Why does an SMS have 160 characters?

[rabia829]

In 1985, researcher Friedhelm Hillebrand defined the standard length of a text message. At that time, a mobile phone was nothing more than a car phone and the available bandwidth was extremely limited. So it was necessary to shorten the message. Basically, what Hillebrand did was take his typewriter and randomly type in a number of common questions and phrases. He came to a conclusion: most of them were less than 160 characters, which was eventually set as the maximum for SMS.

This limitation has had further consequences gcash database beyond telephony. Twitter, for example, limited messages to 140 characters so that it was possible to update the profile via SMS. The remaining 20 characters were to be reserved for identifying the user.



The first SMS was sent 20 years ago, on 3 December 1992, from a computer to a mobile phone. It simply said “Merry Christmas”. A year later, a Nokia handset sent the first mobile-to-mobile message in Finland.

This limitation is no longer visible on new smartphones, which allow you to send as many characters as you want, but only in increments of 160 characters. All of them count.