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Comment by robinduckett | Hacker News Reader

Isn't this just SMS "Flash" messages? That's how I was told the voicemail count worked when the iPhone came out on O2 in the UK all those years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Message_Service#Flash_SMS

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I don't think it's just Flash-messages, or it could be based on Flash-messages containing faulty data. He gets the phone tricked to show that there is 250 missing calls on both lock screen and in the home screen (does the voice mail sms use flash?). Certain types of messages also locks the whole phone so that it has to be rebooted.

As far as I know voicemail uses flash messages to indicate the number of messages.

Not in Sweden on Swedish carriers though. At least not at Telia, 3, Tele2 or telenor. (That's pretty much all of the large ones that owns parts of the cellular network)

Certainly looks like it, when you compare against the screenshots that appear on a google image search for ios sms flash.

I guess this is a "feature", then.

Chalking this blog post up to FUD spreading and moving on with my life then!

So er, I assume the way an SMS works is basically User A -> Carrier A -> Carrier B -> User B.

Now, it makes sense that Carrier B sends control messages to user b (although a phone crashing message sounds bad, phone should reject). But, why would Carrier B forward control messages from Carrier A? Carrier A has no business messing with user B's unread message count etc. Why not drop those control messages?

I thought Flash messages had been disabled and that you had to jailbreak to use them again?

No, this appears to be part of Apple's proprietary messaging protocol, apsd.

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