Text Message (2/4)-(2 of 4) Question

[ArmageddonX]

When I send longer Text Messages is there any way to get them to specify to my recipients what order the messages are sent?

Often I send very long text messages and without any (1 of 4), (2 of 4), (3 of 4), and (4 of 4) or (1/4), (2/4), (3/4), and (4/4) message breaks often my recipients are unsure of what order my messages are in and often are not sure if they've missed a message.

Is there anyway to fix this?

 

[Stuntman]

I believe that the carriers are the ones that break up a long message into smaller ones. When I receive a message broken across multiple texts, I find that the message says which part of how many parts. I do find that sometimes they arrive in the wrong order. I'm not sure if there is an app or setting that controls this. It may be controlled on the carrier side in which case you cannot do anything about it.

 

[ArmageddonX]

When I had my Palm Pre on Sprint it separated my messages (1 of 2) and (2 of 2).

Now that I have my hTc EVO 3D is sends the messages without any sort of separation.

For instance, when I text my Wife often the messages will even split a single word in half.
Like; "The Big Elephant Trunk" turns into "The Big Elep" and then "hant Trunk".
Whereas before with my Palm it would do; "(1 of 2) The Big" and then "(2 of 2) Elephant Trunk"

I have looked through all the messaging settings and I cannot figure out how to do this in Android.

 

[Stuntman]

The longer texts I receive end up get broken exactly at the maximum length of the text. I'm not sure of the exact phones that are used, but I find all long texts are broken at the maximum lengths. When I send texts, I have an indicator that counts the number of characters remaining. I usually ensure that my texts fit within the maximum length. If I am about to go over, I usually just send the complete sentence, then start the next sentence in a subsequent text.

I have an HTC Desire Z and I just use the regular messaging app. I get texts from a variety of phones, some of which I do not know the model.

 

[EarlyMon]

I believe that you'll find that you can control that with various 3rd party apps.

I use and recommend Handcent, it's rich in options for multi-part messages.

 

[ArmageddonX]

Thank you everyone for the advice. I did try Handcent and found that I like the native Sense 3.0 messaging application much better. I know some other UIs have the built-in message splitting/numbering functions so I suppose I will just wait for HTC Sense to do this too. Hopefully in the next OTA Update =)

 

[takeshi]

Send an MMS instead if you're sending longer messages.

 

[cableguynoe]

Send an MMS instead if you're sending longer messages.

+1.

The easiest way to do this is add a subject to your long message. This automatically turns it into an MMS. Then it will always arrive in one long message, instead af many little ones.

 

[ArmageddonX]

I'm going to speak candidly for a moment... I'm a little annoyed I'm having to jump through a bunch of hoops to have such a simple thing done to my texts. I hated my Palm Pre, but it did this by default. My friend has a LG Rumor "dumb phone" and it does this by default. I had to borrow a Samsung Seek "dumb phone" before I got my Android and it did this by default. Not really sure why my "Ultra-Smart-Phone" can't do this by default...

 

[cableguynoe]

I'm going to speak candidly for a moment... I'm a little annoyed I'm having to jump through a bunch of hoops to have such a simple thing done to my texts. I hated my Palm Pre, but it did this by default. My friend has a LG Rumor "dumb phone" and it does this by default. I had to borrow a Samsung Seek "dumb phone" before I got my Android and it did this by default. Not really sure why my "Ultra-Smart-Phone" can't do this by default...

I agree that this is a bit annoying, since I frequently send long messages also.
If you haven't already, in Handcent, go to settings-send message settings-then check Auto-convert to MMS. This will automatically turn it to MMS after you reach a specific amount of characters(not sure what the number is), and send it in one long message.
The other very simple way to do this, as I stated in my previous post, simply add a subject.
While typing your text message, hit menu, then add subject. You can just put a . there and it'll do the trick.

Not everything about these phones are perfect, but usually there's workarounds.



Edit: sorry, just read that you didn't really like handcent.
The add subject trick will work for you then...

 

[ArmageddonX]

Thank you. I appreciate both your advice and your understanding of my frustration. I will just start adding a subject for messages over 160. I'm on Sprint so it's unlimited MMS/SMS/Data/Everything.

Edit: I just tried the "adding" a subject. It just added "Subject: ." to the beginning of my message and sent it as two separate SMS messages LOL... Ohh well... Thank you for trying to help anyway.

 

[EarlyMon]

What do we have to do to put you into this shiny new Handcent today?

We're willing to give top trade-in value for your stock app in trade!

~~~~

Seriously, tho - Handcent and the other popular alternatives (Chomp and Go SMS) are pretty flexible.

With Handcent you change the Skin, Theme, Conversation list settings, Bubble settings (including stock Android, no bubbles) - my question is:

Is it the UI (that we can maybe help with) or some part of the Sense 3 SMS functionality that wasn't floating your boat?

 

[ArmageddonX]

I was loving Handcent & spent awhile customizing it but it did something that scared me. I was Text Messaging my Wife to test out the App and it sent her the same message eight times. It kept popping up "Message not sent, re-sending..." and I couldn't stop it without deleting the message. When I tried to delete the message it freaked out & wouldn't let me stop it. Then, once I managed to deleted the messages, my 3G radio immediately shut off and I couldn't get it to turn back on. In addition I noticed my phone was running at 103F so I uninstalled Handcent & restarted my phone.

It's been working fine since & never had that issue before. I know it was probably a fluke, but I'm a extremely paranoid about stuff like that and it scared the bajeezuuz out of me. I have been considering re-installing it and trying it out again because it really was quite nice.

I absolutely love the stock Sense 3.0 messaging App and I've grown accustom to it. I'm hoping in the next OTA update they offer better group and outgoing message options because those are the only two areas I feel the options are lacking. Or I'll try Handcent again, it just seems like overkill to use Handcent for this one simple issue.

 

[EarlyMon]

Yeah, totally forgot about that, I had a thread on that in the 3vo forum.

Once you change options in Handcent, you have to reboot.

This is definitely a new bug, and I'm not 100% sure, but think it's unique to dual core phones. I had it eating my battery in hours before I'd realized that it had gone rogue.

There's a config option to suppress multiple messages also.