1021326 - [SMS] - SMS thread is ordered according to the time configured in the phone instead of order received

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox OS Graveyard :: Gaia::SMS, defect)

Description

[Ralph Daub [:rdaub]]

I was able to replicate this issue on the LG Fireweb device version 1.1 as well as on the ZTE Open C version 1.3.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
1. On the Firefox OS device, set the time and timezone correctly.
2. From another device, send SMS messages to the Firefox OS device, to create an SMS thread.
3. Change the timezone on the Firefox OS device to an earlier timezone.
4. From another device, send SMS messages to the Firefox OS device again.

EXPECTED RESULTS:
The messages from step 4 should appear at the bottom of the SMS message thread in the Firefox OS device, regardless the time configuration in the Firefox OS device - since it was received at a later time.

ACTUAL RESULTS:
The messages are ordered according to the timestamp on the Firefox OS device that receives the message. The messages that were received later (on step 4) show up above the first messages (from step 2).

Please let me know if there is any information I could provide to help with the investigation and troubleshooting of this issue.

Thanks!!
- Ralph

Comment 1

[Julien Wajsberg [:julienw]]

Yeah, currently we order by the timestamp only. This is especially confusing when you send a message, and it ends up being added out of the visibile thread.

Maybe we should use an internal autoincremented id instead? But then how should we display out-of-order messages?

IMO we should not change the current order, but seeing how confusing this is, we should try to detect like "if latest received/sent message is older than the latest-by-timestamp, display a warning".

NI Jenny for UX input.

(Cc Paul who showed me exactly the same issue yesterday)

Comment 2

[Jenny Lee]

(In reply to Julien Wajsberg [:julienw] from comment #1)
> Yeah, currently we order by the timestamp only. This is especially confusing
> when you send a message, and it ends up being added out of the visibile
> thread.

Hey I just tested on my device, it seems the timestamp displayed on each message is based on the current time zone, the message sent out later (but at an earlier time zone) is at the bottom of thread, so there's no problem. See below for the build info I tested with:
Build identifier 20140605160202
Git commit info 2014-06-05 06:02:58 (908f94fd)

Comment 3

[Julien Wajsberg [:julienw]]

Jenny, the problem comes if your phone has a wrong time.

Say, for some reason, it loses the current time; then we use a wrong timestamp, and the message is completely misplaced.

I actually think it should stay misplaced but we should somehow warn the user that the message was not added in the bottom.

Comment 4

[Jenny Lee]

Hello Julien, I am unsure of what's causing this issue. Just had a little discussion with our developers and our conclusion is that the *only* way the phone would use a wrong timestamp is when user manually set the time. For example: 

step 1. user receives 1st message, 
step 2. user sets the time to one hour early, 
step 3. user receives 2nd message, 
step 4. go to thread view and the 2nd message will be placed in front of the 1st. 

Is this the case you were referring to? If so, I don't find the need to warn user about this cause same could happen with mail. 

Flagging Steve to comment on technical part. Thank you Steve!

Comment 5

[Jenny Lee]

Sorry, please ignore the "cause same could happen with mail." part from comment 4 
I accidentally saved changes before complete editing.....

Comment 6

[Steve Chung [:steveck]]

First of all I would prefer QA support for verifying if changing timezone could reproduce this issue or not.

We just discuss this with Bevis. It seems not possible to reporduce only changing the timezone, It only happens when you mess up the time settings. Since we are not sure if this behavior comes from user mess up the time or correct from wrong time, having a notification here seems not much help because user have no idea how it happend or how to solve this problem. So I agree with Jenny that it seems not so necessary to have a notification for this rare case.

Comment 7

[Ralph Daub [:rdaub]]

Steve Chung: I was not able to reproduce this issue on my Flame v1.3 by changing just the timezones. It was reproducible after manually changing the time.

I believe the confusion for the user would come in a SMS thread with hundreds of messages, and if the system time gets changed - I had an obscure bug happen once that caused this, but now this is looking like an edge case.

- Ralph

Comment 8

[Julien Wajsberg [:julienw]]

Paul Adenot told me that there was a race when booting the phone:

* the phone didn't have the right time at boot
* it connects to the network
* it receives messages
* and only then it synchronizes the time

As a result, the received messages are wrong.

That's why I thought we could have a warning somewhere. But maybe the warning could be at the system level? Or maybe there was a real issue on the Flame that is now resolved?

Comment 9

[Ralph Daub [:rdaub]]

Hi Julien,

The "unordered message thread", which now seems that was actually caused by "obscure bug that reset or changed the time preference", was originally seen on the LG Leo device. 

During our workweek Hermina Condei, from SUMO, also experienced this "obscure bug that reset the time preference" which caused the "unordered SMS thread". Unfortunately, we have not been able to reproduce it this way.

My tests from comment 7 were done by manually changing the time preference and time zones.

I hope this helps clarify. Please let me know if there are any questions.

Comment 10

[Eric Kramer [:Kramer]]

Changing the time zones did NOT repro this issue on today's 2.0 Flame. All texts in the thread would get updated time stamps.

Manually changing the time however did repro the issue, like Ralph said on comment 7.

Environmental Variables used on repro:
Device: Flame 2.0
Build ID: 20140611091244
Gaia: a0f9f1f41a436daad8a249ce85df80a81a5ba2d5
Gecko: 0c0effd600c4
Version: 32.0a2 (2.0) 
Firmware Version: v10G-2

Comment 11

[Julien Wajsberg [:julienw]]

Mass closing of Gaia::SMS bugs. End of an era :(

Comment 12

[Julien Wajsberg [:julienw]]

Mass closing of Gaia::SMS bugs. End of an era :(