Update Android “Communication Services” If Your Texts Are Not Being Sent
A cryptic bug built into an updated version of the Carrier Services Android app has broken the ability of Android users to send and receive text messages. If you feel like you’ve been struggling with texting for about a week and a half or so, you’re in luck: Google has spotted the problem and is releasing a “fix” that you can get right now.
It is not clear what exactly the bug caused the problem, but we can trace it back to the Carrier Services Android app update in early December. The app, which “provides the latest communication services from mobile operators, including battery optimization and advanced feature support in the Android Messages app,” began receiving rolling updates to version 50 on December 3. However, this version of Carrier Services seems to have been problematic as Google is now rolling back Android users to version 48 of the app. (This is a fix.)
As Google told The Verge :
We identified the issue and started deploying the fix yesterday. If users have automatic updates turned off, we recommend that they update to the latest version of Carrier Services via the Play Store to get the fix.
We’ve seen reports that the bug appeared to mainly hit smartphone users OnePlus, LG, Motorola, Samsung, and TCL, not Google Pixels, apparently. Whether you are hurt or not, we recommend opening the Google Play app, clicking on the three-line hamburger icon in the upper left corner, clicking My Apps & Games, and installing any available app updates.
When you’re done, you can double check that you have the correct older version of Carrier Services installed by opening the list of apps in Google Play on your Android device and then tapping ” About this app” . Your screen should look like this, which means you are using version 48 of the app:
You may not need to restart your phone to fix your SMS issues, but it won’t hurt. In the future, you can always downgrade this app – or any other system app you are having problems with – by clicking Settings> Apps & notifications> See all # apps> [app name]> icon with three dots in the upper right corner. > Uninstall updates. This should take you back to the version of the app that came with your phone, and then you can avoid using the Google Play store (or turn off automatic updates) until a fix appears.