1. shalea#IM's Avatar
    Hello, I was wondering if Sprint planned to update their systems so that one can text more than 160 characters when sending texts. I know that T-Mobile, AT&T, and just heard that VZW have the feature that lets you send text of over 160 characters, but breaks the texts down to 160 characters at a time to recipients (i.e., multiple texts).

    Does Sprint plan get this feature anytime soon?
    04-06-09 04:02 PM
  2. redsoxrocker's Avatar
    I don't think Verizon has this feature on their blackberrys. On none-blackberrys, some, yes, but my pearl doesn't send let me send over 160 characteral then breaks it up on its own..

    Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com
    04-06-09 06:22 PM
  3. Fire-Detention's Avatar
    with blackberry messanger and email texting will be a thing of the past.
    04-06-09 07:29 PM
  4. StarDestroyer's Avatar
    160 characters is a limit of SMS. It is not something the carriers can really override... even with tricks like this. It is a limitation that some phones hide by breaking a message over 160 chars into two (or more) separate messages as they're being sent. This is something a phone on any network can do.

    As for the comment about BB Messenger, that will not make texting a thing of the past. The vast majority of people in the world do not carry a phone that includes BB Messenger, but do carry one that supports SMS. Unless RIM wants to make BB Messenger available to all phone manufactures, they all agree to include it, and all the carriers support it w/out a data plan (many people have SMS plans w/out any data)... but I don't see that happening any time soon.
    04-07-09 08:54 AM
  5. superaj's Avatar
    Vzw does not break up sms 160 is max. A quick fix is to send an mms which will allow 900 characters.

    Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com
    04-07-09 09:33 AM
  6. kingakuma's Avatar
    MMS is the best way for long Messages
    04-07-09 10:56 AM
  7. Lowsol94's Avatar
    SEARCH!!!

    Message size

    Transmission of short messages between the SMSC and the handset is done using the Mobile Application Part (MAP) of the SS7 protocol. Messages are sent with the MAP mo- and mt-ForwardSM operations, whose payload length is limited by the constraints of the signalling protocol to precisely 140 octets (140 octets = 140 * 8 bits = 1120 bits). Short messages can be encoded using a variety of alphabets: the default GSM 7-bit alphabet (shown above), the 8-bit data alphabet, and the 16-bit UTF-16/UCS-2 alphabet.[26] Depending on which alphabet the subscriber has configured in the handset, this leads to the maximum individual Short Message sizes of 160 7-bit characters, 140 8-bit characters, or 70 16-bit characters (including spaces). Support of the GSM 7-bit alphabet is mandatory for GSM handsets and network elements,[26] but characters in languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Japanese or Cyrillic alphabet languages (e.g. Russian) must be encoded using the 16-bit UCS-2 character encoding (see Unicode). Routing data and other metadata is additional to the payload size.

    Larger content (Concatenated SMS, multipart or segmented SMS or "long sms") can be sent using multiple messages, in which case each message will start with a user data header (UDH) containing segmentation information. Since UDH is inside the payload, the number of characters per segment is lower: 153 for 7-bit encoding, 134 for 8-bit encoding and 67 for 16-bit encoding. The receiving handset is then responsible for reassembling the message and presenting it to the user as one long message. While the standard theoretically permits up to 255 segments,[27] 6 to 8 segment messages are the practical maximum, and long messages are often billed as equivalent to multiple SMS messages. See Concatenated SMS for more information.
    SMS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    04-07-09 11:37 AM
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