My cell phone and texting

Factual Questions
1

I have a Motorola Razr V3a on the Alltel/Verizon network (Alltel was my original carrier, Verizon bought them out, but I am 99% sure I am still on a network considered to be Alltel’s).

I’m having issues sending multi-paged texts. That is, text messages that go longer than one full screen length.

When I send my brother such a text, he gets one separate text for each “page” and then a message saying “objects in the preceding message were removed.” I get a text that says “Message delivered [his number] as plain text Destination does not support enhanced messaging service”. He’s got an LG AX245 phone, and is not only on the same network as me but also on the same shared plan.

When I send long text to Friend 1, who has some sort of Blackberry phone, I get the same return message as I get with my brother, and my text is split up into separate messages. When he sends me long messages, his text is split into separate messages. This friend is on Alltel/Verizon as well. IIRC, this did not happen when we both had “pure Alltel” and the same Razr. He switched over to Verizon proper when he got his Blackberry phone.

When I send a long text to Friend 2, absolutely nothing weird happens. He just gets my texts. I get his long texts as one message. I don’t know what network he’s on or what phone he has but I’m fairly certain he’s not on Alltel/Verizon and doesn’t have a smart phone. We both live in the same geographical area, tho.

When I send a long text to Friend 3, who I think has an iPhone (or something “smart”), she doesn’t get it at all. When I send a long text to Friend 4, who has a phone using the Windows Mobile OS, he doesn’t get it at all. I don’t think either of these friends is on Alltel or Verizon.

I have no issues sending images to any of these people. Sometimes adding text to the images gets lost or mangled. But I’ve never lost an image.

Is there anything I can do, settings wise, on my phone to correct this problem? I have no idea if it’s a handset problem or a network problem.

If it is a handset problem that can’t be fixed by settings, what sort of handset do I need in the future to avoid this issue? I reeeeeally love my Razr, it’s the perfect size and shape. I don’t want a smart phone. I can get a new phone on my contract in a few months.

I’m also not really willing to move from Alltel/Verizon, since we’ve got 5 of us on one extremely cheap family plan. Although I might be able to move us all to Verizon proper, but I’m not sure how that works at the moment.

Sorry for the long post. This has been driving me crazy for quite some time!

2

AFAIK, SMS is limited to 140 characters. Some providers may have a different limit, and some devices may be clever enough to chop a long message into multiple pieces, but basically, SMS is not email- don’t try to use it that way.

3

So that’s it? Even though texting is extremely popular and people use it for more than just “bring home milk”, I’m relegated to only sending 140 chars or less at a time? Why does my phone allow for 300 characters?

Can anyone tell me if this is a feature of the network or the phone? What is “enhanced messaging service” and can I turn it off?

If my phone/network is telling me that my message is being delivered as plain text, how can I send just plain text by default? And why would my friends’ with smart phones not be able to receive 140+ char text from me at all? (the iPhone and the Windows OS phone)

4

Is it possible that you are sending an MMS message but you’re brother’s phone/plan only allows SMS messaging? In such a case, the longer MMS is split into multiple messages (“pages” as you describe it) and any multimedia content, such as pictures/video/music/etc. is removed from the message.

Wikipedia has a good rundown of MMS and the difference between it and SMS.

5

Hmm, no, I don’t think I’m trying to send MMS. I can successfully send actual multimedia messages to any of the people listed in the OP. It’s just that when I try to send what my phone calls “pages” ("Sending message to ##### (2 pages)), I get a return message saying that my message was sent in plain text and the destination does not support “enhanced messaging service”.

Other than the length, there’s nothing different between my short messages and my longer ones. Something about the multiple pages makes the recipient phones angry. I really wish my phone or my carrier didn’t do this - but I don’t know who’s at fault! :frowning: