Is this conceiveable? SMS beyond 160 for verizon

riot544 · Nov 9, 2009

I have converted from the iPhone to the Droid... mostly because of the crappy service my family and I were getting under AT&T. Unfortunately, this presents a new issue for me... Verizon doesn't allow one to send texts longer than 160 characters to users outside the network.

Therefore, I am wondering if it is conceivable for someone to produce an app that will detect when one is sending an SMS with more than 160 characters and automatically split it into multiple texts? It would behave similarly to Blackberry's "Beyond 160" app.

Yes, I realize that the "S" in SMS stands for "short." Thank you for not reminding me, would-be-flamers. And yes, I realize that I could always just send an MMS. Again, that's inconvenient. It is much easier to send an SMS. The thing is, 160 was a good number when QWERTY keyboards weren't the new standard... and now that I am so used to sending massively long texts in a very short amount of time with my iPhone, I really miss the option.

There are a few problems that I can see someone running into...
1) How does one know whether or not the recipient is a Verizon customer able to receive the EMS?
Well, the app, once installed, could either completely ignore this and split the longer texts for EVERYONE... or the app could add an option within each contact to indicate whether or not the contact is a Verizon customer. This would be manually edited, of course.

2) What about the Verizon notification about "Texts with graphics/special characters or longer than 160 characters will only be sent with the first 160 characters?" Would that annoying message still occur with every long text sent?

Thank you for your time you beautiful and precious developers. I will love you forever if you manage to make this app and make it work!

BSmith · Nov 9, 2009

I agree there needs to be a solution for this.

thetruth · Nov 10, 2009

I would love to have an app that can accomplish this.

riot544 · Nov 10, 2009

Does anyone have more opinions on this? Even just telling me its possible/impossible and giving me a reason why?

BSmith · Nov 10, 2009

Handcent SMS has a setting to automatically convert to MMS if it is going to take up X number of messages.

Problem solved.

riot544 · Nov 10, 2009

I have handcent sms and it does not do this for me. I made it 3 pages long like it requests and it does nothing to convert to mms. :/ any ideas??

BSmith · Nov 10, 2009

Awww man, I was just hoping it was going to work like it said. Darn!

I have no idea, I haven't tried it yet. I don't text that much.

Maybe shoot an email to the developer?

riot544 · Nov 10, 2009

Ok, I checked it again... and it says "more than 3 pages..." as inconveniently long as I have to make the message for this to happen... it does convert it to MMS automatically... unfortunately, I cannot send MMS using the application (there are multiple people with this problem-- they are probably working on it), so that kind of defeats the purpose. I have gotten in touch with the developers though and I am working with them on the issue. Thank you for the ideas!

BSmith · Nov 10, 2009

Cool. It looked to me like you could adjust the number of pages. Maybe try cutting that number down?

riot544 · Nov 10, 2009

No, unfortunately that option under settings is set permanently to "more than 3..." as pressing it simply checks or unchecks the option. A long-press doesn't bring up an extra menu either.

BSmith · Nov 10, 2009

Darn. Well, it sounds like they are gonna work with ya on it. I look forward to it working

riot544 · Nov 10, 2009

I'll keep this thread updated with what Handcent says about the situation. That way, anyone else with my problems can just come here instead of making a new post.

akdunlap · Nov 10, 2009

I don't think that it would be possible to make an app that would combine those messages together and send an SMS as MMS to other networks. The issue is not with the sender but with the receiver, VZ can not control how that data is sent to another user off their network, or any other provider.

Now maybe if both phones had the same app, say a Droid to an iPhone, then the application should be able to combine them, but would not work for non-smartphone cells.

riot544 · Nov 10, 2009

Actually, Verizon seems to be the problem for me. Whenever I send a message longer than 160, Verizon cuts it at 160 and sends me a message telling me it cannot deliver a single message longer than 160...
But why can't it split them for me? Certainly someone could develop an app for that?
And they did... I spoke with a Handcent developer and he QUICKLY wrote code that does just that. I can send messages 3 pages long and they are automatically split into 3 messages and sent out simultaneously.

Now, Handcent does have a feature that converts long messages into mms messages. This will conceivably work as well as soon as they iron out the problems with mms and handcent. He is working on writing code for that problem as I type.

BSmith · Nov 15, 2009

They just released a new update that says it fixes this problem.

Jmersh · Nov 16, 2009

My Moto Droid Goes right into page 2,3,4,etc....

El Blacksheep · Nov 16, 2009

Kinda inexcusable really, my Helio Ocean split long texts automatically (and showed you a character count so you knew when you were getting close to the limit) and that device is over 2 years old!

pman555 · Nov 16, 2009

Handcent now has an option to automatically split SMS's over 160 into separate texts. It was released a day or two ago.

I was in the beta testing group, it works as expected.

Jethro · Nov 16, 2009

Well, cool to see there's some development on this. On my Omnia WinMo phone it would split long texts into multiple messages automatically. I didn't even have to think about it. Can't remember if it was a built-in function or something I added.

I'll check out Handcent again. Was using it before I had to reset my phone. Now using Chomp SMS. I prefer the Chomp interface a bit, especially in regards to the pop-up feature.

- Anyone know if Chomp SMS is working on this as well??

I have the Droid Eris, and switched from the default SMS app due to concerns that it drains the battery too much (a problem w/ the Hero).

pman555 · Nov 16, 2009

Jethro said:
Well, cool to see there's some development on this. On my Omnia WinMo phone it would split long texts into multiple messages automatically. I didn't even have to think about it. Can't remember if it was a built-in function or something I added.

I'll check out Handcent again. Was using it before I had to reset my phone. Now using Chomp SMS. I prefer the Chomp interface a bit, especially in regards to the pop-up feature.

- Anyone know if Chomp SMS is working on this as well??

I have the Droid Eris, and switched from the default SMS app due to concerns that it drains the battery too much (a problem w/ the Hero).

Jethro, do you have to pay to use Chomp?

Jethro · Nov 17, 2009

No, Chomp is free just like Handcent. Very similar, actually. I just prefer the interface a bit. A little nicer design.

And I did see on their site that someone just suggested the 'split messages over 160 characters' option, and they have officially put it into their 'To Do List'. So it's probably just a matter of time before this comes out.

All the new Droid users are going to stir up some new needs for the Android community, as they see how an Android phone on Big Red works differently than T-Mobile.

zoukis05 · Nov 17, 2009

I had Handcent installed on my Droid, it was great, except when i opened a message, it wouldn't clear the notification from the phone. Any advice on how to avoid either getting the notification from the phone, or to force Handcent to clear the notification?
I tried selecting the option that says mark as read on close.

Edit:: Never mind, figured it out with a little poking and prodding. It's in the messaging app, under settings, for those just learning like me.

ofkvod · Nov 17, 2009

I would love to have an app that can accomplish this.

pman555 · Nov 17, 2009

Jethro said:
No, Chomp is free just like Handcent. Very similar, actually. I just prefer the interface a bit. A little nicer design.

And I did see on their site that someone just suggested the 'split messages over 160 characters' option, and they have officially put it into their 'To Do List'. So it's probably just a matter of time before this comes out.

All the new Droid users are going to stir up some new needs for the Android community, as they see how an Android phone on Big Red works differently than T-Mobile.

Jethro...I'm trying to find Chomp on the market...for some reason I cant find it. Any suggestions?

dmm · Nov 17, 2009

pman555 said:
Jethro...I'm trying to find Chomp on the market...for some reason I cant find it. Any suggestions?

It is not yet available for Android 2.0. I believe it's currently in beta testing so it shouldn't be long before you can use it on your Droid.

Is this conceiveable? SMS beyond 160 for verizon

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