Although LG exited the smartphone market in 2021, there are still plenty of people who love and use LG's phones. The company has a generous update policy to those who own an LG smartphone, so things could have been much worse. However, unfortunate handset owners subscribed to T-Mobile were left with non-working phones for a good part of the day, with an error message reading "LG IMS has stopped” that repeatedly popped up. The good news at this point, though, is that T-Mobile rolled out a fix for the issue.

What does the ‘LG IMS has stopped’ message mean

As spotted by The T-Mo Report on Reddit, the issue is affecting a variety of LG phones on T-Mobile. The “LG IMS has stopped” message started showing up overnight for many, and it kept popping up even when people dismissed it. This made LG phones on T-Mobile essentially useless. Restarting or even resetting the phone didn’t alleviate the problem, either.

If you’re wondering, IMS is a framework meant to correctly route phone calls and SMS messages over data networks, allowing you to make calls and send texts via LTE and 5G. The networking feature is vital to make your phone work as, well, a phone, and is one of the fundamental architectural building blocks for phone services on modern Android devices. It looks like in LG’s case, something went wrong with the implementation of the IMS services on T-Mobile, which is why the issue is isolated to this carrier’s network only.

T-Mobile fixes the ‘LG IMS has stopped’ issue

T-Mobile acknowledged the issue earlier this morning and said it was "actively working with LG" to resolve the issue.

In an update posted this afternoon, The T-Mo Report cites a trusted source in saying that a fix has indeed started rolling out and that customers affected by the issue should restart their devices. This update could take as long as 24 hours to get to everyone.

If you're still having problems in the meantime and would like to attempt a manual solution, you can follow the instructions below.

Reset IMS services

An adept LG phone owner found and shared a solution on Reddit, and it seems to have worked for many users. Here is what you need to do:

1. Set your LG phone to airplane mode to prevent the error message from popping up over and over.
2. Head to Settings -> Apps & Notifications -> App info.
3. Tap the 3-dot menu in the top right corner and enable show system.
4. Look for com.lge.ims.rcsprovider in the list and tap it.
5. In the detailed overview for this app, hit the following three buttons in order: Clear cache, clear storage/data, and force stop. (Depending on the Android version on your phone, some of these three options may be found under storage information.)
6. You may have to repeat step 5 above multiple times for the problem to fix itself.

The tipster says that this route has worked for three different LG phones in their household, so it’s likely that this will fix the problem for you, too, but there is sadly no guarantee that it actually works for everyone.

Remove your SIM card or stay in airplane mode

If the method above doesn't work for you or you find it too cumbersome, you can remove the SIM card from your LG phone or keep airplane mode activated. You will lose the ability to make or receive calls, texts, and mobile network connectivity, but this did also prevent the error messages from showing up for some people. You will then at least be able to use your phone on Wi-Fi while LG and T-Mobile are working on a proper fix for the issue.

What caused the issue

We're not sure what caused the IMS errors, but according to the T-Mo Report's source, T-Mobile had initiated some sort of network-side system update and that the IMS issue on LG phones was not detected before the update completed.