When I compose a new SMS, the character count is wrong, because special characters take more space than normal ones.
As an example, if a regular SMS takes 160 characters, if I use special characters such as á, é, €… the same SMS will take more characters and therefore they will bill me for 2 SMS, or more instead of one.
Sorry for my poor English but it is not my mother tongue 🙂
That's correct. Special characters (unicode) in SMS do use more space, so as soon as you use one special character, the number of available characters drops to 70 instead of 160.
So, to only be charged for 1 SMS when using special characters, make sure the SMS is less than 70 characters.
That's correct. Special characters (unicode) in SMS do use more space, so as soon as you use one special character, the number of available characters drops to 70 instead of 160.
So, to only be charged for 1 SMS when using special characters, make sure the SMS is less than 70 characters.
Hi, thanks! But how is possible than the iPhone cannot count real space used just like Skype does? If I compose an SMS in Skype, I can see for real how many characters are used. I know they are different methods!! But if Skype can do it, the SMS application should be able to count real characters properly.
Your English is not poor, it is perfect! 🙂
Thank you! 🙂
What do you mean by "real characters"?
On my iPhone the character counter starts counting down from 160 characters, but if I use a Unicode character it drops down to count down from 70 characters.
Is yours not doing that?
The count is not going down but up, I mean if I type this sentence (don't worry about the meaning):
"¡Jovencillo emponzoñado de whisky, qué figurota exhibió!"
It takes 146 characters on Skype, but only 56 in the iPhone. The character "ó" takes a lot of space, for example.
I see what you mean now.
Skype counts the number of 7-bit characters a message takes regardless of whether the SMS is sent as 7-bit or 16-bit (Unicode).
iPhone counts the number of 7-bit characters a message takes if the SMS is sent as 7-bit, and counts the number of Unicode characters a message takes if the SMS is sent as Unicode.
Personally, I think the iPhone behaviour is correct, as 7-bit and 16-bit (Unicode) SMS have different character limits so the iPhone shows you the correct limit depending on the type of SMS you are sending. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS#Message_size
There's no way to change this though.
I see this is by design, but there is a difference in the bill, if I send 30 or 60 SMS because I send special characters. I know the quick solution is to avoid sending this characters, but the application should be smart enough to count the characters I'm being billed as this is all the purpose of character counting in my humble opinion.
So, iPhone is doing it right counting 7-bit characters, but not OK counting the "real characters I'm paying for" which is more important to me. I guess no one cares about how many characters takes to say something just for the quantity's sake unless they are using Twitter 😀 I hope my explanation was quite clear!
This should be a bug, not a feature, in my very humble opinion 🙂
Perhaps what the iPhone needs is, in addition to the character counter, it needs some kind of SMS counter. So it shows you clearly how many SMSs your message will use whether you use 7-bit or 16-bit characters.
I completely agree with that! That would be a great improvement! 🙂
Wrong character count in SMS
