all expansion packs installed, your Android phone will be able to send up to 1800 SMS messages per hour, subject to limitations of your Android phone's hardware and the mobile network. To install expansion packs, open the Telerivet Android app, then click Increase SMS Rate Limit. For more information, see Increasing Sending Rate Limit.
Be aware that each mobile network may have their own limits and rules to block bulk unsolicited ("SPAM") text messages. If your Android phone sends too many messages to too many different users in a short period of time, the mobile network may block your Android phone without warning. If you plan to send SMS messages at a high rate, you may wish to contact your mobile network to inquire about their usage limits.
In general, the Telerivet Gateway app is only recommended if you expect to send fewer than about 1,000 messages per day.
If you need to send higher volumes of messages, you can connect multiple Android phones to Telerivet, or use another type of route that supports high volume messaging. For information about other types of routes, contact support@telerivet.com .
Messages are not being received (but sending messages works)
If your Android phone has chat features enabled, and the sender also has an Android phone with chat features enabled, incoming messages may actually be RCS (Rich Communication Services) messages instead of SMS. The Telerivet Gateway app is unable to send or receive RCS messages. To avoid this issue, disable chat features on your Android phone. In the Messages app, click the 3 dots menu, then click "Chat features", then make sure the "Enable chat features" setting is disabled.
Alternatively, another SMS app on your Android phone may be preventing Telerivet from detecting when your phone receives SMS messages. Disable or uninstall any non-standard SMS apps on your Android phone.
Another possibility is that your Telerivet Gateway app may have "Test Mode" enabled. When Test Mode is enabled, incoming SMS messages will not be forwarded to Telerivet unless they are sent from specified phone numbers. You can disable Test Mode on the Phone Settings screen of the Telerivet Gateway Android app.
SMS expansion packs stop working
Some brands of Android phones use a modified version of the Android operating system which interferes with SMS expansion packs.
If you are using a Samsung phone: Some Samsung Android phones automatically put "unused" apps to sleep, including the Telerivet Gateway app and SMS expansion packs which run in the background. To allow the Telerivet Gateway app to continue running in the background, you can disable this behavior as follows:
- Open the Settings app.
- Click Battery and device care
- Click Battery
- Click Background usage limits
- Disable "Put unused apps to sleep" (or add the Telerivet Gateway app and all SMS expansion packs to "Never sleeping apps")
If you are using a phone manufactured by a Chinese brand, including Huawei, Tecno, ZTE, Xiaomi, or Itel: Telerivet recommends switching your Android phone to a major non-Chinese brand, such as Samsung or Google.
Telerivet Gateway app crashes
This isn't supposed to happen, but if it does, and you downloaded the Telerivet Gateway app from Google Play, click the Report button to send us a crash report, and also send us an email at info@telerivet.com to tell us about it.
If there isn't a Report button when the app crashes, install the app from Google Play and send us a crash report the next time.