EncodingGSM 7bit
Characters used0
Characters in SMS160
SMS Messages1
The length of your message
The length of your message will be calculated differently depending on two types of characters used in your SMS. One type is GSM 7-bit encoding, and the other type is Unicode.
Regular 7-bit character, present in GSM charset
7-bit letter which all equal two characters: | ^ € { } [ ] ~
Character present in GSM charset, encoded as Unicode character
Character not present in GSM charset, forces to use Unicode encoding
GSM 7-bit encoding
GSM 7-bit encoding is used for cell phone messaging and primarily consists of alphabet letters. Each 7-bit letter counts as one character (excluding [ ] ~ | ^ { } € which equals two characters each). The length of a GSM 7-bit encoded SMS message is 160 characters. One character GSM 7-bit encoded letters are:
Unicode
Unicode covers a lot more characters than GSM 7-bit. Unicode characters are, for example, emojis [primer], special characters [primer]. The maximum length of an SMS that contains Unicode characters is 70.