hopefully someone can help! i am now showing 7 new messages on the home screen. when i look further it shows (7) SMS And MMS, yet i cannot find them. i have tried to search, and only came up with missed calls. i deleted them all, and still receive the message icon.
i have shut down, and even done 2 battery pulls...no luck.
Have you looked in your saved message folder? If you save a message either by accident or on purpose but don't open it first it will show up as a new message on your home screen.
I have a GMail account which I've chosen *not* to include in my consolidated inbox (running 5.0.0.643). So I have to explicitly go to the GMail account to see the messages (otherwise I have 'phantom alerts' as you posted).