Are you getting text messages full of question marks? Are your friends and family complaining that your messages are indecipherable? You’re not alone!
I’ve been scratching my head all morning about a puzzling bug that fill incoming text messages with question marks. The bug seems to replace spaces and some other characters with a ‘?’ symbol. At first I thought it was something to do with me running the Android 15 beta on my Pixel 8a, but then I noticed several Reddit posts popping up with other people experiencing the same issue.
The problem primarily impacts messages between iPhone and Android devices. However, it also seems to happen across wireless providers. On Reddit, Telus, Rogers and Bell customers all reported the issue. Update 28/06/2024 at 12:28pm ET: The issue seems to be specific to Canadian carriers, with U.S. users unable to replicate the bug.
In my own testing, messages from my wife and from MobileSyrup contributor Karandeep Oberoi came through full of question marks. They both use iPhones, one on Virgin and one on Bell. However, messages from MobileSyrup gaming editor Brad Shankar, who uses an iPhone on Koodo, didn’t have any issues. My Pixel 8a is also on Koodo, so perhaps devices on the same network aren’t impacted. Additionally, texts from my Pixel sent to iPhones weren’t impacted.
Another oddity with this SMS bug is that adding emoji or certain special characters like ‘&’ seems to fix the problem. If you’re among the impacted, you can temporarily fix the issue by adding an emoji to every message.
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