International texts: Message sending ineligible text

[LVGT]

Hi PM Community,
Has anyone had any trouble when sending texts internationally? When I send texts to a UK phone (from Canada) sometimes they are received but the message does not make sense and is not the same message that I composed. I have noticed that sometimes it happens on longer messages and the message becomes fragmented and then disorganized. At times it also makes no sense at all.

See attached pictures for examples: Green message is the one I composed and white is the one received (in multiple mini messages).

Is anyone else experiencing this or does anyone have any insight into why this happens or how to correct it? It seems like having international texts is of no use if they don't work properly.

Cheers,

 

 

 

 

[darlicious]

@LVGT 

I don't know if this is an option on an iPhone but most Android phones allow you to send a traditional SMS as an MMS by using the messaging app's settings (3 dots top right corner) to send as an MMS text. MMS won't count against your plan data and don't have to character count.

[Nezgar]

@softech D'oh!

[softech]

@Nezgar   and it's hard not to use emoji because the Auto change, like you were definitely trying to put : )  but the system just changed it back to emoji for you.  LoL

[Nezgar]

Since the emoji is not plain text, it would have to be encoded to a form that allows more characters, but each character takes 16-bits instead of 8, halving the size of the message that can be sent, and actually less (67 characters, as @softech astutely pointed out) -- check out this article: SMS Character Limit | Twilio

Specifically this passage is of interest: "If you include non-GSM characters, such as Chinese script, in SMS messages, those messages have to be sent using the UCS-2 encoding. Messages containing any UCS-2 characters will be limited to 70 characters. UCS-2 messages of more than 70 characters will be split into 67-character segments."

So... Not including the smiley face emoji and just using 🙂 might have at least reduced the amount of splitting up that needed to occur. Though it's probably also a good literacy challenge to keep messages concise, or at least keep single thoughts/sentences within in one message each so that it doesn't matter too much if they arrive out of order...

[ZuckMark]

There used to be a warning when carriers still charge per message, however, messages are free now and no need to alert you. Also keep in mind that for Apple users you can use Imessages (which is not supported by your carrier instead use internet/WIFI or mobile data) and/or regular SMS the old school text messages. Will also depends on the other person's cellphone.

[LVGT]

Oh thanks for the hot tip... I'll try both lengths and see what works

[softech]

@LVGT   If you were sending in iMessage before, you wouldn't have that problem as iMessage is not true SMS

Also, check this page   https://www.pageone.co.uk/support/sms-message-formatting-and-charging/#:~:text=Standard%20Messages,s...). , it is about the limit and international character (16-bit)

I checked your first segmented message, it's exactly 67 characters (your others are each 67 characters as well), which falls in the the example it gives about a message of 71 characters that got broken into 67 characters for one and then the next 4 characters in the 2nd message

[LVGT]

@softech 
Thanks for the suggestion I will try sending smaller messages. The strange thing is that I do recall many years ago that you would be told by your phone if you hit a character limit but I haven't seen that in years (I currently use an iPhone X). I did just look it up though and it turns out that I did have a character count toggled on in my iPhone settings but still couldn't see the count. It turns out that to see the count on and iPhone X you have to toggle on the subject option on and then that's where you see the character count.

Thanks for the suggestion

[MrSpock]

@LVGT Yes there is a character limit of 160 I believe and yes it will get broken up , either that or it could be caused by a spatial enomeli   lol

[softech · Accepted solution]

@LVGT   Look like you hit the character limit.  Carrier will break the message in segments, but there is no guarantee that receiving end will receive those segmented messages in order

This will happen to local text, too.  There is still a character limit to sms text sent within Canada, and it will break it if you hit the max.  I guess the order issue is less as the transfer time will not vary as much when you send text locally