verizon 160 character limit

[Borkil]

So the past few weeks people from AT&T have been texting me (on Verizon) long messages and I only get a portion, probably around 160 characters. Back in the day there was a 160 char limit however I searched online and it looks like Verizon updated something to auto split the messages into separate ones. I feel like it used to work like this a while ago. I swear I can remember receiving multiple texts of one long message. Is this the case or am I wrong? How do I get it to receive multiple messages?

 

[cl-scott]

This isn't a Verizon limitation, it's the limit imposed by the SMS standard. Some phones will split messages once the limit has been reached, and do it transparently to the user, but those devices are operating in a non-standard mode so you sometimes wind up with situations like yours.

MMS has more bandwidth allocated to it, and has I think a 5000 character limit, so I would suggest that your more verbose friends send you MMS messages instead of SMS, or even better, an email.

 

[MrX8503]

I believe that's a capability of the phone, but I could be wrong. On the iPhone it automatically puts the sms back together as one long message.

 

[PowerYoga]

I always thought it was the phone that did it for you. I'd receive broken chunks of texts of 160 length long on my droid, but my contacts have mostly moved over to other methods of communication and so I haven't seen that lately.

 

[podspi]

In my experience, if you try sending an SMS longer than 160 characters to someone on the same carrier (at least VZW), it works fine. Sending SMS longer than 160 across carriers just doesn't work.

 

[KLin]

SMS messaging is such a cash cow for the carriers.