*sigh*

[digit]

OK, riddle me this:

My sister has a cheapo POS $30 Samsung SCH-A850. The phone doesn't do music, takes crappy pictures, has 4 meg (if that) of internal storage...all in all junk phone.

I use an HTC Apache (XV 6700,) that I paid $173 for. It's a fully-featured PPC handset (as you all likely know,) except for one thing.

EMS.

Enhanced Messaging Services--the predecessor to MMS.

My sister's crappy phone? Sends and receives EMS messages just fine.

My uber-sweet PPC? Not a chance.

If a Sprint user sends me an SMS with more than 160 characters, I get two texts; one of 160 characters and one of the rest. Same with Alltel; same with T-Mobile and AT&T.

BUT--if a Verizon user (non-smartphone) sends me a 161+ character text, I get nothing. Because non-smartphone/PPC Verizon phones still use the old, deprecated EMS format, which my phone can't handle.

So, whose bright idea was it to do this? Make cheap junk phones more capable than expensive Pocket PC's? Where is the intelligence in that decision?

I don't get it. I'm this close >< to junking my PPC and buying a Voyager because I'm sick and tired of being limited by the PPC platform on stupid little things like this. All I want to do is receive a long text message from a Verizon user. Why is that so hard?