Text Messages

Idbatterim

Just a question about text messages. Is there a certain amount of characters you can use that makes up one text and when you exceed that you have to pay for the price of another or how does it work? cause im sure with some texts i send with meteor (text 9c) that i pay 24 if they are long?

spunkymunky

150 characters ,that is letters, numbers, spaces and symbols per single message

steveland?

160 per message. if you go over 160 you get charged for two messages, over 320 3 messages etc

aidan_walsh

Which should be indicated on your phone as to how many you have left. On Nokia phones its formatted as NumChars/NumMsgs, so for single message that has ten characters left in it it would be 10/1.

spunkymunky

yeah sorry, 160

steveland?

Also afaik Meteor charge different rates for non-Meteor phones or something so you may be paying 12c for some texts (maybe it's peak 12c, off-peak 9c or summat) so that may account for your 24c texts

aidan_walsh

SteveD wrote:

160 per message. if you go over 160 you get charged for two messages, over 320 3 messages etc

Actually for 2+ messages, the character count goes down a little to account for the increased message header size (a link reference to the previous message so that they are formatted correctly) while maintaining a consistant packet size for network transmission.

dublin_apache

It depends on the phone, as fas as I can remember the Nokia 3310 has 430 characters which would cost the same a 1 text meassage...

Wertz

If you have a GPRS phone with MMS you can send something like the equivalent of eight 160 char SMS's for whatever your carrier's rate is...

Spocker

..

radiospan

Special characters use more than 1 character I think.

steveland?

doodle_sketch wrote:

Actually for 2+ messages, the character count goes down a little to account for the increased message header size (a link reference to the previous message so that they are formatted correctly) while maintaining a consistant packet size for network transmission.

Good point. it sends *some text missing* or something at the end of the first message and start of the second.

You can see it on the older phones that don't update the message quickly and recieve them as two seperate messages until the second message comes in like the 3310

jesus_thats_gre

160 per single message. It you go multi message, you can get 140 per message..

Mimikyu

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Naos

um..

RTFM!

steveland?

it means she's gone over the 160 characters. Leave it a second so the second message can be delivered and it should update itself. That's what mine did when I had a 3510i

omnicorp

I'm with meteor aswell and they charge me 9c for every multiple of 160 texts

mp3guy

dublin_apache wrote:

It depends on the phone, as fas as I can remember the Nokia 3310 has 430 characters which would cost the same a 1 text meassage...

It has 459 chars, and no, they definately don't cost 13c per 459 char text (i found out the hard way)

omnicorp

I found out when I sent a 459 character text to New Zealand.
ouch...

mp3guy

oh yeah, once i was in france, sent a text home, checked my credit, no change, sent a few more, still no change. I thought, great, free texts. about 30mins later, €4 gone.... damn them and their slow update.

Stark

If you send the text as a Multimedia/MMS message then it's 19c flat rate for any length text. Beware though, the person you're sending to has to be able to receive them.

jesus_thats_gre

Solitaryman666 wrote:

This post has been deleted.

It wont be in the manual ya twat...

Its a problem with the actually handsets software.

aidan_walsh

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

It wont be in the manual ya twat...

Its a problem with the actually handsets software.

Well, it means the message has more than one part, to be precise. Though I think that was stated already up along...

jesus_thats_gre

doodle_sketch wrote:

Well, it means the message has more than one part, to be precise. Though I think that was stated already up along...

Yup. When you send a text message that is 420 characters long, it is sent as three seperate messages and the receiving phone appends the three seperate messages together as one again.

When this does not happen on Nokia phone from the 3410(?), it is a problem with the specific firmware version of the handset.

Flukey

I use Vodafone.ie when I am online. The texts are free and it is a lot easier to type them too! The site is not always reliable, but if I am at my PC and get a text, that is how I generally reply!

steveland?

I always find though you're restricted to the 160 chars on vodafone.ie which isn't really enough for some texts tbh. Grand for just arranging stuff though.

My plan gives me 150 texts a month though and if I don't use them in the month they're not carried over so I find I never bother with webtexts.

Those pre-paid plans can be an absolute pain though if you're only planning on using your phone socially as opposed to for business