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Sms

M

MarkW19

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 13, 2002
1,209
1
Surrey, UK
Does anyone else think SMS on the iPhone looks pretty bad?

I'm not sure if in the States/other parts of the world you just tend to send very short SMS's ie. "See you tonight at 7"; but here in the UK, we use SMS a lot to send quite long messages back and forth.

This looks quite tricky to do on the iPhone - for starters the bar where you input your own message is very small, only enough for a few words. This is in contrast to all Pocket PCs (and even most normal Nokia/SE phones etc.) where you have the whole screen (therefore several lines) to compose your own message and go back to different parts and edit it etc. before sending. If all you've got to go at on the iPhone is that little bar for entering text and then you have to scroll back through it to review your message before sending, that could be very tedious!

Also, with the "multiple session" SMS's, the same is true for that - if someone's sent you a few long messages, then each one would just about take up the whole screen (with the keyboard visible), meaning lots of scrolling to find the message you want.

It looks a great idea for short texts, but for anything more (which I think we do a lot of in the UK anyway), it looks like a chore!

I really hope not, and I'll still be getting an iPhone anyway, but I hope Apple have thought that side of things through.

What does anyone else think?
 
im just pissed it doesnt have ichat... I dont want to text message, I want to CHAT...
 
No I think it looks great, and I'll use it a lot more than iChat, as most of my family, friends, and co-workers have cellphones and are not in iChat all day long.
 
I know I can chat with my phone with aim users and such using text messaging(all in a threaded view and which unlike the standard texting view other phones have).
 
It looks great to me. The convenience of having the last few lines of the conversation right there makes up for the small input box. I don't usually "edit" my SMS messages; they're meant to be brief, informational blips. The maximum length of an SMS message is 160 characters - that pretty much limits how much you can say in one.

If you've ever used the Twitter client Twitterrific you've seen its similarly tiny input box. I don't really mind that either - I just type and hit enter. Editing would defeat the purpose of it being fast and simple. If you use SMS differently, that could suck, but I'm guessing most people won't mind it.

As for the conversation view, I find that a vast improvement over my phone's list of the first few words of each SMS.
 
My friends and I often send eachother long messages, not just quick snippets, and you can chain multiple messages together of course to write far more than 160 characters.

As I said, if you send short texts then it'll be awesome; if not, it could be tedious. I'll reserve full judgement until I get my hands on one though!
 
Image on the Iphone I'm replying to a message in my conversation view from several hours or a day or 2 ago. For me it's natural but the recepient would be totally confused.

Also if I'm writing an SMS that multiple sentences long and has to be edited I think I would use the yahoo push email feature.

My biggest concern is about forum posting. Currently I like having the large screen to be able to reread the original post while replying. I wonder how it will look on the 3.5" screen.
 
MarkW19 said:
My friends and I often send eachother long messages, not just quick snippets, and you can chain multiple messages together of course to write far more than 160 characters.
Click to expand...

That's where I think iPhone's conversation view would actually be beneficial. My IMs are almost never very long; I split them up into shorter phrases or sentences. This reads well in the standard IM conversation view. In the SMS "inbox" view, where I have to click on each message separately, it's a pain. Also, on my phone at least, I can't see a "conversation"; I just see the messages I received. To see the ones I sent, I have to go to the Sent folder. It's impossible to piece together a conversation that way.
 
trust me it will be awesome.

treos (my 680 included) organize text messages this way. every text i have sent or recieved from someone is collected together. i do a lot of texting and it's cool that i can look back at past conversations for tidbits of information i might need down the line. the point about replying to something a lot later and the other person being lost because of their system not organizing messages this way is valid, but hey they should upgrade to a smartphone too.

btw even though it works great on my treo it looks horrible. having it look like ichat is fantastic so i am looking forward to texting on my iphone when i get it.
 
MarkW19 said:
Does anyone else think SMS on the iPhone looks pretty bad?

I'm not sure if in the States/other parts of the world you just tend to send very short SMS's ie. "See you tonight at 7"; but here in the UK, we use SMS a lot to send quite long messages back and forth.

This looks quite tricky to do on the iPhone - for starters the bar where you input your own message is very small, only enough for a few words. This is in contrast to all Pocket PCs (and even most normal Nokia/SE phones etc.) where you have the whole screen (therefore several lines) to compose your own message and go back to different parts and edit it etc. before sending. If all you've got to go at on the iPhone is that little bar for entering text and then you have to scroll back through it to review your message before sending, that could be very tedious!
Click to expand...

I think the texting feature is damn fine. Your concern over the input box should be moot as it expands as your message gets longer. When Jobs typed his "See you..." message, he hit return at the end and the input box expanded by one line. I presume that it will expand a reasonable amount before the box will start scrolling (which I expect you can do with just a flick of your finger).

Also, I'm sure he was just showing us the new stuff at the Keynote, and not the "regular" features of a handheld device. My soon-to-be-retired Palm T3, for example, will hide and un-hide the writing area at the touch of a button, thus opening up the whole screen for reading. I would be gobsmacked if iPhone didn't do this, allowing you to read whole conversation threads much more easily.
 
I think we'll all need to see the iPhone in use first-hand before we know how good or bad it is.

This IS a very important issue though. As a previous thread pointed out, in the UK using a phone to make calls actually decreased for the first time recently, whereas SMS usage is skyrocketing.
 
MarkW19 said:
Does anyone else think SMS on the iPhone looks pretty bad?

I'm not sure if in the States/other parts of the world you just tend to send very short SMS's ie. "See you tonight at 7"; but here in the UK, we use SMS a lot to send quite long messages back and forth.

This looks quite tricky to do on the iPhone - for starters the bar where you input your own message is very small, only enough for a few words. This is in contrast to all Pocket PCs (and even most normal Nokia/SE phones etc.) where you have the whole screen (therefore several lines) to compose your own message and go back to different parts and edit it etc. before sending. If all you've got to go at on the iPhone is that little bar for entering text and then you have to scroll back through it to review your message before sending, that could be very tedious!

Also, with the "multiple session" SMS's, the same is true for that - if someone's sent you a few long messages, then each one would just about take up the whole screen (with the keyboard visible), meaning lots of scrolling to find the message you want.

It looks a great idea for short texts, but for anything more (which I think we do a lot of in the UK anyway), it looks like a chore!

I really hope not, and I'll still be getting an iPhone anyway, but I hope Apple have thought that side of things through.

What does anyone else think?
Click to expand...

I hear ya on the usage of SMS in England, text messages are a lot more popular. My main problem with the iPhone is tactile feedback when texting.
 
Ubuntu said:
I hear ya on the usage of SMS in England, text messages are a lot more popular. My main problem with the iPhone is tactile feedback when texting.
Click to expand...

I doubt you'll be able to "touch-type" on the iPhone, if this is what you're getting at. No more stealth texting under the desk!
 
rayward said:
I think the texting feature is damn fine. Your concern over the input box should be moot as it expands as your message gets longer. When Jobs typed his "See you..." message, he hit return at the end and the input box expanded by one line. I presume that it will expand a reasonable amount before the box will start scrolling (which I expect you can do with just a flick of your finger).

Also, I'm sure he was just showing us the new stuff at the Keynote, and not the "regular" features of a handheld device. My soon-to-be-retired Palm T3, for example, will hide and un-hide the writing area at the touch of a button, thus opening up the whole screen for reading. I would be gobsmacked if iPhone didn't do this, allowing you to read whole conversation threads much more easily.
Click to expand...

Didn't realise the input box expanded - this, coupled with being able to hide the keyboard (which I'm sure you'll be able to do), would sort most of the potential issues out for me!
 
rayward said:
I doubt you'll be able to "touch-type" on the iPhone, if this is what you're getting at. No more stealth texting under the desk!
Click to expand...

Well, my main point really was that I don't think that I could personally type at a decent speed, it wouldn't be comfortable for me. But I guess I should try one first.

whooleytoo said:
Can people txt without looking? I'd find that near-impossible on any phone.
Click to expand...

I can. But it turns out like this:

Hey, yeah, I'll meet ydsd d out abt " etc :D
 
I hope the iPhone has the "normal" features most phones/smartphones have had for years...eg. Some sort of external indication you've got a new txt message/missed call when you're away from the phone, so that when you go back to it you don't have to turn it on to look at the screen (ie. a flashing LED or something); when you get a message, an icon in the menubar at the top so that you're reminded you've got a new message to read when you're doing other things on the phone; profiles - ability to set different alerts for different events (reminders, texts, emails, calls etc.) and store all these settings in different profiles (vibrate, silent, quiet, etc. like my pocket pc has had for years!). If you could access all of these profiles from the ringer button on the side, that would be great, instead of it just being a ringer on/off button. Asking for profile changing by time is probably too much (as my pocket pc currently does with a 3rt party app) but just being able to change them manually would be good.

Does anyone think the iPhone will have these features?! Surely it must...

I'm also hoping for an MSN (messenger) widget before too long, although it would make sense for Apple to do an iChat client with Jabber support (remembering the links with Yahoo etc.).
 
I'm curious as to how the conversation view works.

Does the iPhone just organize conversations based on the sender & recipient, or does it actually keep track of separate conversations (how would this be possible)?
 
EricNau said:
I'm curious as to how the conversation view works.

Does the iPhone just organize conversations based on the sender & recipient, or does it actually keep track of separate conversations (how would this be possible)?
Click to expand...

It says "multiple sessions"...it would make sense for this to not be just by recipient (ie. all messages from the same person come up), but by time/number of texts. ie. If the same person texts you and you text back every 10 mins for a number of texts, it's obvious that's the same conversation. To start a new conversation, maybe it would start the next day, or after a few hours delay or something...or maybe if you just create a new message yourself instead of opening the previous message and replying, that would create a new conversation. I'm not sure though, it'll be interesting to see.
 
neven said:
...The maximum length of an SMS message is 160 characters - that pretty much limits how much you can say in one....
Click to expand...

My average is about 500 characters I'd guess, but I once sent a 43part text!
 
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