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SMS Messages that are too long (Sprint)

Hey there,
If I send a message that is too long (like it breaks up into 2 messages after the 1st messages character limit is exceeded), the message will not send. I am using a 3rd party, 8sms, because I don't like utilizing Hangouts as my SMS and chat.
I'm sure they will blame it on me using the 3rd party app, because thats what they did last time I had a problem (not related to this)
Anyone else having this problem? Is it Nexus 5 wide, or just Sprint?
Thank you so much.

gsteelx said:
Hey there,
If I send a message that is too long (like it breaks up into 2 messages after the 1st messages character limit is exceeded), the message will not send. I am using a 3rd party, 8sms, because I don't like utilizing Hangouts as my SMS and chat.
I'm sure they will blame it on me using the 3rd party app, because thats what they did last time I had a problem (not related to this)
Anyone else having this problem? Is it Nexus 5 wide, or just Sprint?
Thank you so much.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is doing the same thing when I switch it to Hangouts.
Sprint rep not very helpful. Did a bunch of phone resetting, changing the MSID, etc... to no avail.

gsteelx said:
Hey there,
If I send a message that is too long (like it breaks up into 2 messages after the 1st messages character limit is exceeded), the message will not send. I am using a 3rd party, 8sms, because I don't like utilizing Hangouts as my SMS and chat.
I'm sure they will blame it on me using the 3rd party app, because thats what they did last time I had a problem (not related to this)
Anyone else having this problem? Is it Nexus 5 wide, or just Sprint?
Thank you so much.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't tried any third-party SMS apps yet because I'm mostly happy with Hangouts, but it really annoys me that I can't even send a text with more than 160 characters. On previous phones, you could set up the messaging app to let you type to your heart's content and have the app automatically split the message up into 160-character texts. In Hangouts, it actually won't let you type more than 160 characters. You have to send the text and then start another one. There's no way that I can find to change this.

maxpower7 said:
I haven't tried any third-party SMS apps yet because I'm mostly happy with Hangouts, but it really annoys me that I can't even send a text with more than 160 characters. On previous phones, you could set up the messaging app to let you type to your heart's content and have the app automatically split the message up into 160-character texts. In Hangouts, it actually won't let you type more than 160 characters. You have to send the text and then start another one. There's no way that I can find to change this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, that is what I meant by it not allowing me to do it on Hangouts either. It is truly annoying as ****. 8SMS is really just like the old messaging that we used to have before these updates. I am overall happy with it, just not with not being able to send a message over 160 characters, because it fails.

Does anyone else have a 3rd party SMS app that they like? I tried another one in the Play Store, but it had heaps of ads pop up after sending a text message... I gave that the swift delete quick!
Thanks for everyones help. This forum rocks!

I tried an app called Textra, just to see if it was 8SMS causing the problem.
Textra did the same thing...

I figured out the problem of why it wouldn't send text messages over 160 characters in 8SMS.
In the older versions of Android, on the messenger, it would automatically change the over 160 SMS to an MMS, and you could keep typing. By default, in 8SMS, this wasn't enabled. I had to enable it in settings.
Problem fixed.
Hopefully anyone who uses 8SMS will find this post. I highly recommend this app. I am not a fan of hangouts for SMS.

This is standard for SMS, some phones trick you into thinking there is no limit by not showing you the count or the limit and automatically combining everything or converting the SMS into another protocol (like imessage)
More info here:
http://www.wirelessdevnet.com/channels/sms/features/sms.html
Specifically from the site:
"The messages are limited by size. An SMS message can’t exceed 160 characters. (BTW this limitation is due to the limitation in the MAP protocol in GSM) In case of longer e-mails or information service messages like news, the messages need to broken down into more than one message. The need to break the messages into several smaller segments could make SMS comparatively costlier in comparison to GPRS (for the same kind of service). Also, This doesn’t look very appealing on a mobile device!
However
MMS (talked about later) would remove the limitation of small messages"
Personally I think in the year 2013/2014 and the technologies we have I'm sure it is possible to change this limitation by introducing a new SMS method or protocol/etc but that requires someone to actually spend the time and money to introduce a new standard that replaces one that has been in place for a very long time

I was having the same issue. There are two options to get long text messages to work on Sprint. I'm also using 8sms (great messaging app, really recommend it over Hangouts).
The first, like someone else stated, is to select the option to convert long messages to picture messages. Make sure you select anything over 1 message long to be converted.
The second option that I discovered is to enable "split counter" in the settings. This will split the texts and send them as consecutives SMS messages without converting them to MMS messages. Hope this helps.

Multi Client Messenger?

I hate the iphone (well all apple products really) but the one thing it did right was the iMessenger.
So I have been looking for a 3rd party messenger app that will do a few things that the stock android messengers wont do.
Main featute would be MMS over wifi
Also delivery and read report system
Ability to start and LEAVE group messages. The stock has no way of leaving group messages and I ended up having to block 19 numbers one time.
But most importantly I am looking for an app that will take advantage of these features when the recipient has the same app... but if the recipient does not have the same app it will default to standard. Kinda like imessenger does.
For example
Conversation with person A using the same app
I will recieve delivery and read reports. A typing icon when they reply. And I can send that person images over wifi
Conversation with person B using stock app will still send sms as normal but no read or delivery.. no typing icon.. and mms will default back to network.
Basically I have found apps that do what I want such as WhatsApp for example.. but I can only message people who havw the same app. The biggest problem I run intonwith 3rd party apps os getting everyone to switch over. No kne wants to swap over of they are comfortable with their current app.. I wamt to be able to text those who dont want to switch as well as those who do switch.

MMS issues

Heads up, I love iOS and Android, I think both OS provide excellent features to suite their respective users. With that said, he's my deal breaker as to why I may be returning my S6 within my 14 day return policy to go back to my iPhone 6 Plus.
1. MMS: Now with iOS you get Apple's proprietary iMessage which does not limit the quality of the picture you are sending out, it does however, limit the length of the video though but not the quality. The problem with Android is that it does limit the quality based on your carriers send size limit which in this case for me is 1mb per AT&T. I just couldn't believe it, it wasn't something I was aware of due to the fact that I've been with iOS for a few years now but when I attempted to send numerous pictures I had just taken with my brand spanking new S6 via Textra (Msg App), it kept throwing errors indicating it was out of memory or the file was too large! I was really disappointed to say the least, I mean damn I could send numerous .GIF images just fine via iMessage and can't even do that with the stock SMS app or with Textra - what gives?
2. Group Messaging: I text a lot, I also have quite a few group messages going during any given day at a time and to me group messaging is a big reason why I loved iOS + iMessage. To this day, I just can't comprehend how Google hasn't been able to come up with a solution to oppose iMessage.... It really baffles me... Everyone has their preferences when it comes to phones and OS, not everyone will be on an Android device nor will everyone be on an iPhone. I didn't think this would bother me as much but it is, now if this isn't a big deal to you then that's fine, again this is my preference and my personal opinion but how in the world are we in year 2015 and Android still can't get group messaging right is beyond me.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, again I'm not bashing the S6 or Android, I was just unaware that these were still issues after all these years.
Thanks!

When you open your messaging app go into the settings and try to see if you have to enable group messaging.

Anyone else have this issue? Ive tried everything and I just cant recieve group texts, everyone gets mine but I cant get theirs. This happens on all messaging apps.

This issue only cropped up a week ago for me

Any solutions yet?!
I've recently gone to the S6 from iPhone. I've de-registered my number from the imessage app on apple's website, turned off imessage and facetime on my old iPhone, downloaded textra and numerous other messaging apps, and I still cant send or receive group messages to/from other iphones! When I send a group message, the text goes to the receivers individually. When they text me into a group message I don't receive anything.
Please any help or suggestions?!

thannan said:
Any solutions yet?!
I've recently gone to the S6 from iPhone. I've de-registered my number from the imessage app on apple's website, turned off imessage and facetime on my old iPhone, downloaded textra and numerous other messaging apps, and I still cant send or receive group messages to/from other iphones! When I send a group message, the text goes to the receivers individually. When they text me into a group message I don't receive anything.
Please any help or suggestions?!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had some issues with MMS messages (including group messages) and a Sprint rep had me go into Settings->System Update->Update Profile and it fixed it. Give that a try.
As for your group messages going out as individual messages, this is typically an app settings. Group messages are MMS and send over mobile data, not over cellular like SMS (I might be using the wrong terms there). Most apps don't presume to use up your precious data and will instead send a group message as multiple SMS messages (using up your SMS quota rather than your data quota).
I just checked both Google Hangouts and Chomp SMS that I have on my phone, and both have a checkbox in their settings for something like "Use MMS for Group Messages."

flu13 said:
I had some issues with MMS messages (including group messages) and a Sprint rep had me go into Settings->System Update->Update Profile and it fixed it. Give that a try.
As for your group messages going out as individual messages, this is typically an app settings. Group messages are MMS and send over mobile data, not over cellular like SMS (I might be using the wrong terms there). Most apps don't presume to use up your precious data and will instead send a group message as multiple SMS messages (using up your SMS quota rather than your data quota).
I just checked both Google Hangouts and Chomp SMS that I have on my phone, and both have a checkbox in their settings for something like "Use MMS for Group Messages."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't appear to have the "update profile" setting anywhere on my S6?
But I do have the MMS for group chat activated on my app.. :/
Any other suggestions?
Or can android simply not group chat with iphones?
Thanks for replying though!

thannan said:
I don't appear to have the "update profile" setting anywhere on my S6?
But I do have the MMS for group chat activated on my app.. :/
Any other suggestions?
Or can android simply not group chat with iphones?
Thanks for replying though!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe the problem is that iChat is a proprietary (closed) group messaging system.

Is T mobile re-sizing our pictures through text???

I take a normal 3-4 meg picture and when I send it using Google messenger it compresses it to 30-45kb, yea, KB!
This is horrid and embarrassing when people actually get said picture. Its such terrible quality. My friend on Tmobile with his Iphone looked to have the same issue a week ago when we were testing.
Is there some setting here? OR is this going to be Tmobile's new thing?

It's not tmobile only, mms have some standards and one of them is that they cannot carry big amounts of data (3-4mb). every phone does it whether on tmobile or some other carrier, its built into the phone and therefore into the messaging app. The phone has to compress the image in order to be able to send it. Thats why I use whats app or any other internet based messaging system(imessage, hangouts, etc) when I send any photo

maybe I should rephrase
This isn't my first rodeo, I've done enough with phones over the many years to understand exactly how it works, but this is the first time they have ever compressed a 3-4 meg picture down to 20-40kb, for example on AT&T and Verizon during my testing its at least double that for the same size picture, if not even more , many times compressing it to a 200-350kb size picture. @ 40kb the picture is not even really recognized..
do the test now, take a picture high res. and send it to someone, check the size of the photo you sent.
Is this my phone issue? or is this a tmobile issue? or is there a setting somewhere within the app or phone that is telling it to use low data when sending pictures

It is Google messenger. Use the stock app and the issue goes away. 820KB file size for stock app and 17KB for Google messenger.

if you are sending the pic to a newer phone it will send the full size
the sms app on newer phones has more features you can only use on newer to newer phones
Rich 1 on 1 and group messaging, including near real-time chat
See when others are typing, when your message is delivered and even read
Share high-res photos and videos up to 10 MB just as you would a regular text message

I've heard the opposite about the default messaging app in android. Started with my note 5. I couldn't send pics and text, only pics. So all you have to do is download a messaging app that has better features.
Sent from my SM-T817T using XDA-Developers mobile app

The issue is specifically with Google messenger. I noticed this right when the G5 was released. Any other SMS client (stock, textra, hangouts) fixes the issue. I haven't tested it with the latest update of Google messenger though. Which version were you using?

google messenger sucks, facebook messenger sucks, I use handcent and that seems to send reasonably sized pictures.

Multiple SMS Apps at once?

Currently on OPO Cyanogen CM13, 6.0.1
Been having this issue with SMS apps lately, perhaps I'm too picky, but have been looking for a good app that has chat heads and does it as well as Facebook's Messenger.
Now, I believe as of June, Messenger rolled out its new SMS integration allowing you to not only use it for Facebook messaging, but for SMS as well. Great. Too bad I've been so used to the amazing customization of Textra for nearly 2 years.
Messenger is severely lacking so far in terms of customization. It doesn't really jive well with the theme of my phone. (Boohoo right?)
Now, the issue arises in trying to send Facebook SMS and Textra SMS at the same time. Facebook SMS doesn't wake the screen, or have colored icons or chats, something I paid money for to have in textra.
I'm faced with needing to pick a default SMS for the sending app. I can receive notifications on both. But how can I bypass the sending option?
Reason being, I'm willing to part with the base part of textra if I can get the notifications to work, and send my SMS from fb messenger.
Tldr: I want to be able to send SMS from Facebook messenger and textra at the same time without switching default SMS apps.
Or send SMS from fb messenger and receive notifications only on textra.
Here's to never settling.