Hey all,

So as we all know, WhatsApp is... pretty much unavoidable for day-to-day communications if you live outside the US. I have avoided it up until now, using solely Signal and Telegram (with e2ee secret chats), but now the pressure has finally caved in and I need WhatsApp working.

So I made a secondary user profile, installed Google Play Services, created a fresh Google account, downloaded WhatsApp and... it fails to send the SMS. Every time, no matter the number I put, it gives the error (roughly translated): "We are unable to deliver the message, please try again in 1 hour".

I tried downloading WA from APKMirror, with no luck (But then again APKMirror is just a reupload of google play so not sure what I was expecting). And the issue is definitely not with the SIM card or SMS receiving, other apps have verified just fine and I sent SMS to myself from a different phone number and they are received ok.

This is where I got out an old iPhone (to be precise, 2017 iPhone X), wiped it, made a fresh Apple ID, downloaded WhatsApp, and typed in the phone number. The SIM card was still in my Pixel, with GOS. And it worked, first try! The message delivered and I can use WhatsApp normally on the iPhone. But the issue is, I don't need it on my iPhone, as it has extremely short battery life. As a short term solution I could carry it around switched off, but Apple does invasive tracking so for long term I would rather have it in a sandboxed profile on the Pixel.

Phone verification also fails -- "We are unable to call you. Try again in 1 hour". Looking online for various solutions, I only found a strange post from 2012 on XDA that doesn't contain a solution. WhatsApp support team (via email) is no help either, they insist something is wrong with my SIM card.

Any ideas on how to solve this? Thanks in advance

Just a guess, but did you enable Phone calls and SMS for the new profile?

Wow, that actually worked! Thank you so much! I guess WhatsApp uses that to determine if it's a tablet or not, and since it doesn't allow tablets, it blocks the verification.

But anyway, it's all working now, thank you very much!

5 days later

I'll borrow this thread since I have a similar problem. I've installed play store and services on my main user, so sms and calls are enabled by default. But I still cant get it to work. I've tried giving both google play and services, as well as whatsapp, sms permission but it makes no difference. Signal was no problem to set up. Anyone know whats wrong?

2 years later
  • Edited

I have the same problem. can't send verification SMS on secondary profile. help?