Emoji character limit?

[Marvin-13]

Hello all, I have spent the last half hour searching online for a possible solution but have found nothing.

I was texting a friend today and he asked me why my text to him came in five different messages when there were only enough characters to fit into two messages. So I tried typing the same message again and a noticed that when I use emojis the character limit changes from 160 to 70. This happens on my One m7 with the HTC keyboard, Google keyboard, swiftkey, android l keyboard, and fleksy. Only keyboard it doesn't happen with is swype but I would hardly call swype's 15 face options emojis.

Does anyone know what could be causing this or how I can fix it? Or does anyone else have this problem? I am on sprint if that helps.

 

[Darth Mo]

When you use emoji, the phone actually has to change the character set being used to UTF-16 (16-bit) where regular messaging uses UTF-8 (8-bit).

Since the characters used in UTF-16 are twice the size, the total number of characters allowed is reduced to 70.

So it's not your phone, carrier, keyboard, or app, it's just the nature of SMS. SMS technology is dated and this is yet another drawback.

 

[Marvin-13]

My friend that I was texting has a galaxy note and it didn't do that for him.

 

[Darth Mo]

My friend that I was texting has a galaxy note and it didn't do that for him.

Is it converting it to MMS? That allows for more characters.

 

[Marvin-13]

Is it converting it to MMS? That allows for more characters.

I have no idea but I will ask him when I get the chance. Thank you for your help!

 

[Griffin Walter]

My friend that I was texting has a galaxy note and it didn't do that for him.

Why do emoji take up more than one character?
Why do emoji take up more than one character? – SwiftKey Customer Support
Maybe it's the reason and you attach the site.