[Android Software/Hacking General [Developers Only]] williscool:
So I got bombarded with 2 different sets of group texts from 2 different sets of friends who are iphone users and after the frustrating ordeal I decided to do some serious research.

Here's what I found (mods please move this if its in the wrong place) :

The state of affairs and summary aka the Short Version:

A couple of people are working on an OS level version for ASOP (not the Google core team frustringly and unfortunately).

Use Go SMS Pro or Handcent whichever one works better for you now.

I'm writing this post as a cry for help for those working on this

though I'm not affiliated, just somewhat of an informed spectator.

Resource links:

Link of thread from person who has made the most progress:

http://forums.androidcentral.com/ve.../207431-group-text-messaging-jb-achieved.html

And their github: https://github.com/vivekvasani

Google Groups Discussion:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/android-contrib/Oh254kDdCas

Google Code Feature Request:

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=24468

background xda threads:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=774990

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1441941

(if you don't want to read about the whole process and my rant you can stop here...)

The Long Journey Version:

The quest to get this done as far as I can tell began with this xda thread:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=774990

And 2 years later a member of our commmunity (who join specically to post about this as you can see here http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=21539987#post21539987 )

Created a Google Code Feature Request: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=24468

though many had questions about it before. This was probably what really set things in motion for a solution.

The standard answer to those with desire to have group / threaded mms chat on android has been to use Handcent or Go Sms...

No matter where you look be it here on xda, andriodcentral, droidforums, you name it.

Handcent was the first on the the scene with this working: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1559824

Go Sms a few months later: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1680704

And to prempt all the use <GroupMe/Whatsapp/etc.> posts... I tried to get my friends to do that and they weren't having it. Immediately just started sending new mms group chats :/

And I mean can you blame them? Why install a new app when it just works for you by default?

And I'm an old school smartphone hacker (talking flashing windows mobile 5 roms) who loves a good dig into this kind of stuff; so here was a shiny new thing to hack :)

My personal story:

For reference I had started this journey on a Sprint HTC Evo 4G and more recently got the Evo 4G LTE which I am on now.

Handcent

I had been using handcent since their inital 4.0 release with the feature but then it started screwing up on me in a number of ways which I reported to them in an email.

the just of which is this:

But the problems were only on the sending side. All messages sent to the group would show up in a group thread prorperly.

Go SMS

So I decided to try out Go Sms. And with it sending works flawless for me but... threading not at all. Every message that is supposed to be in the thread would show up in each indivudual sender's thread...

So I had an epiphany. I could have handcent do the downloading and threading... and have Go Sms do the sending. Which worked like a charm for about a day...

The Event or the reason you are reading this long post

Then the phone crashed... and after a restart things looked fine but then it happened.

I have two 2 different groups threads going one with 6 people in and one with 8.

They all had stuff they wanted to talk about today. Here was the ultimate test for the system right? Failed miserably.

Right now I've got about 8 threads with varying texts that should only be in 2 threads.

I was furious. Its crazy annoying when a conversation is going on and you can't figure out the context properly with that many people. Luckily I had the old threads that had worked to respond in but the new messages were all over the place.

I think uninstalling and then reisntalling first Handcent then Go SMS got it back working again but if I have to do that alot it will get annoying because these groups aren't going anywhere.

And this whole mess is a band aid. Not a solution.

Research time.

I need to know why this isn't working.

I mean long press one of those messages. Long story short it is an mms with extra numbers in the to: field.

Or even simpler all an MMS is a text file with some xml tags tossed in there for metadata. Your carrier sends you an sms with a link in it for where to download the text file from.

This cannot be that hard to fix and if it is I want to know why.

Google (search) time.

I searched for the Google Code thread I had seen a while back first. http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=24468

843 stars. Many comments by people just as baffled as me this isn't done already.

I even have a post there asking about where the code is so I could try to poke around.

Then I remembered I had just had a good conversation with one of the chrome developer tools devs on Google Groups so I decided to look there too

More info: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/android-contrib/Oh254kDdCas

Apparently a guy tweeted the person who is the lead Google Employee over AOSP and he told him to post there. Then the thread got closed because they had no soultion...

BUT wait! There is hope!

Shortly after that, a guy started working on a solution. Check his stuff out here.

http://forums.androidcentral.com/ve...07431-group-text-messaging-jb-achieved-2.html

And this person is freaking amazing because he has gotten this far with little prior knowledge of the project, java, android, git or gerrit to begin with.

Here is also the github where he is working on his stuff https://github.com/vivekvasani

And the trails ends there.

His last commit was about 2 weeks ago and he was asked to contribute it to master a 3 days ago

I'm posting all this to say if there is anyone out there listening who cares and can help this guy get this done please do.

Its ludicrous that we don't have this completely solved yet.

Thanks for you time,

Will