Display character count for SMS

[jongpie]

Would it be possible to add a character count to the SMS section? Just something simple like "x of 160" and have x reflect the number of characters typed so far.

Apparently, I have a bad habit of sending lengthy texts to friends, and would like to know if my message will be over the standard length of 160 characters.

[Chris]

We bounced this idea around before, but shot it down because long messages were automatically broken down into multiples. I'm not sure what point in the chain was responsible for breaking them down, though. It could be Google Voice upon sending, the cellular carrier during transport, or the iPhone upon receipt. Our tests were performed using 2 iPhones on different carriers (one in the U.S. and one in Canada). Have you actually seen a situation where exceeding 160 characters resulted in the message being truncated?

[jongpie]

As far as I know, the messages are never truncated. The issue is more so that if I send a long sms, it counts as 2+ messages for friends who don't use Google Voice. Since they are paying a carrier's (overpriced) costs for texting, I'd like to know if my message will be counted extra for them.

On top of that, some phones don't have sms threading, so reading a 2-part message is a bit of an annoyance.

I personally don't have an issue with receiving long texts (especially with Google Voice), but I try to be considerate of others I'm texting - the character count would help with that.

[Chris]

I added a feature request in our tracking system for this. Thanks for the input!

[joey]

Personally I never consider other text messaging limits as if I did I would need to know the text Plan that they are on and how many they have left. A counter is good for text messaging limits I think when I am personally limited. Other than that how would one be able to consider others?

[Chris]

I'm in the same boat as you, joey. It seems like jongpie is saying he tries to be mindful that whatever the other party's limit and current usage is, the likelihood is high that there is some sort of limit and he takes that into consideration. Since I only carry a 200 message limit and do a considerable bit of testing on mine, I get frustrated when people eat away at my allocation by forwarding random junk to my cell phone. I try to be respectful of others as well, but I've never really taken SMS further than thinking "Joe doesn't use SMS, so he likely doesn't have it on his plan." On the other hand, I'm the type of person that dials someone as soon as the messages begin to look like a conversation, so I rarely exchange more than a few short back and forth SMS messages with anyone at a given time. We're all different.

[abelriverturn]

Google voice has a 160 character limit, and I have to say, there is nothing on planet earth that I find more annoying than to receive a single sms message broken down into multiple parts. Things get even more aggravating when a given word is itself broken down so that the first message would say something like this:

"... Things get even more aggr" and the second message would say would then say:

"avating when a given word gets broken down..."

Not only that; I have received broken SMS messages from AT&T customers where the second part of the message arrives first and the first arrives second. Thus, following the example above, I would first get "avating when a given word gets broken down..." then I would get "... Things get even more aggr" This doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen, and it's just somewhat disturbing.

When I first saw this thread, I was shocked to read this:

We bounced this idea around before, but shot it down because long messages were automatically broken down into multiples.

because BlackSwan is one of the most (if not the most) well-thought-out apps I've ever seen, and given my experience with those annoying broken SMS messages, I thought a character count would be the first thing to pop into the engineer's head (like before the commencement of the developing cycle and all). I was thinking along the lines of "OMG I can never ever EVER let myself send an SMS message that would be broken down in the middle like that. That would be sooooo digustsing. Eww! Eww! Ugh". But alas, there was no character count to prevent OCD SMS maniacs like myself from doing so. We're all different

That said, I'm extremely pleased with BlackSwan. Thanks for your hard work guys. Keep it up!

[Chris]

It sounds like you'll be happy to see the character count in the release pushed out earlier today.

I personally use SMS for short messages, so I doubt I see many exceed 160. I'll notice more now that the count is in there. The native Messages app doesn't have a count either, so I suppose I never missed it.

[abelriverturn]

Yup, I sure am happy. Thanks again!

[jongpie]

I thought a character count would be the first thing to pop into the engineer's head (like before the commencement of the developing cycle and all).

Completely agree with this! I'm sure some people don't care about the character count, but that seems like a very basic piece. Every phone that I've ever had has had a counter.

The native Messages app doesn't have a count either, so I suppose I never missed it.

Actually, it does have a character count as of iOS4. (It shows up after 20 characters. No idea why Apple didn't included this from the beginning either.) In fact, BlackSwan's implementation is identical to the native Messages app, except the native app shows it over the "send" button instead of below it. (If you don't see it in the native app, you may need to enable it in Settings.)

But I digress - I'm loving the new feature, and am glad it's in there!