BEWARE - SMS becomes MMS without warning unless you adjust settings

[Anonymous]

Recently got an S4 to replace my beloved S2.  Was surprised to note that I had been charged for 4 text messages as MMS messages.  Discovered the reason - I was silly enough to include a "smiley" chosen from the provided list of options. After wading through Settings I found an option to display a warning when a bog standard SMS is going to be treated as MMS.   Typical O2 underhand dealing in my view.

[anticpated]

I was under the impression the message size limit is set in software. Therefore if the message limit us 3 sets of 160 characters. Then it is 480 characters or 3 messages before a message is sent as data. 

Even though this is the case,a data transmission still has a maximum limit. There is a reason it is called Short Message Service.  Anyway it's a lesson to be learned. Made that mistake myself.

[MI5]

SMS has always been limited to 480 characters. The recent differences in phone software mean that now anything over 480 will be sent as an MMS rather that breaking up into individual sms messages.

[Anonymous]

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@MI5 wrote:
SMS has always been limited to 480 characters. The recent differences in phone software mean that now anything over 480 will be sent as an MMS rather that breaking up into individual sms messages.

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I can honestly say I never knew that! Oh well, suppose one is never too old to learn

[Anonymous]

I have noticed that if you accidently choose an email address from your address book to send an sms, it is automatically converted into mms and gets charged. I have sent a group text recently and one of the receipeints was an e-mail address. No wonder I got charged £2.63 for this message. When I contacted O2 they had no clues about this and said they are MMS!

[Anonymous]

o2's own help link.

http://service.o2.co.uk/IQ/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE?New,Kb=Companion,question=ref%28User%29:str%28Mob...

[Anonymous]

"6. Smiley faces or emoticons – Don’t use smiley faces or emoticons"

Is this to say that using these uses up characters and therefore reduces the amount of text you can type before SMS becomes MMS, or does it mean as soon as you use a smiley/emoticon the message becomes MMS?

I assume the former

[MI5]

If you use ": )" it's free. If you use a picture smiley like this it's auto MMS.

[jonsie]

Using the stock app ☺ smilies on both the S3 and the Note uses just 3 characters so I'm not sure why it should vary on the OPs S4? running 4.3 on both.

[MI5]

The S4 has an emoticon app in the keyboard. It is these that are seen as picture files. You also have the choice to use standard text smiles as you have done in the post above.

[Anonymous]

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@MI5 wrote:
If you use ": )" it's free. If you use a picture smiley like this it's auto MMS.

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Is this just for the Samsung or all phones?