Support longer text messages
planned
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Michael Fields
Right now you can only send text messages up to 160 characters in length. This is a limit imposed by mobile carriers (e.g. T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, etc.) for the length of individual messages.
It's possible for messages up to 1,600 characters in length to be split up behind-the-scenes, and automatically reassembled into one message by the receiving phone (so that it still looks like one long message).
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My apologies if this has already been requested.
You offer SMS and I appreciate that but sometimes I need to get wordy. Statistics tell us that text msg get read more often and sooner than email. Would it be possible to offer MMS and SMS or just MMS?
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Wes Cossick
marked this post as
planned
Meredith Owens
Merged in a post:
Increase text message length
Ann Douglass
Please consider increasing the number of characters allowed in a text message. Just typing in who the message is from takes up valuable space that little is left for meaningful message to be relayed in emergencies.
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Michael Fields
What you are offering is better than what we have. Yes, I would like to explore your suggested option where the system splits texts automatically. Can you provide an estimated time for testing? Just wondering how people gonna react when they get several texts.
Meredith Owens
Michael Fields: I'm afraid we don't have an estimated time for that yet. Currently, we're collecting feedback from other users on if they'd like to see this feature, and how they'd like to see it be implemented. Once there's a change in this request's status, we'll update the post, and you'll be notified via email!
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Bwe Siteowner
agreed. this is woefully short. Make it a long raw field and let us type in what we need. Many times successive texts can be received out of order and that causes massive confusion for our older owners. Being able to send longer texts would be a big win!
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Michael Fields
Correct
Wes Cossick
Michael Fields: Since 160 is the limit set by mobile carriers, messages longer than 160 characters would be broken up into multiple individual messages. We can consider offering to do this automatically, but for now, you can do this manually by sending multiple messages. I'll update your post to more closely reflect the feature you're asking for.
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Michael Fields
Wes Cossick: By changing the last part after the @ I can send a MMS instead of a text. Most carriers have a list of both. They are emails that are converted to SMS or MMS.
Wes Cossick
MMS, or "Multimedia Messaging Service," means that the text message contains media like images, videos, and/or audio files. We don't plan to offer this type of capability due to technical and cost limitations.
However, it seems like you're simply requesting the ability to send longer text messages (i.e. longer than 160 characters). Is this correct?
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Bwe Siteowner
Wes Cossick: I would be interested in sending longer text only messages if could make that happen.
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Michael Fields
Wes Cossick: Yes, that is correct. The ability to send longer text messages.