I've only just changed to iphone, sent all of my contacts an SMS saying I've changed my number and my phone provider charged me £15.77 because my phone converted my SMS into an MMS!!!!
How do I stop my phone from doing this?
iPhone 5
A provider can provision their servers for "long" messages of less than 480 characters. That means a SMS text of >160 but < 480 characters gets split on sending into 3 SMS messages. It is then up to the receiving server and handset to support stitching them together again. Once you exceed 480 characters though, it will be sent as MMS, by any carrier, handset or messaging app I've ever used.
Your provider's tech people told you wrong - there is no changing this on the device.
If you toggle MMS off, and exceed 480 characters, you will either end up not sending anything, or you will be sending a truncated message (not sure what happens as I've not tried it myself - anything over 160 characters and I'll send an email).
Talk to your provider. SMS text has a strict character limit (160). If you exceed that, they can either break it up to send it as multiple SMS, truncate it, or convert it to MMS and send the overflow characters on the data channel. Your provider provisions their system however they choose to - it has nothing to do with your phone.
Thank you so much for replying. I posted a problem at the weekend but not had a respose from anyone yet.
Ok, I called provider, they said it's nothing to do with them it's to do with a setting on my handset, said I should go into 'apple' and ask a tech guy to look at it. Thought I'd ask on here first.
I found in settings, message, I can turn MMS off which I have now done. Would this cure the problem? Or is there anything else you can think of that I need to do?
Natalie x
These settings may help
Settings > Messages > MMS Messaging > Toggle Off
Settings > Messages > Character Count > Toggle On
So, anything over say 400 will go as an MMS?
But by me turning the MMS toggle off, my handset should prevent this from happening?
SMS is inherently limited to 160 characters (140 bytes), so three SMS messages would be 480 characters. The so-called long protocol cannot change that inherent limit, so the service providers systems take a message of less than 480 characters and split it into three. There is no provision for anything longer than 480, so those get rolled over and sent out as MMS.
If you turn off MMS, but have an MMS capable account, I do not know? It still may be that if you try sending a message of more than 480 characters, it would still go out as MMS from your account and you'd be billed for it, as that is the only way for the system to ensure actually sending of your unusually long SMS text message. Or, it might just not send anything at all and return an error.
Turn on the character counter to know how long your message is getting, and honestly, if it gets longer than 160 characters, I'd switch to email to be sure of no unexpected charges. SMS was just never designed for messages longer than 140 bytes.
Thank you for your support. I probably won't ever send a long one again. I only sent the first one because I was texting everyone in my contact list to inform them of my new number, thought as had unlimited messages it wouldn't be a problem, had no idea it would turn to MMS.So, I've turned on the counter now hopefully thanks to you and the other person that suggested advice I'll never have to pay charges again.
Thank you so much x
How do you prevent long SMS messages converting into MMS message?
