How your SMS will look on a handheld device
What determines the length of an SMS?
There are two factors which decide how long the characters in your SMS will be. One being 7-bit encoding, and the other being Unicode, also known as UCS-2.
7-bit encoding
7-bit encoding is very easy to understand and primarily alphabet letters. Normally, each 7-bit letter counts as one character (excluding | ^ € { } [ ] ~ which all equal two characters).
The length of a 7-bit encoded SMS message is 160 characters. 7-bit encoded letters which equal one character are the following:
Φ " 2 B R b r ¥ Γ # 3 C S c s è Λ ¤ 4 D T d t é Ω % 5 E U e u ù Π & 6 F V f v ì Ψ ' 7 G W g w ò Σ ( 8 H X h x Ç Θ ) 9 I Y i y LF Ξ * : J Z j z Ø ESC + ; K Ä k ä ø Æ , < L Ö l ö CR æ - = M Ñ m ñ Å ß . > N Ü n ü å É / ? O § o à
Unicode
Unicode is much more expansive than 7-bit. For example, a character you may know would be the © sign. Emoji icons are also within the Unicode bracket, for example: ⌛ or 😼. If Unicodes are used in an SMS, the maximum length automatically turns into 70 characters. So if you're looking make your text messages longer, avoid Unicode icons.
Why we created the tool
After looking at Google's keyword planner, we found ~300 people per month were looking
for "SMS length calculator". Our SMS length counter has always been available for
clients using our appointment reminder system.
But, as there's clearly a demand for such a tool, we decided to make it readily
available to the public. Whether you're using it for business reasons, or out of
curiosity, we're sure it can be very useful!
We hope you enjoy the tool -The Remelo Team