SMS...How many characters left?

[Guest fokkerjet]

When composing an SMS, I believe that the maximum number of characters per message is 160. With the SPV, it seems you can just ramble on and on ad infinitum whilst composing. Once the message is sent, does the message as received just have the first 160 characters and ditches the rest?

Is there a way to have the SPV count the characters remaining (like Nokia and Ericsson do) so that the quota is not exceeded?

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

You are right it is 160 characters per message BUT

what happens if you exceed that is the person you are sending to will

receive multiple messages until they have all of the text.

Remember for every message they receive you will be charged.

But there is no counter as yet (like the nokia's have)

A lot of people have mentioned this

[Guest HelloDave]

Unfortunately not, and it's an incredibly basic feature to miss out! The last phone I had without a character counter was my old Motorola m3788 brick, but that just stopped you typing at 160 characters. The SPV will let you ramble on forever because the message editor is designed (primarily it seems) for e-mail, but it will send everything you type in an SMS too by sending as many text messages as it needs to. For example, if you type 161 characters it will send 2 SMSs, if you type 1600 it will send 10, and won't warn you its doing it! A shady marketing trick by Orange/M$ perhaps?!

The best way i've found to estimate the length of one SMS is don't type beyond the penultimate line in the message editor to be safe, but 160 characters seems to finish about half way along the last line (if you feel lucky ;)).

[EDIT] You beat me to it again Ashley! [EDIT]

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

:mrgreen:

[Guest fokkerjet]

Thanks...I would have thought it would be pretty simple for the Microsoft Boys and Girls to correct this in an update. It is a bit of a pain really.

[Guest Big Ron - No Longer a Mem]

There's a way around this. Orange has a NEW deal on offer - GPRS WAP access @ 10 megabytes per month for £4. I've checked, and it IS allowed with the SPV promo pack. For the fiirst three months, there is NO charge at all - your bill will show a £4 debit and a £4 refund. WAP allows you to send txt-only POP3 email from a pop3 email account (also free) set up at www.orange.co.uk. (it's a legacy of Orange.net, which closed down in December 2002) 10 megabytes "fair usage" of txt-format (NOT HTML!) equates to roughly 45 copies of "Hamlet" in ASCII format. ... and that's one hell of a lot of text.; it's essentially "unlimited usage". ANYONE can have an Orange.net email account, which they can access via WAP. And there's no 160 character limit to txt emails. Note that, although Orange email is POP3,, you can also use it exactly like Hotmail, and send/read the messages from the "Services/Mail" section of Orange's home-page via WAP.

Bottom line, it's either a very smart move by O, or remarkably dumb. The deal equates to an offer: "switch from SMS to GPRS WAP, and you can have unlimited texts for £4 per month... and the first three months are FREE." If it catches on, the implication is "SMS RIP".

[Guest Bazz]

The big problem with that is that not everyone has an e-mail phone. When I SMS I usually want to text someone - i.e. send a message to their phone - so that it arrives fairly quickely. E-mailling them's useless if they aren't at their computer...