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The short answer (for developers): an SMS carries a fixed number of bytes (140). With the GSM-7 alphabet that is 160 characters. A single character outside that alphabet (ã, õ, á, ê, an emoji, a curly quote) switches the whole message to UCS-2 (Unicode), where only 70 fit. A longer message is split into parts that the phone puts back together (concatenated SMS), and each part loses room to the header that joins them: 153 characters per part in GSM-7 and 67 in UCS-2. In Portuguese, everyday words like «não», «código» or «está» are enough to change the count.
What each character does to the message
| What you write | What happens |
| Unaccented letters, digits, common punctuation, and é, è, à, ù, ì, ò, ñ, ü, Ç | GSM-7: 160 per message. These accented letters are part of the GSM alphabet. |
| ã, õ, á, í, ó, ú, â, ê, ô | Not in GSM-7: the whole message becomes UCS-2, 70 per message. |
| Lower-case ç | GSM-7 has Ç. Some providers turn ç into Ç, others switch the message to Unicode: it depends on the provider. |
| € [ ] { } ^ ~ \ | | They live in the GSM-7 extension: each counts as two characters. |
| Emoji | UCS-2, and many take two positions, so they use twice the room. |
| Curly quotes, the long dash and non-breaking spaces pasted from a document | Outside GSM-7: they switch the message to Unicode without anyone noticing. |
Keeping the size under control
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| An accented customer name in a template counted as GSM-7 turns one message into two or three. Names, addresses and product names are the variables that most often bring in Unicode without warning. |
| If the text already comes out of the database with question marks, the problem is before the SMS: accents turning into strange symbols. And the name shown as the sender has rules of its own: SMS marketing and Sender ID. |
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Accents already look broken on your site or in the database? Open a ticket and tell us where you see them. Open a support ticket |
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