A question for the texting gods

[Spyte]

I'm new here, so i beg pardon if this has been asked; however i have searched the forums and did not find an answer.

my question is thusly:

as everyone knows, sms msgs are limited to 160 characters to non-verizon phones. idiotic, nonsensical restrictions aside; i have seen referred to in these forums a character count box that while apparantly inconveniently placed, is completely non-existent on my Motorola droid. Has anyone else encountered this conundrum, and if so, is there a setting that i have missed somewhere that would resolve this issue?

Interestingly; i am apparently the only one on these forums who does not like handcent, which i have tried and detest.

 

[okeeffm]

Hi Spyte.
I detest handcent as well. I uses SMS popup and love it.

On to your question....the character counter on my droid for the stock messanger app does not show up until I hit 150 characters. It is displayed as 10/1 at this point. It then counts down to 0/1 when you are at 160 characters. the next character takes it to 145/2. Don't know what those numbers mean but that is what appears when you go over 160. Hope this helps.

 

[bamfsig45]

Doesn't the stock app make your SMS an MMS after 160 characters? Has this been changed? That is the main reason I use Handcent because it splits the message beyond 160 characters into multiple sms messages.

 

[andrewdoane]

This problem (no character countdown) was discussed in one of the early "internal" memos talking about problems with the Droid. I thought for sure it would be resolved in the first OTA update... along with the email signature problem. Neither one fixed.

 

[Spyte]

i just typed in about 300 characters using the on-screen keyboard...no character count.

but as soon as i opened up the keyboard i got the count and a msg saying it was being converted to an mms. how quaint.

my love/hate relationship grows by leaps and bounds, unfortunately in the direction of the latter rather than the former. <insert long, theatrical sigh here>

 

[frankieg22x]

not making fun of you...


but you sound like the most sophisticated forum user on here lol

 

[xjman349]

I love how everyone gets all crabby about the 160 cap on messages when Verizon is the last person you should be complaining about.

 

[Spyte]

Perhaps i was a trifle hasty in my previous post as by definition a message sent by sms is short; and upon further experimentation it was proven that even my first observation was nearly without merit. i so desperatley want to love this phone that every new tiny blemish suddenly transforms itself to Mt. Everest. As for being sophisticated, thank you; but i would posit that it's not me, it's the semicolons.

 

[DroidFan]

Hi Spyte.
I detest handcent as well. I uses SMS popup and love it.

On to your question....the character counter on my droid for the stock messanger app does not show up until I hit 150 characters. It is displayed as 10/1 at this point. It then counts down to 0/1 when you are at 160 characters. the next character takes it to 145/2. Don't know what those numbers mean but that is what appears when you go over 160. Hope this helps.

I'm guessing the 145/2 means 145 characters left on message #2... so it's splitting the message into 2 SMS texts.