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Help Can someone explain this to me?!

andrew53517

Android Enthusiast
Oct 31, 2009
491
18
So I was having an intense discussion with one of my friends via text message, and whenever I send a message over a 160 characters I get this BS from verizon:

Messages sent to non-VZW customers with graphics/tones/formatting and or 160+ characters are sent as plain text with only the first 160 characters.


WTF?! are you kidding me?! the rest of it gets CUT OFF?! thats boggus! Why is that?!
 
I have been on verizon for 6 years now and it has always done that. However, even though it says that my friends have always gotten the full message in 2 parts.


I don't think it's only Vzn that does it. I get long msg's from my friends who are on another network split into 2 or more parts as well.

I'd be willing to bet it's part of the 'standard', and that there is no standard to handle longer messages. But each network has a way to handle long messages in house.

Just my thoughts, they are worth what you paid for them.
 
Upvote 0
Yeah, the SMS standard is 160 characters. SMS, or Short Messaging Service, is designed to use the unused signaling resources of telephony and switched networks (meaning for no additional cost to the carrier), of which 160 7-bit characters fits neatly into a signaling packet. SMS was initially 128 bytes, but was later improved to 140 bytes (160 7-bit characters), which is also why Twitter is limited to 140 characters. There are apps that let you send longer message via SMS and Twitter, but they are breaking them up into 160 character chunks just the same. And it's why messages longer than 160 characters, or messages with graphics or special formatting get sent in plain text if they have to go from one carrier to another.
 
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