SMS with Emoji not received in iPhone v1... unless...

There are multiple complaints on this forum about SMS behavior when including Emoji characters on iOS 5.1.1.

Here is one more, but with some (bizarre, unexpected) workaround.

1) Sending SMS w/ Emoji from iPhone v1 [iOS 3.1.3] to iPhone 3GS [iOS 5.1.1] works fine, thanks to the Japanese/Emoji international keyboard activation.

2) Sending SMS w/ Emoji from iPhone 3GS to iPhone v1 does NOT work, the SMS is (apparently) sent and logged, but never received.

BUT

3) If instead of sending it directly from the Apple iOS Messages app, I use instead the SMS Smileys FREE app (downloaded from the App Store) to send my SMS w/ Emoji, this time it is properly sent from the iPhone 3GS AND RECEIVED by the iPhone v1 !.

And in that case, the log of the regular Messages App shows the actual Emoji SMS sent.

Did you say bizarre ?

Note that this curious behavior may or may not be Carrier related (I use Free Mobile).

Too bad there is no hack to force the Apple iOS Messages app to behave properly with Emojis, since obviously it can...