Character count does not work for all contacts anymore.

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Level 1

14 points

Character count does not work for all contacts anymore.

I have an iPhone 4 running 6.1.3 with character count enabled and on the Sprint network. Recently character count stopped working when texting at least one of my contacts that i know for sure. I haven't gone through to see how many other contacts have the same issue, but i know it still works for some other contacts. Why would character count show for some of my contacts but not others? And what would cause it to stop working when it showed the number of characters before?I have found the problem exists regardless of if it's an SMS text or iMessage. And there is only one contact at a time that is the recipient; it is not an MMS. Is it possible that there actually is more than one recipient that i'm not aware of or is there another reason why character count would stop working only for certain contacts all of a sudden?

iPhone 4, iOS 6.1.3, 3G

Posted on Jun 15, 2013 8:39 PM

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Answer 1

sberman

Level 10

275,810 points

Jun 15, 2013 8:48 PM in response to Knownewstuff

I find there are two factors that cause the character count not to be displayed:

1. The recipient is on iMessage.

2. The character count is very small (generally less than about 35). I have to type at least some number (about 35) of characters to see a count.

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Answer 2

Knownewstuff Author

Level 1

14 points

Jun 16, 2013 1:16 PM in response to sberman

So if the text bubble is blue (i.e., I'm using iMessage, which is dependent on the recipient (i.e., if they are on an Apple device)), character count will never work, right? There's no work around for this? Why is the iPhone so limited (rhetorical question)?

So if I want to make sure i'm not carrying over into more than one text box when I send to someone on iMessage (whether I have iMessage enabled or not), I cant? That or I have to use an app or external editor with that functionality then copy & paste it out of there?

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Answer 3

Jun 16, 2013 2:44 PM in response to Knownewstuff

Knownewstuff wrote:

So if the text bubble is blue (i.e., I'm using iMessage, which is dependent on the recipient (i.e., if they are on an Apple device)), character count will never work, right? There's no work around for this? Why is the iPhone so limited (rhetorical question)?

So if I want to make sure i'm not carrying over into more than one text box when I send to someone on iMessage (whether I have iMessage enabled or not), I cant?

It will never carry over into another box in iMessage because iMessages (blue) are not limited to 160 characters. That's why there's no character count. You can type as much as you want.

SMS (green) are limited to 160 characters and so Apple provides the character count.

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Answer 4

Knownewstuff Author

Level 1

14 points

Jun 19, 2013 9:57 AM in response to IdrisSeabright

Maybe this is nit-picky, but if the recipient is on an iPhone, the text bubble size still has a 160 character size limit doesn't it? I.e., if my text to him/her goes over 160 characters, it will still split up and carry over into a second text bubble even if we're using iMessage, right?

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Answer 5

Jun 19, 2013 10:26 AM in response to Knownewstuff

No, the bubble will expand to contain all of the text. I don't know if there is some upper limit but I've never seen one. I found one iMessage that I got from a friend that was 277 characters long. One bubble. One really big bubble.

In fact, many modern smart phones don't chunk SMSs anymore either. They just send it as an MMS behind the scenes instead (which has, if I recall, a 1000 character limit). Of course, this doesn't work if you're sending to a basic phone and sometimes not across carries.

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Answer 6

Knownewstuff Author

Level 1

14 points

Jun 19, 2013 12:06 PM in response to IdrisSeabright

Awesome! Thank you so much 🙂

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Answer 7

Jun 19, 2013 1:01 PM in response to Knownewstuff

So now you do indeed know new stuff!

Best of luck.

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