Text Message Limit

[mexiken]

You're a slight bit incorrect Maria. If you send to the message to someone with AT&T or T-Mobile (I think they keep them together too), then your message DOES NOT get split up. It stays together. Trust me. It was a huge selling point for us to people who massed/heavy texted. Nice advantage over the competition. Especially since you'd actually have to split the messages with VZ manually, as opposed to it just breaking it up and doing it for you.

[LuvrGirl]

Well then, I don't know how it DOES work for ME?

I'm big on texting and just to see it again, I texted my girlfriend (who has Tmobile) last night. My text went over 160 characters and on my Q it actually showed me how many msgs, or parts, it would be (came out to 3 msgs) and I sent it to her. She received my full text message in 3 separate parts/msgs.

So as long as it works for me... it's all good

~maria

[zenkinz]

Originally Posted by mexiken

You're a slight bit incorrect Maria. If you send to the message to someone with AT&T or T-Mobile (I think they keep them together too), then your message DOES NOT get split up. It stays together. Trust me. It was a huge selling point for us to people who massed/heavy texted. Nice advantage over the competition. Especially since you'd actually have to split the messages with VZ manually, as opposed to it just breaking it up and doing it for you.

only if your are on EMS otherwise otherwise if you are on SMS it'll break into multiple messages.

[mexiken]

Originally Posted by LuvrGirl

Well then, I don't know how it DOES work for ME?

I'm big on texting and just to see it again, I texted my girlfriend (who has Tmobile) last night. My text went over 160 characters and on my Q it actually showed me how many msgs, or parts, it would be (came out to 3 msgs) and I sent it to her. She received my full text message in 3 separate parts/msgs.

So as long as it works for me... it's all good

~maria

Ok, then I was wrong, T-Mobile doesn't do it. But I assure you, AT&T does. I worked for the company long enough to know. Try texting someone with AT&T and see if it splits it up or not. The many messages is a courtesy to tell how many its going to charge you. Every 160 characters is considered a message, so it counts against you if you dont' have unlimited.

[mexiken]

Originally Posted by zenkinz

only if your are on EMS otherwise otherwise if you are on SMS it'll break into multiple messages.

Oh, well thats not too bad then. I thought you had to manually do it yourself. I had someone forward me a message the other day (I think he had Verizon) and he had to send both parts, one by one. But I guess since it got forwarded to him is why.

When you have AT&T, it doesn't split them up. Its the receiver's network that splits them up. If you have any other company BUT AT&T, you will receive an AT&T message in parts. If an AT&T customer sends to another AT&T customer, they get it all in one message =)

We all have AT&T in our house, and none of us have EVER gotten a message split up from each other. I just tested it right now with my roommate (don't know why I did, but I've been wrong before), who works for AT&T. I sent him a 203 character message. he just got it, all together, all at once, the way it always does. It absolutely DOES NOT split them up. The ONLY exceptions are phones that save the texts to SIM cards by default. When it does that, the character limit is 160, and it does indeed force the phone to split them up, but thats because of the SIM, not the phone. Most phones give you the option of where you want to save the texts.

I thought T-Mobile sent them all as one message too, but I guess they don't, or the phone is one of the exceptions above. I actually have an old phone that does that.

[zenkinz]

so I dont know about AT&T or T-mobile since I am in Asia. But based on my understanding, as long as its SMS, it will always send and receive in packet that's limited by 160 character, but the receiving phone end will determine how it is going to interpret/handle the various parts of the message. On my very old samsung phone, it'll receive message in parts. Using my Q9h, it will receive in one (although looking at the queue table, I know at the point of receipt there's two messages).

Again, perhaps AT&T really provide a "enhanced" service for its AT&T subscribers (which makes their SMS billing alittle complicated imho, but you work in AT&T, you know something I don't :P), but in other telcos, that's how long SMS (that'll be an oxymoron term :P) messages are being handled somewhere else.

[BostonBoy23]

Yeah I have Verizon and I can send message which are over 160, which come to other person as 2 messages. But when trying to receive a text that is over 160, I get the first have and a message from Verizon saying something about how the previous message was cut short due to something, and then I never get the 2nd half and have to ask them to send the message as 2 message at separate things. Its stupid how it works.

[mexiken]

Originally Posted by zenkinz

so I dont know about AT&T or T-mobile since I am in Asia. But based on my understanding, as long as its SMS, it will always send and receive in packet that's limited by 160 character, but the receiving phone end will determine how it is going to interpret/handle the various parts of the message. On my very old samsung phone, it'll receive message in parts. Using my Q9h, it will receive in one (although looking at the queue table, I know at the point of receipt there's two messages).

Again, perhaps AT&T really provide a "enhanced" service for its AT&T subscribers (which makes their SMS billing alittle complicated imho, but you work in AT&T, you know something I don't :P), but in other telcos, that's how long SMS (that'll be an oxymoron term :P) messages are being handled somewhere else.

Turns out I hear that most carriers, when you send multiple messages to them, they keep them together. As in, if you're Verizon, and you send over 160 messages, it will break them up, but put them back together ONLY on a Verizon phone to show as one long message. If it was another company, it would send them differently. So my hypothesis is that ALL the companies break them up as the spec maybe states, but the phone's software puts them back together only when its of their own network. I will verify with my little niece right now who has Verizon.