Why is my phone automatically sending media messages without my knowledge?

[Anonymous]

I'm very careful to only send text messages, yet my latest bill shows that I've paid over £60 on 'media messages'.

I don't understand how this can be - certainly I keep every text that I send so I can see that I haven't sent photos to the people on the calls list.

So what's going on? Why is my phone randomly deciding to send expensive media messages when it feels like it, and without my consent? Can any one help?

[adamtemp64]

@fatboy can you back up the claim about sms length?

I thougt up to 480 was ok but longer gets converted to mms on some phones and not split into multiple 160 sms

[Anonymous]

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@adamtemp64 wrote:

@Anonymous can you back up the claim about sms length?

I thougt up to 480 was ok but longer gets converted to mms on some phones and not split into multiple 160 sms

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I've sent text messages with more than 600 characters on my iPhone on numerous occassions and I've never been charged a MMS charge for them.

Also the text message that I'd sent with more than 600 characters was sent in one go, and not split into smaller length text messages.

[Anonymous]

My phone lets me get to 640 on both the native and downloaded app.

There is also indeed instances of people being charged for sending to multiple contacts down to the way the phone handles the information.

http://service.o2.co.uk/IQ/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE?New,Kb=Companion,question=ref(User):str(Mobile),C...

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
My phone lets me get to 640 on both the native and downloaded app.

There is also indeed instances of people being charged for sending to multiple contacts down to the way the phone handles the information.

http://service.o2.co.uk/IQ/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE?New,Kb=Companion,question=ref(User):str(Mobile),CASE=52289

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Has I mentioned earlier, I've sent the same message to 6 people at the same time and I've never incurred a MMS charge for doing this.

Also, since iOS 6. Emoji is an included keyboard on iOS and this allows for smilies and many other emoticons. I use this daily and I've never incurred a MMS charge for using the many emoticons that I've used.

Here's a video guide showing how to use the Emoji keyboard on iOS:

[Anonymous]

There seems to be a real inconsistency here

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Sorry OP, we digress.

I appreciate it hasn't happened to you, but I can assure you it has and does happen to others.

From Apples own website - Not using group messages.
"If you send a message to multiple recipients without group messaging in use by the sender and all recipients, an individual message will go to each recipient using either SMS or MMS"

Using group messages.
"Group messages will be sent using iMessage if all recipients have iMessage enabled. If not, the conversation will be sent as MMS. Group messages use MMS even if the content is text only."

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

But annoyingly, my phone sometimes shows the character counter and sometimes not. Grr. I shall have to look into this.

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The character count does not show at all when you are sending an iMessage (this is indicated by the receipents name been blue).

When sending a standard text mesage (this is indicated by the receipents name been green). The character count will appear/show when you are on the second line of your text message.