If you’re using a
smartphone over Wi-Fi, cellular messages can cause problems. Here’s what to do if you are regularly seeing the error message ‘Currently unable to download. Please try again later’, or similar.
QUESTION I recently bought a Galaxy Note 3 and transferred my SIM over my old Galaxy S3 phone. My son has since been using the Galaxy S3 without a SIM and connecting via Wi-Fi, but there’s now an annoying error message that pops up again and again.
At the bottom of the screen the message, ‘Currently unable to download. Please try again later’ appears. I’ve checked my downloads and I can find nothing pending. I’ve also removed all browsers and still can’t find what’s causing this error. It keeps popping up repeatedly, so I can’t really ignore it.
HELPROOM ANSWER This error can often appear when the phone is attempting to download an MMS message in the background. Because MMS messages require use of the mobile network, the handset can’t download the message when connected only via Wi-Fi and the result is the error message you describe.
To clear this, open up the messaging app and look for any MMS messages. Deleting these should clear the problem. Also in the Messaging app, go to Settings and scroll down to Multimedia message (MMS) settings. In this section, make sure the option Auto-retrieve is not selected.
Of course, this problem will go away if you perform a full factory reset of the device, and we’d definitely recommend doing this if you’ve giving the phone to someone else – especially as, from your description, it probably still has your personal messages and information stored on it.
