Does anyone know if it is possible to remove the up to 160 characters limit on the sms. I have a Bold also and it has no limit. But both Storms I Have they have the limit. I called Telus and support couldn’t help me and I called Bell and they said its been set by RIM which i find it hard to believe

160 is the standard for Short Messaging Service. The bold just takes anything over 160 and converts it to a second, third, fourth, etc. Text Message.

I thought the Storm did this as well, however my messages are usually short, so I have not had the opportunity to test it out yet.

I've run into this problem, if I send a SMS to a Verizon phone with over 160 characters, the recipient gets the SMS in its entirety. But if I send a SMS with over 160 characters to a non-Verizon phone, then the recipient only gets the first 160 characters.

i just tried to send a message with over 160 characters and it would not let me. when i tired to go over it said something like invalid field or something like that. With my old phone i could go over 160 too and just have it be split messages.

That would be awesome if it would split the message...i run into that problem all the time. On top of that since it is so hard to change something in the middle of a sentence (like abbreviate a word or two to get more chars freed up) it is a pain, i hope there is a fix for this soon...

This limitation exists on every Verizon Blackberry that I've used and I'm guessing it's the same for all other Blackberries. What's annoying about the 160 character limitation is that all Blackberries are messaging devices and it should allow you to type a SMS message as long as you like and then simply break it up into multiple SMS messages when it's sent. Many other Verizon phones allow you to type a SMS message as long as you like and then either the phone or the network breaks it up. However if the Verizon phone doesn't break up the outgoing message and the receiver is not a Verizon customer, you'll get a warning message back telling you that messages longer than 160 characters cannot delivered to non-Verizon customers and that only the first 160 characters will be sent. IMHO, the phone should break up the longer message into multiple messages and even if it doesn't the Verizon network should also break up the long message into multiple messages. My guess is that Verizon doesn't want people to have people calling customer service disputing how many SMS messages they sent because 1 long message was split into multiple messages and the customer got billed for more messages than they expect.

Wirelessly posted

Well said. I agree completely

I just send an MMS without pic/vid and just text. But the receiver has to support MMS of course.

If you just respond via MMS you can go up to 1000. At this point even the worst phones out there have some ability to receive MMS messages. Just an idea, but at that point I would just have called the person to deliver that long of a response.

It is a limitation put on the phones by Verizon. As suggested, send an MMS if you want to go over the limit... or an email.

160 characters is a rather lengthy SMS. Have you considered sending an email, MMS or just making a good old fashioned phone call.....?

I disagree. 160 characters isn't really that long of a text message. It may sound like a lot but IMHO it isn't. Also, not everyone has instant email access on their phones. There are still a lot of people out there with Motorola Razrs (which was still the best selling mobile phone until pretty recently) and other non-smartphones who don't have instant access to email.

i disagree also 160 characters isnt long at all. also Bell and Telus have no MMS

yep...if anyone here knows anyone at verizon that could get an explanation that would be awesome!

160 is not long at all!!! on my Bold I can go as long as i'd like

i can also do the same with my bold too . what if i loaded a 9500 OS ?

I just read this:

"Text messages aren't just tiny, they're also free riders tucked into control channels, or space reserved for operation of the wireless network. The channel uses space whether or not a text message is inserted.

This explains why a message has limited character space. It must not exceed the length of the message used for internal communication between tower and handset to set up a call."

this morning from this article about text messeges.

www foxnews.com/story/0,2933,473924,00.html

Has anyone seen an improvement on this since the latest OS's that have been released? The 160 char cutoff is really lame.

I use beyond160. It's available for the Storm.

Beyond160 - Communication & Internet Blackberry Software

Jsconyers is correct!

However the 160 text limit is specific to CDMA carriers, not just Verizon.

The Beyond160 application will allow the operator to type any length SMS. It then splits the SMS into multiple messages and sends it to the recipient. If you type long SMS communications Beyond160 is the way to go.

Beyond160 sells for $6.99, however if you visit the Crackberry app store via your device browser or the hot section on Crackberry's updated client, utilize the coupon code CBBEYOND160LAUNCH at checkout and get a $2 discount. Hurry, because that coupon code expires sunday 5/10/2009.