SMS has long outstayed its welcome

[MrX8503]

How would it kill SMS if was using SMS?

If an app can MSG every platform plus SMS with any phone, while being transparent, it would take over SMS.

Eventually SMS users would move over to the new platform.

 

[pandemonium]

How bout telling all that to my dumbphone (touchscreen phones never appealed). Also, why would I want to pay for an expensive mobile internet plan when I have internet at home already. Too pricy for me to justify, not to mention far more limited for what you pay for.

Basically, unless providers want to throw data plans for the same price as an sms plan, sms is very likely going to stay.

Here's what I have, and what you can still get as a new customer. It's somewhat difficult to find and not prominently offered, but it's there and it's real. From AT&T, of all places...

Services:
Data Unlimited for Non-Smartphones
Remove (shop via standard, non-smartphone)
$15.00

Is $15 that expensive?

 

[thecapsaicinkid]

My problem with just using email is that people tend to ignore it for long periods of time. SMS tends to get a pop-up, is seen pretty much immediately and much more likely to get a timely response. If I want to meet a buddy in a few days, I'll email. If I want to meet in a few hours I'll SMS.

These all seem to be issues of habit and nothing to do with the technology of email vs sms.

Out of all the people I communicate with, only a couple do I have to send text messages. 3 to be exact. Only 1 of them has a phone which physically cannot email. Using email as your primary messaging is incredibly convenient. I can message friends, with no limits on length or attachment, with a physical keyboard. I can send links to content that I know they can view on a large screen at some point. I never see spam which I can't say for sms. I've had more issues with sms not going through than email, I'm not sure why people keep saying email won't re-send after a connection is lost.

The problem is, this all requires a little bit of effort up front namely finding a clean email account, configuring your phone for email etc. Most people can't be bothered when sms works ok but I see this changing as more people spend time with tablets.

 

[zephxiii]

I've never had an issue with sms going through and i send thousands every month for the past 5 years. Just about everyone i know uses sms over email when communicating with other people from their phone to other, it's just the default and requires no setup or knowing of separate address.

What u would like to see is the character limit raised. However when I noticed when u send one that gets split into several on ATT that gets sent to another ATT phone the sms will appear as one large one instead of split up as several.

 

[Eug]

Here's what I have, and what you can still get as a new customer. It's somewhat difficult to find and not prominently offered, but it's there and it's real. From AT&T, of all places...

Services:
Data Unlimited for Non-Smartphones
Remove (shop via standard, non-smartphone)
$15.00

Is $15 that expensive?

Why would you spend an extra $180 per year for no good particular reason? Just to get IM support so some lazy friend doesn't have to pick up his phone when he's sitting at home 20 feet from his phome? That's just foolish, esp. when IM is less ubiquitous and sometimes less reliable.

I've never had an issue with sms going through and i send thousands every month for the past 5 years. Just about everyone i know uses sms over email when communicating with other people from their phone to other, it's just the default and requires no setup or knowing of separate address.

What u would like to see is the character limit raised. However when I noticed when u send one that gets split into several on ATT that gets sent to another ATT phone the sms will appear as one large one instead of split up as several.

Yep. The only criticism I have of SMS is the length. On my provider you can go over 160 and it keeps it as one, but I still keep my messages to 160 or less to maintain compatibility for everyone, since I don't always know what carrier they're on.

 

[thecapsaicinkid]

160 character messages that are limited to a particular device doesn't sound like desirable technology to me. Try sending a text message at midnight on your new year's party. I had a handful of txt refuse to go through last week for no reason. They wouldn't even try to re-send, just sat there.

 

[mikeymikec]

160 character messages that are limited to a particular device doesn't sound like desirable technology to me.

To which particular device? Are you referring to that uncommon piece of equipment known as a "mobile phone"?

Every phone I can think of that I've used can send/receive longer text messages, they're simply spliced and put back together again automatically. It's a bit of a ah heck if one part gets lost (which I've seen before), but otherwise it works.

Try sending a text message at midnight on your new year's party. I had a handful of txt refuse to go through last week for no reason. They wouldn't even try to re-send, just sat there.

I bet it was an important one that simply couldn't wait until all the other terribly important messages being sent at that time had stopped saturating the local network.

 

[thecapsaicinkid]

I bet it was an important one that simply couldn't wait until all the other terribly important messages being sent at that time had stopped saturating the local network.

You're not really making a good case for why sms doesn't need binning.

 

[mikeymikec]

You're not really making a good case for why sms doesn't need binning.

No, you're not making a good case for why it needs binning. Just because your "HAPPY NEW YEAR OMG SO DRUNK ROFL LOL !!1!" message didn't get through at a time of year which is probably a thousand times more busy than any other time, that doesn't mean that it's not good enough.

 

[zephxiii]

Why would you spend an extra $180 per year for no good particular reason? Just to get IM support so some lazy friend doesn't have to pick up his phone when he's sitting at home 20 feet from his phome? That's just foolish, esp. when IM is less ubiquitous and sometimes less reliable.

If I remember correctly with the case of AT&T and dumbphones you didn't need a data plan for IM because their integrated IM app worked over SMS.

However the really interesting thing is that once apon a time all my friends and I used to use IM all the time...now adays no one uses it because we all have cellphones and have defaulted to SMS and phonecalls.

 

[zephxiii]

160 character messages that are limited to a particular device doesn't sound like desirable technology to me. Try sending a text message at midnight on your new year's party. I had a handful of txt refuse to go through last week for no reason. They wouldn't even try to re-send, just sat there.

That's more of a network congestion problem than anything in which there will also be other problems. We don't have network congestion problems where i live...well except for sprint when their crap network crumbles to the point of no signal at times during festivals. To their credit they are very spectrum starved and will be remedied with the USCC acquisition. They only had 5/5mhz chunk of PCS and i think they were leasing 1.25/1.25mhz chunk from someone else to get by.

 

[pandemonium]

Why would you spend an extra $180 per year for no good particular reason? Just to get IM support so some lazy friend doesn't have to pick up his phone when he's sitting at home 20 feet from his phome? That's just foolish, esp. when IM is less ubiquitous and sometimes less reliable.

Having a data plan isn't only geared towards IM support... And to put things into context, how much does having SMS support cost you extra on top of your voice plan? Sometimes it's included in low priced packages, but you can almost always find cheaper with voice alone...so the whole extra cost thing goes both ways. Except with data you get everything data. With SMS, you get...SMS; that's it. And per instance, I guarantee that each SMS/MMS will always cost you more via that system than compared to each IM/e-mail/post/etc.

It has nothing to do with being lazy, lol. Where and how are you rationalizing anything you're saying? It's all to do with being cost effective with your money.

FYI: I posted that as in comparison to the big, "required" data plans, which cost $30+ month; in response to the person I quoted.

You appear to have a difficult time reading within context.