Mobile phone cannot display text fro iPhone

[Michael Graubart]

My wife has an old-fashioned mobile phone (not a smart phone) and a T-Mobile account. T-Mobile is part of EE. I have an iPhone SE with iOS 10.2 and an EE account, and a Mac desktop computer with MacOS 10.12.2 (Sierra). If I send her a text message (just text, no images) from the Messages app on my Mac, she receives it without difficulty. If I send her a message (again just plain text) from my iPhone, all she receives is 'EE NNS Message cannot be displayed', sender EE NNS. What is going wrong with plain phone-to-phone messaging, but going right with computer-to-phone messaging? I should be most grateful for advice.

 

[J. A.]

In Settings - Messages on your iPhone, go to SMS/MMS - Show Subject Field. If it's enabled, turn it off. Also try turning off MMS Messaging there, and see if that helps.

 

[Michael Graubart]

Thanks so much for that quick reply. I have shot off two more 'experimental' messages to my wife according to your two suggestions, and await results with bated breadth. But she probably won' t respond for a while. I shall post the results here when she does, in case other people have had a similar problem.

 

[Michael Graubart]

In Settings - Messages on your iPhone, go to SMS/MMS - Show Subject Field. If it's enabled, turn it off. Also try turning off MMS Messaging there, and see if that helps.

I have an answer, and it may be of interest to anyone with an iPhone who wants to text a user of a traditional, non-smart mobile phone. It is the subject field (see Settings/Messages) that is crucial here. If either 'Show Subject Field' is disabled, or it is enabled, but nothing is typed into it when a message is composed and sent, the message can be received in the non-smart mobile phone. If the subject field is enabled and something is entered into it, the message will not be received. As far as I have been able to establish, turning MMS Messaging on or off in the iPhone's Settings has no bearing on the reception of the message (though if it is turned off, it becomes impossible to send a message with a subject field).

 

[J. A.]

I had the same problem when I tried sending SMS to my son and daughter when they still had Android devices. So don't use the subject field when you send texts to mobile phones other than iPhone.