


Use Your Email Address Instead of Your Phone Number If one suggestion doesn’t work for you, just work your way down the list. Here’s the simplified version, with the most successful approaches first. There are a number of little tricks to try to fix the problem, but sadly no foolproof solutions. For a decade now, iPhone and iPad users have been left to their own devices to find a cure. The company promised to have a fix ready for the next software update.Īlas, it didn’t, and users have continued to report problems ever since. The first time it was widely reported was after the iOS 7 launch in 2013, and Apple admitted there was a bug preventing iMessage and FaceTime from working properly on both iPhones and iPads in certain situations. The iMessage bug doesn’t only happen when changing to an international number, but also if you change providers within the same country, and even when upgrading to a new operating system. Have You Turned It Off and On Again? No, Really. Here’s what I’ve learned about fixing it.

Whether you’re in your kitchen or thousands of miles from home, it’s a major frustration. Swapping SIM cards at home (like when you switch to a new cell company) can cause exactly the same problem. Of course, you don’t have to be traveling to encounter this problem. I’m hardly the only one, either: I found plenty of complaints during one particularly-desperate attempt to fix the problem. It wasn’t a fluke, unfortunately, as the same thing happened on other trips: going back to Mexico after Panama, to Spain to visit family, to the US for work. Well, technically they were “waiting for activation”, the screen told me, but the end result was the same: they didn’t work. Puzzled, I checked the settings on my iPhone, only to find both iMessage and FaceTime were disconnected. Calling and WhatsApp happily accepted the new SIM, and I didn’t think to check other apps until a friend e-mailed me, a little bewildered, asking me why I wasn’t replying to my iMessages. This little kink first came to haunt me on a trip to Panama. That’s especially true for iMessage and FaceTime. While they’ll easily recognize the new SIM for voice calls and general data use, some features may not be quite so compliant. As it happens, iPhones can have a bit of trouble adjusting to their new location. They’re typically readily available, straightforward to install, and let you use your phone just like you would at home.

That’s why we recommend unlocked smartphones and local SIM cards or eSIMs for almost every traveler.Ĭheap data connections like these come in handy for many things when you’re traveling, and we recommend buying one if you’ll be in a country for any length of time. We’re big advocates of taking phones on the road, of course, we just prefer not to pay a fortune to use them. If there’s one thing we don’t love around here, it’s high roaming charges.
