Re: Cost of new line (line break) in SMS message?

[lonelydad]

Pamela <pamela...@gmail.com> wrote in news:XnsAA8DE06CF337F37B93@
81.171.118.178:

> Is a new line in a text message counted as one character?
>
> On Android I would use a line break or "return" -- not a row of spaces.
>
> Or does some special pricing apply?
>
To the best of my knowledge SMS messages are billed 'per message', not per
character. I am sure there is a total limit on how many characters are
allowed in a single message.

Besides, even if the pricing was per character, there is only one character
difference between a 'new line' character, and its equivalent of cr/lf. The
rest of the row appearing to be filled with spaces is juat that, an
appearance.

[Arlen G. Holder]

On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 00:40:51 GMT, lonelydad wrote:

> To the best of my knowledge SMS messages are billed 'per message'

AFAIK, when I was charged for all messages after 200 messages per line, at
something like 20 cents a message thereafter, what lonelydad said was
correct at that time (years ago).

Most of us in the USA have unlimited text, so the OP will need to ask the
carrier, or someone who is still paying by the text message (e.g., perhaps
those on prepaid plans).

Good luck.

[R. Mark Clayton]

On Tuesday, 16 July 2019 01:40:53 UTC+1, lonelydad wrote:
> Pamela <pamela...@gmail.com> wrote in news:XnsAA8DE06CF337F37B93@
> 81.171.118.178:
>
> > Is a new line in a text message counted as one character?
> >
> > On Android I would use a line break or "return" -- not a row of spaces.
> >
> > Or does some special pricing apply?
> >
> To the best of my knowledge SMS messages are billed 'per message', not per
> character. I am sure there is a total limit on how many characters are
> allowed in a single message.

160

[Andy Burns]

R. Mark Clayton wrote:

> lonelydad wrote:
>
>> I am sure there is a total limit on how many characters are
>> allowed in a single message.
>
> 160

Fewer if you use weird and wonderful characters, including emoji.

[Carlos E.R.]

On 15/07/2019 23.03, Pamela wrote:
> Is a new line in a text message counted as one character?
>
> On Android I would use a line break or "return" -- not a row of spaces.

A new line is a single char, or maybe two (CR+LF). You simply need to
press the "enter" button, unless you configured your phone to send
automatically on "enter". It is never a row of spaces - but if you type
a row of spaces you will be charged for them.

That is, you will be charged if the total count of characters you type,
including the spaces and new lines add up to one more SMS.

>
> Or does some special pricing apply?

No. What matters is the total count of characters you type, visible and
invisible. There is a max number per SMS, 153 chars. A longer message
uses 2, 3 messages, up to a total of 918 chars. In the end, they charge
per number of SMS - unless your phone switches to MMS, which are
absurdly expensive - unless your contract covers a flat rate.

So, a message or 154 chars, charges for two sms. It it is worth it (if
your contract charges per sms) to drop one char, and thus send only one sms.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

[Someone Somewhere]

On 16/07/2019 13:05, Carlos E.R. wrote:
> On 15/07/2019 23.03, Pamela wrote:
>> Is a new line in a text message counted as one character?
>>
>> On Android I would use a line break or "return" -- not a row of spaces.
>
> A new line is a single char, or maybe two (CR+LF). You simply need to
> press the "enter" button, unless you configured your phone to send
> automatically on "enter". It is never a row of spaces - but if you type
> a row of spaces you will be charged for them.
>
> That is, you will be charged if the total count of characters you type,
> including the spaces and new lines add up to one more SMS.
>
>>
>> Or does some special pricing apply?
>
> No. What matters is the total count of characters you type, visible and
> invisible. There is a max number per SMS, 153 chars.

It's a little more complicated than this....

An SMS has a maximum of 140 bytes - this is a hard limit imposed by the
original protocol used to carry it.

Basically SMS was an after-thought of what to do with some additional
bandwidth on the channel it is carried on, and that channel had a
maximum packet size of 255 bytes which once you take out maximum address
lengths and headers etc gets you to 140 bytes.

For "normal" messages, this translates to 160 characters as long as
those characters are contained in the 3GPP/GSM alphabet (which for those
who are very interested can be found in 3GPP 03.38). These characters
are encodeed using 7 bits (so 8 (bits in a byte) / 7 (bits in a
character) * 140 (bytes in a message) = 160 characters).

Some later versions of the protocol can also use 8 bit encoding,
translating to 140 characters.

In the case of using special characters, emoji or certain accented
characters for example, these are encoded as 2 bytes, giving a limit of
70 characters. If you just use one character like this the entire
message is encoded this way.

If that isn't confusing enough, there are some options that can shorten
it by a small amount depending on specific circumstances....

[Roger]

On Mon, 15 Jul 2019 22:03:42 +0100, Pamela
<pamela...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Is a new line in a text message counted as one character?

It is one character but how many bits it takes depends on the
encoding.

There are 140 octets available (1120 bits). If the characters
can all be encoded in 7 bits there can be up to 160 characters.
One of the characters which counts as two characters (14 bits)
is the euro. (A message of 80 euro characters wouldn't have room
for anything else, hence the "up to" 160 characters.)

If you use any character which isn't in the 7-bit character set
the whole message is encoded using 16 bits per character giving
up to 70 characters per SMS. (70 x 16 = 1120 bits)

Once you go over the maximum number of characters then the
message is split into multiple SMSs and some of the 1120 bits
of each SMS are used for house keeping purposes.

The standard SMS app on my Android 6 phone shows the number of
characters remaining as I get near the 1120 bit limit. If yours
does the same try typing until there are only a few characters
available and type something like a euro, which would cause the
count to reduce by two, or a lower case c-cedilla (not upper
case) and watch what happens.

>On Android I would use a line break or "return" -- not a row of spaces.

How do you do a line break? There's nothing obvious on my phone.
Perhaps your app is different.
--
Roger

[Andy Burns]

Roger wrote:

> How do you do a line break? There's nothing obvious on my phone.
> Perhaps your app is different.

On my phone (android, using the Google Messages app and Gboard keyboard)
just use the 'enter' key)

[Roger]

Yes, that is different.
--
Roger

[lonelydad]

Roger <inv...@invalid.invalid> wrote in
news:jmhrie9us1mqtc5i5...@4ax.com:

>
>>On Android I would use a line break or "return" -- not a row of spaces.
>
> How do you do a line break? There's nothing obvious on my phone.
> Perhaps your app is different.

Usually that is a Shift-Enter combniation keystroke. ASCII has encoding for
newline as a single character, but some systems may encode it differently.

[Andy Burns]

Pamela wrote:

> Someone Somewhere wrote:
>
>> In the case of using special characters, emoji or certain accented
>> characters for example, these are encoded as 2 bytes, giving a limit of
>> 70 characters. If you just use one character like this the entire
>> message is encoded this way.
>

> That makes a big difference by reducing message size to 70 characters.
> Would a line break (CR/LF) count as a special character?

No.

[Carlos E.R.]

On 17/07/2019 00.37, Pamela wrote:

> On 13:52 16 Jul 2019, Someone Somewhere <nnt...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 16/07/2019 13:05, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>>> On 15/07/2019 23.03, Pamela wrote:

...

>> In the case of using special characters, emoji or certain accented
>> characters for example, these are encoded as 2 bytes, giving a limit of
>> 70 characters. If you just use one character like this the entire
>> message is encoded this way.
>

> That makes a big difference by reducing message size to 70 characters.
>
> Would a line break (CR/LF) count as a special character?

There is nothing special about CR-LF. It is two chars, one CR, one LF.

It is trivial to find out. SMS writing apps have a char counter, usually
saying how many chars remain available in this SMS. Just press "Enter"
and watch the counter change...

--
Cheers, Carlos.

[Carlos E.R.]

On 17/07/2019 00.42, Pamela wrote:

> On 14:38 16 Jul 2019, Roger <inv...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 15 Jul 2019 22:03:42 +0100, Pamela
>> <pamela...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Is a new line in a text message counted as one character?
>>
>> It is one character but how many bits it takes depends on the
>> encoding.
>>
>> There are 140 octets available (1120 bits). If the characters
>> can all be encoded in 7 bits there can be up to 160 characters.
>> One of the characters which counts as two characters (14 bits)
>> is the euro. (A message of 80 euro characters wouldn't have room
>> for anything else, hence the "up to" 160 characters.)
>>
>> If you use any character which isn't in the 7-bit character set
>> the whole message is encoded using 16 bits per character giving
>> up to 70 characters per SMS. (70 x 16 = 1120 bits)
>

> is the "return" key part of that character set or does it trigger the
> different encoding?

Generally it produces the single or double character that signals a new
line in the operating system that you use.

In MsDOS or Windows, it is two. In Linux systems, it is one (LF). In all
cases, it is part of the character set.

>
>> Once you go over the maximum number of characters then the
>> message is split into multiple SMSs and some of the 1120 bits
>> of each SMS are used for house keeping purposes.
>>
>> The standard SMS app on my Android 6 phone shows the number of
>> characters remaining as I get near the 1120 bit limit. If yours
>> does the same try typing until there are only a few characters
>> available and type something like a euro, which would cause the
>> count to reduce by two, or a lower case c-cedilla (not upper
>> case) and watch what happens.
>>
>>> On Android I would use a line break or "return" -- not a row of spaces.
>>
>> How do you do a line break? There's nothing obvious on my phone.
>> Perhaps your app is different.
>

> My standard Google keyboard has a green "return" key which is what I use
> to create a new line. You can see it here:
>
> https://betanews.com/2016/12/13/gboard-keyboard-android/

which has to produce a line break or "return", not a row of spaces.

>
>
>


--
Cheers, Carlos.

[Rob Morley]

On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 10:42:41 +0100
Andy Burns <use...@andyburns.uk> wrote:

> Fewer if you use weird and wonderful characters, including emoji.
>

ISTR Unicode can require up to three bytes per character.

[Daniel James]

In article <20190726103300.17c5a9c5@Mars>, Rob Morley wrote:
> ISTR Unicode can require up to three bytes per character.

That depends on the encoding ... and on the Unicode.

The Basic Multilingual Plane is restricted to 16-bit values, and can be
encoded in two bytes as UTF-16, but may require three in UTF-8. The
current Unicode standard requires up to 21 bits per character, which
can be encoded in 1-4 bytes in UTF-8 and in 2 or 4 bytes in UTF-16 or 4
bytes in UTF-32.

So ... if you're talking about the BMP and UTF-8 then, yes, up to three
bytes is right.

--
Cheers,
Daniel.