What to do if your Samsung Galaxy S9 can’t send / receive text messages?

Text messaging is a basic service and a smartphone like the Samsung Galaxy S9 adorned with great hardware specs and features should be able to send and receive text messages without any issues. However, there will always come a time when text messaging issues may occur and the most common of them is when your phone can’t send and/or receive text messages.

In this post, I will walk you through in troubleshooting your Samsung Galaxy S9 that can’t send and receive SMS or text messages. We will try to rule out one possibility after another until we can figure out why the problem is happening and how to fix it. If you’re one of the owners of this device and are currently bugged by this problem, then continue reading as this post may help you one way or another.

Before going further, if you found this post because you were trying to find a solution to your problem, then try to visit our Galaxy S9 troubleshooting page as we’ve already addressed most of the commonly reported issues with the phone. We’ve already provided solutions to some of the problems reported by our readers so try to find issues that are similar with yours and use the solutions we suggested. If they don’t work for you and if you need further assistance, fill up our Android issues questionnaire and hit submit.

Fix Galaxy S9 that can’t send / receive text messages

More often than not, this kind of problem is pretty minor and you can fix it on your own provided the issue is in your phone and not related to the network. Network concerns, however, should handled by your service provider or carrier. With all that being said, here’s what I suggest you do about this problem…

Reboot your Galaxy S9

If you were able to send and receive text messages before this problem started, it might be just a minor glitch. Reboot your phone if it’s the first time that it happened. After the restart try sending a text message to your own number so that you would know if the text goes through and if you can actually receive it.

Should the problem continue after the reboot, try doing the Forced Restart procedure which is way more effective than the normal reboot. Press and hold the volume down and power keys at the same time for 10 seconds or until the phone restarts. Send a test message to your own number to know if the issue still occurs or not. If it still does, then move on to the next procedure.

Make sure your account is in good standing

This is a no-brainer but sometimes we are too occupied on knowing what the problem is all about without thinking that it’s actually possible that the problem is due to an account-related issue.

If you have unpaid balance, you may have to settle that immediately especially if the problem started without apparent reason. There are different ways in knowing if your account is still in good standing or not but it’s better if you called your service provider to inquire about it.

Inquire about possible network issue

If you were able to send and receive text messages a few hours prior to the problem, it’s possible there’s a network problem. This kind of issue may often result to intermittent loss of signal so you should check the status bar of your phone and look at the signal indicator. Regardless whether the phone is getting decent signal or not for as long as there’s an airplane icon beside the indicator, then Flight Mode is enabled. Disable it and you’ll resolve this problem.

If you’re not getting any signal, however, you should call your provider or carrier as they can help you better when it comes to network related problems.

Reset your Galaxy S9 if there are other issues beside texting problems

For instance, if you Galaxy S9 freezes and lags aside from not being able to send and/or receive text messages, then it might be an issue with the firmware affecting many of your phone’s functions. Since it’s impossible for us to know exactly why the problem happens, it’s better you just backup your files and data and then reset your phone.

Before the reset, backup your files and data and then remove your google account from your phone so that you won’t be locked out after the reset. Once everything is set and ready, follow these steps to reset your Galaxy S9:

Turn off the device.
Press and hold the Volume Up key and the Bixby key, then press and hold the Power key.
When the green Android logo displays, release all keys (‘Installing system update’ will show for about 30 – 60 seconds before showing the Android system recovery menu options).
Press the Volume down key several times to highlight ‘wipe data / factory reset’.
Press Power button to select.
Press the Volume down key until ‘Yes — delete all user data’ is highlighted.
Press Power button to select and start the master reset.
When the master reset is complete, ‘Reboot system now’ is highlighted.
Press the Power key to restart the device.

If the problem continues after this, you should bring your Samsung Galaxy S9 back to the store so that a technician can check it up for you. Should you have other concerns with your phone that you want to share with us, feel free to contact us anytime or leave a comment in the section below.

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