How do Text messages send & recieve on your phone

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Very interesting question Fire14

Here is my observation:

From at&t Treo 750, 6126 & V3xx messages >160 come in one unbroken long message.

From Verizon VX7000 & q9m messages >160 come & are received in parts.

Hope that makes sense

 

With my Verizon treo 650, if the message is longer than 160 characters that I am receiving, then it clogs up my phone and I cannot receive any messages until I reprogram my phone. I can send no problem. Oh Verizon has an outstanding ticket on the issue going on about 3 weeks now, LOL.

 

On my Verizon Q, if I send a message >160 characters, the message is sent as multiple messages. I suspect the same if someone sends me a long SMS. I believe this happens since the Q is not EMS capable. I hate this now since my #646 and #3282 messages are received as multiple messages.

On my former Samsung A930, if I send a message > 160 characters to a non Verizon user, I get a free text message stating that the message was cut to 160 and the format/images were removed... otherwise, the message converts to a EMS for the Verizon subscriber.

On my Nokia 6010 (on TMobile), messages that exceed 160 are sent or received as multiple messages... I get around this by sending long messages as Picture messages since text only picture messages count as text messages.

 

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if your sending sms the limit is 160 with gsm. and if your sending mms its bigger.

 

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Fire14, Just wanted to clarify something:

While the >160 are sent as one long message, at the bottom of the screen it does say how many messages it will be. I believe you posted that your V3xx does the same?

 

Tom, on the 6126 to be honest I never noticed how many characters but it will send one message, as for my previous SE W810i as I typed a text (which by the way was the king of texting as opposed to my 6126.) it would show SMS 2 SMS3 as I typed a text. Also on the 6126 the messages I receive come in one part.

 

On my older Nokias (31xx, 6820) it will show the part number as I'm typing and the remaining characters in that part. It starts at 160/1 and each subsequent part is only allowed 145 characters (assuming English, if you use any language that uses UTF encoding the number goes down significantly, starting with something like 67/1). On the 6131 it starts counting at 1000/1 regardless of language and I never tried to type a 1000 character long SMS

On the sending neither model tells me how many parts are being sent. On the receiving end it glues them back together into one message as the parts arrive, displaying *some text missing* inside for the parts that haven't arrived yet.

 

It depends on what your phone does partially. With standard SMS the length of the message cannot exceed 160 characters total. If your phone (the sending one) has concatenated messaging capabilities you can make messages over 400 characters by "stitching" the messages together. If the receiving handset can understand concatenated messages it will stitch the messages together. If it can't it will send as multiple messages. To further complicate things some phones if you go over 160 characters will convert the message into a multimedia message which means in effect it can be whatever length it needs to be. T-Mobile supports concatenated messaging. I would assume (though I can't say since I don't use it) that AT&T as a GSM carrier alaso probably does as well. Once you get into different technologies (GSM vs. CDMA) how messages behave is sometimes different. e.g. message delivery. If you send SMS between GSM carriers and have message confirmation turned on GSM systems generally will give you a true status on a message (pending, delivered or failed.) Whereas when sent to a CDMA system you'll get an immediate status of "delivered" which only means that it was delivered to the gateway but not necessarily to the handset.

 

AT&T behaves the same exact way — no true delivery reports are available.

 

Well on sprint it seems to be 160 as well on the phones I have had on the smart phone however it would go as long as 600 or so. It would break them into seperate messages. As far as the MMS goes it goes through sprints picture mail system which can suck I have never had a problem sending pictures but when I try to send videos it does not go through for most people.

 

On Verizon, the confirmation works if the text is sent to an email or to another Verizon phone.

 

Fire, it sure looks like it from the posts on this thread. I did notice Zamboni's post on your other thread that both the LG 9800 & the 9900(Verizon) can send longer messages, I hoping he will stop by and give further input.

So when is your bar chart on this going to be ready?

Zamboni, could you please clarify how the long messages are sent & received on the 9800 & the 9900, thanks.

 

dmapr, I had forgotten about the 6131 and the the starting at 1000. I never did quite understand the rationale behind that, what are your thoughts?

Fire, do you have any idea how much trouble you are asking for? I can & love making EXCEL spreadsheets and graphs on any type of data, and I do mean ANY.

 

Charlyee, I don't understand the rationale at all. It completely hides from the user any indication of how many messages the sender will be charged for. It makes it even worse in case of UTF encoded messages, because the limit there drops significantly from 160 that are allowed in normal Latin encoding.

 

I don't have specific insights but a chart made of the Cellcos maximum SMS/text capabilities and forms of delivering text and shortcomings would be interesting. One could gather information and plot how the various phone models behave using the services out there.

After reading the huge amounts text output, I can't help but wonder if a more appropriate chart comparing how many text messages are sent worldwide, plotted against the age where heavy text users first display symptoms of Repetivive Stress Injuries of the fingers (like Carple Tunnel Syndrome). And which phones are most damaging etc. It all adds up!

I did a similar exploration of various Voice Mail services codes and patterns. Then I found some engineers that new the names or code numbers for the specific products that a wireless company was using and it helped identifying the major players systems.
Usually engineers are to busy to teach systems to curious parties, but a Cellular Trade web site or journal might advertise text sms software products.

I suspect there's several companies specializing in text, SMS, that would be known in the "biz" to provide those products to a cell carrier. Wether the specific text/mms functions all get rolled into a big sw package, I'm not sure. I suspect limits built into the CDMA, GSM systems, but how much carriers pick and choose is a mystery to me.

One thing is for sure, all messaging types are a HUGE cash cow for wireless, requiring little bandwidth. Historically I noticed text was offered for free and then when people begin widely using the service they start charging.

There's probably a whole city in China where they write code for telco and cellular networks and handsets, just like the sock city

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Sid