# Long text messages



## kevinturcotte (Dec 19, 2006)

Whenever anybody sends me really long text messages they send them as one long text message, but my phone sees them as separate, 180 character messages and jumbles them all up. Just had somebody send me a text message that my phone broke into 18 smaller messages and randomly arranged, making it very difficult to read them in the correct order. Is there anyway to fix this? It's EXTREMELY annoying! I have a Samsung Galaxy S4. 

Sent from my SPH-L720 using DBSTalk mobile app


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## Go Beavs (Nov 18, 2008)

I've seen this before with my iPhone. It is a little distracting but at least it keeps them in order. I can imagine it's pretty frustrating when it doesn't.


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## Laxguy (Dec 2, 2010)

Have your correspondent use e-mail for heaven's sake!


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

It's not necessarily your phone. I think if for example a Verizon customer sends a long text to another Verizon customer, it will be received as sent, one long message. If it's sent to someone at a different carrier, the enhanced text messaging features are removed, and you've got individual messages in chunks.

I agree, either use email or one of those messaging apps like WhatsApp or BBM.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

Yeah that's the nature of texting if your not on the same system. 

At the very least your friend could break up the messages themselves and even label then 1, 2, so on and so forth. I think all phones have a character count ability on screen when they are writing.


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## Scott Kocourek (Jun 13, 2009)

If they have that much to say have them call you.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

The current xkcd is very topical:


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## sigma1914 (Sep 5, 2006)

Tell your friends you quit paying attention after 150 characters, so hurry up.


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## 4HiMarks (Jan 21, 2004)

It's not always friends. I am signed up for text alerts from various local agencies, including counties surrounding the area where I live and the commuter bus I take to work. They send out texts with weather and traffic problems and changes in schedule or route. Some of them are also available by email, some are not. Sometimes I subscribe to both, but when I subscribe to a text messaging service, I expect to get text messages. I can't just tell them to call or email instead.

The messages are usually long, sometimes 6 or 7 texts worth. They used to come as individual texts, which was really annoying. Now they seem to get stitched together into one long message. I don't know if they changed, or my phone OS (Android) did, but it seemed to happen for all of them at once and it works much better now, so I'm guessing it was Android, although it could also be AT&T.


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## wingrider01 (Sep 9, 2005)

SMS has a built in limit of 160 characters, if that limit is reached it splits to a second 160 character block. SMS is basically forward and forget, is a stateless communication protocol in which every SMS message is considered entirely independent of other messages if the carrier does not pay attention to the UDH (user data heading) segemnts can be received out of order or messages from the same number that arrive at the same time will be treated as one message. if there is a messaging app on your phone it can manipulate the segments and join them together


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## chevyguy559 (Sep 19, 2008)

Try Textra...its a pretty nice free app for Android that is much better than the stock SMS and MMS app....


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