Text message character length

[Nuar]

Hey guys,
I just upgraded to the xv6800 ppc and while i love the phone, I am REALLY REAAAAAALY annoyed at the stupid character limit on the text messages.
I use texting a lot and being limited on a friggin pocket COMPUTER is ridiculus.
I had the verizon "V" phone up untill now, and with that phone I could type up a whole god damn novel and send it out as one single text to my girlfriend and since she has the V as well, she received it no problem.
I get this phone and not only my messages get split into multiple texts (RETARDED) when she tried to send me a long text, i only got the first 160 chars or so and the rest was just deleted. No split into multiple texts, just gone.

I really hope there is a fix to this damn feature, if not this stupid "pocketPC" is as good as gone.

ANY help or info would be REALLY appreciated! I looked everywhere and all i found was "texts are limited by the network and not the phone" which is obviously not true since the same network let me send LOOOONG texts with a different phone...

[slvrap1]

On mine when i go over 160 characters it will send multiple texts, i dont think anyone has a program that will increase the character limit

[Darkness231]

If you use the Palm Threaded SMS. app it will let you type as much as you want. It will just send out multiple messages.

[blasphemous_prime]

yes, and you forgot to say it's on an instant messaging interface. that's how great it is.

[bakntyme]

Devices using the SMS standard are limited to 160 characters maximum per message. Your previous phone may have used something other than the SMS standard, or may have had some application extension that "stitched" multiple SMS messages together, but that is NOT standard. The standard text messaging applications will let you type a message exceeding the 160 character maximum, and then break that up and send multiple messages of no more than 160 characters each that may or may not be received in the correct order. If text messaging is the most important thing to you, return your 6800 for a refund and go back to using your "V" phone. Either way, we would appreciate you cleaning up your language.

As suggested by the name "Short Message Service", the data that can be held by an SMS message is very limited. One SMS message can contain at most 140 bytes (1120 bits) of data, so one SMS message can contain up to:

• 160 characters if 7-bit character encoding is used. (7-bit character encoding is suitable for encoding Latin characters like English alphabets.)
• 70 characters if 16-bit Unicode UCS2 character encoding is used. (SMS text messages containing non-Latin characters like Chinese characters should use 16-bit character encoding.)

[Success100]

i second the palm messaging app..easily one of the best programs out there!

[Nuar]

Thanks for all the responces guys!

bakntyme,
thank you for the response and i appologize for the language... I'm just really frustrated!
I spent a lot of money on this phone and like I said I love everything about it, except for the texting. I am especially heated, because the salesperson at the verizon store told me the phone will be able to send larger texts without a problem, I made sure to ask about it before I purchased this thing.
Well since its standard to have a 160 character limit on the SMS service, does that mean that the phone itself is limited, or is this potentially avoidable with a different widows mobile 6 application?

While I realize that this might seem like a silly issue to have with the phone, please try to understand that for the past 2 years i had no limit and I got use to it, so now being limited is really annoying lol. I could get past it since I can type as long as I want and it will split it, but others that are use to sending me long texts are whining and complaining even more then me :P

[michaelk]

Originally Posted by Nuar

Thanks for all the responces guys!

bakntyme,
thank you for the response and i appologize for the language... I'm just really frustrated!
I spent a lot of money on this phone and like I said I love everything about it, except for the texting. I am especially heated, because the salesperson at the verizon store told me the phone will be able to send larger texts without a problem, I made sure to ask about it before I purchased this thing.
Well since its standard to have a 160 character limit on the SMS service, does that mean that the phone itself is limited, or is this potentially avoidable with a different widows mobile 6 application?

While I realize that this might seem like a silly issue to have with the phone, please try to understand that for the past 2 years i had no limit and I got use to it, so now being limited is really annoying lol. I could get past it since I can type as long as I want and it will split it, but others that are use to sending me long texts are whining and complaining even more then me :P

The phone isn't limited- their may be a registry hack or a 3rd party app that can do it.

Basically the networks are limited. to elaborate on what bakntyme said- text messages aren't sent over the data network- that's why you dont need a data plan to send them.

So if they aren't voice and dont go over the data network how does it work? It's a trick- basically they use some extra data space on a signaling channel in the voice network to sneak the messages through. The 160 character limit is because that's all the space that exists in that signalling channel.

I've had phones that send and receive more than 160 charaters of SMS (palm OS treos specifically) not sure how they do it- but i know they aren't following the standard so it's not certain it would work on from any phone on any netwrok to any other phone on any other network. And that's why the carriers and the phone makers place the 160 carrier limit in there.


Anyway- if it's just to send to your girlfirend- why not just send each other MMS messages? They get sent as data so they have no limit that I know of. You dont need to include any multimedia you can just send them as text. In fact some phones have a setting to default to MMS.

[to0]

You aren't going to find any relief to this problem, programs or otherwise, except going back to your old phone model that is using something other than the SMS standard.

[Nuar]

Thanks for all the help guys and once again sory about the rude language in the first post...I guess ill just have to enjoy all the other awesome features of this phone... It is going to be tough to get use to the character limit, but ohh well.