Some handsets suffer Y2K16 SMS bug

By on Jan 3, 2010 at 10:01 AM
News January 3, 2010

Text Message from 2016

Ah, yes, Y2K…remember the good old days?  ATM’s weren’t going to recognize your bank card, servers were going to spontaneously combust, and elevators would have no idea where the second floor was. For those of you who look back with nostalgia at the Y2K hysteria, there is a new, albeit much smaller, Y2 “something” glitch to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside again. WMExperts is reporting that some mobile users are seeing text messages sent after 1/1/2010 dated as 1/1/2016.  The most widely affected group seems to be those on Windows Mobile 6.1 and 6.5 although some non-Windows Mobile users are also reporting this behavior. WMExperts has a home grown .cab file posted with a fix, however we haven’t seen anything official from Microsoft or other major manufacturers. How about it? Any of you out there getting text messages from the future?

[Via PocketNow]

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  • Roach

    okay, explain this, On the 1st no problem this afternoon it struck, the 1st from my dads BB on VZW to my Sprint. todays from my mothers BB on VZW.

  • Stephen Quirk

    It’s a pretty bizarre bug. The fact that the bug is inflicting itself on Windows Mobile users, which can be fixed by users installing a patch, indicates there is definitely a bug with Windows Mobile, and possibly with a few other handsets also.

    • Harold

      Troubleshooting genius.

  • Mrwirez

    winmo lol

  • Iris

    This has to do with how the phone timestamps the incoming messages, and what appears to be a bizarre hexadecimal related issue.

    The bug may or may not appear, depending on how your carrier configured the phone.

    See
    http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showpost.php?p=1454414&postcount=1
    and
    http://www.wmexperts.com/y2016-sms-bug

    The workaround is to either use the cab or manually add a key to the registry that tells the phone to timestamp the message with the time on the phone when it is received. Those phones that were already doing this did not see the problem. So the question also is, how/when should the ‘timestamp’ be added to a message? Do you want when it is received at your phone, or when it was sent? And why should it say 2016 anyway?

  • iKrAzY

    No problems with mine I dont see the big fucking deal it has the YEAR wrong big fuck deal

  • brian

    i had the same text sent about ten or so times on new years…saying happy new years of course. i thought the guy was a little drunk, but it started happening with other people too.
    that was with a blackberry bold on att

  • B-radP2013

    How about i had no idea about this till reading this post….and i go check my phone and theres like 50 messages since yesterday that are dated for 2016…Pretty funny…I woulda never known

  • Kris

    Both my Sprint Touch Pro and Diamond have the 2016 issue.

    Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone).

  • Henry

    Good to see the microsoft team is still churning out their crack OS versions. Surely this must have slipped through the cracks since their dev teams are spending night and day developing new, incredible features that will put every other phone to shame, right? Right?

    • Wang Dong

      You so funny.

  • Josh

    Yeah, my Treo Pro is getting the futuristic messages, New Years day, I kept getting the same twitter post over and over and thought they just really wanted to get their point across, but after the 15th time, and with the date problem, I just settled on the fact that it was a gliche.

  • bloggerX

    Heh! Teh future is now!

  • Mkurz12

    I use a BlackBerry and the first 2 texts I got after New Years where from a future date. I don’t recall if it was 2016 but it definitely caught my attention.

  • Vince

    No problems here, but I did receive an odd message: “Save the cheerleader.”

    What’s that mean?

  • David A

    LG Expo Win Mo 6.5, thinks its 2010.

  • Swader

    US Cellular WM6.5 HTC Pro2 – 1/5/16 :) I love it!

  • Jordan K

    Agree, but still don’t understand why the phone cannot automatically switch timezones?!

  • http://www.bgr.com Mitch

    Although BlackBerry Browser sucks too much a**…

  • ~Phel

    Go to Options>date/time>format>network. That should take care of your timezone issue with your BB

  • ~Phel

    So use opera or bolt, it’s not like it’s a locked down os that needs to be jailbroken…

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