How many sms do you have and how are you trying to delete them on the Eris. Because if you have just so many sms collected, the phone will freeze and the only way to get rid off them would be by deleting each one individually or factory reset.

I am in agreement with Rabid Raccoon...

I've experienced slowness in deleting SMS messages, but none that cause the phone to freeze or lock up.  How are you attempting to do this?

I tried to do it by deleting the entire thread and by deleting all messages, i have to delete them one by one and its really time consuming. You said something about a factory reset what is that? And if i do that would it reset contact info and everything in the phine?

A factory reset will erase everything on your phone, like it just came out of the box. Yes, it will erase all the contacts. I your contacts are Google contacts then you can sync them back down to your device after the reset. Log into your gmail account and click on contacts, make sure all your contacts are in your gmail account first before you hard reset the phone.

Instead of tapping+holding with your finger, try scrolling down with the scroll wheel and holding that down for a few seconds. Then wait.

If there are a lot of messages -- or a lot of messages + pictures, it may take a moment or three for the thread to delete.

I had about 1,300 messages in one thread and experienced the exact thing you are describing. I pulled my battery 2x because of the freeze up and still the messages remained. One day at work I was trying to delete and had to leave the phone. When I was able to look at it again about an hour had passed and the messages were gone. So maybe do what you have been, try an delete the whole thread, when you go to bed and see how it is in the morning.

I also had a LOT of pictures sent and received in my thread, along with videos, and it worked quite well.

I had this same problem, it would freeze everytime I tried deleting a message.  I had to send it back and get a new one

Funny side note.  The new phone I got deletes text messages, but won't let me receive pic messages....this phone is junk

I have the problem solved! On the main menu hit the menu button - Setting.Then click the "Sound and Display", scroll down  to your display settings, and click Screen timeout and change it to "Never Timeout". After this setting you can delete long threads with no problem. The problem happens because while deleting a long thread (thus taking a long time) your phone (computer) wants to preform another action, such as the screen brightness changing, and that is what makes the phone freeze. After changing this setting just delete your messages with no problem. For me a 50 message txt took 30 seconds, and a 1000 message txt (with media) took 10 mins.

thanks this worked well!

there must be different Eris's then because mine does not have a never time out under screen timeout, it has 15 seconds 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 10 minutes, and thirty minutes, and YES i tried to scroll down. I have a GARGANTUAN list of texts back and forth with girls i was seeing, and now with my fiance'. her thread alone is 3530, why cant they store everything on the micro card, like the smart phones i have had before. makes it too easy i guess, or makes you visit their site to figure it out...