Can send a new text message to a contact but if I reply to their text message I get message can't be sent.

Ever had a problem that baffles you. This one has me baffled. This only happens with one of my contacts.

I can send the person a new text message and it works fine. If the person replies to me, or sends me a new text message and I go to reply to them, the reply fails.

To get around this problem I have to delete all text messages from the person and then I can send them a new message.

It is the weirdest thing I've seen, and so far I've not been able to find a solution to the problem, except my way of working around the problem by deleting text messages from them first.

At this stage the only thing that is strange is the person is using a very old mobile phone. It may be the old mobile phone is somehow issuing a sequence that isn't compatible with my mobile phone.

I thought I'd share this because if others have the same problem, they know if they delete the person's message and send a new text it gets through.

I've not seen this issue with anyone else, just this person.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
IT support.

Update: 19 December 2017
Found there's no need to delete entire text message thread including text message sent to the other person. Only need to delete their text messages received. 

iPhone power cable won't plug in.

Today a person's iPhone power lead wouldn't plug into the iPhone correctly and would simply fall out. Not being able to plug in the power lead meant the iPhone wouldn't charge and was progressively going flat.

When the power cable wouldn't plug I think of two issues. A damaged cable and something blocking the power port on iPhone. The cable was fine but inside the power port was some white fluff or lint. In trying to get the power lead inserted the lint had become quite compacted. The following is a picture of the iPhone with the lint I removed.

Removing the lint was a bit tricky. Being a bit of a "MacGyver" I wondered what I could use to remove the lint. I was adverse to using anything metal. With the iPhone turned off it shouldn't be a problem, but you never know. A toothpick perhaps, but not really great as they can break easily. The item that worked well was a tooth floss stick that looks like the following.

The point on this is quite pointed and reasonably strong. Being very gentle you can slowly lift out any lint or fluff. Make sure you get all the lint/fluff. In this case the person had compacted the fluff quite a lot trying to put in their power lead. The material was compacted so much it looked quite solid. As you can see by the picture above it worked well with the amount of material removed from the iPhone's power socket.

How did the fluff or lint get into the iPhone? Most likely from the person's pocket and this could happen to anyone who carries their iPhone or other mobile in their pocket.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
IT support.

Microsoft Edge mobile browser for Android and iOS.

Last night I read that Microsoft had made their Edge browser available on mobile devices such as Android and iOS. I immediately thought there's two things I'd like from Edge so decided to test to see if Edge could do what I wanted.

1. My choice of Start page.

Having a browser open on the page of your choice can save a lot of time. It brings value because you have a page you want immediately available. In my case I want my search page https://www.advancedsearch.com.au/SearchAustralia/mobile/.

Nope. This feature isn't' available. You end up with a start screen and no ability to set the start-up page. You can work around this by going to the page and then using the Add to Home screen option. Not ideal but gets around the issue.

2. GPS location access without having to have an SSL site.

When you go to a website that uses your GPS location you get asked if you want to give the site access. In their wisdom, browser makers Google Chrome, Apple Safari have decided the site needs to be using SSL as well. This means many sites no longer work, or if you're a developer you need to pay more to host these sites. Often the extra cost isn't worth it for small developers.

Edge however on notebooks and desktops works fine and asks to use your location. Since this can be based on your Wi-Fi access point (your home) it can be pretty specific as to where you're located. Google even has a geolocation API that does the same thing. So forcing sites to use SSL makes no sense.

I was hoping Microsoft had taken the same approach with their mobile browser. Sadly no. Looks like they're using the same restriction that applies to the Chrome browser.

3. Using my own search engine

Now this was good. I was able to set up my search engine as the default search engine. That means you can type a word or phrase into the address area and you search engine will then take over. Since I have keywords for all my major sites, that's a real productivity gain not available with Google Chrome.

Summary

The two things I thought would get me to use the Microsoft Edge mobile browser aren't available. Again Microsoft doesn't seem to guess if their product isn't different from others they're unlikely to beat the incumbent. This is the same fight Lotus and WordPerfect lost. They lost because Microsoft had the operating system. Microsoft this time doesn't have the mobile operating system and in the end they'll lose must as Lotus and WordPerfect did.

Microsoft needs to do what others don't do to win. Google is about ads. An ad blocker is an obvious choice as are the suggestions above.

At this point I don't really see much point in moving to the Microsoft Edge browser on mobiles as there's no significant gain, at least for my needs.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
IT support.