6 Things You Need to Know About iPhone SMS

I almost didn't get the confirmation message because you folks send it with a Reply-To: of my own address. That ended up matching some criteria that leads my server to bin the message. I don't think it's very reliable to use Reply-To: like that.

My email server has rules to throw away certain messages and those that are "From" me ie. Reply-To and also "To" me meet that criteria.

From: service@blogsmith.com
Subject: The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW): Please confirm your comment
Date: August 26, 2007 10:59:24 PM CDT
To: robert@elastica.com
Reply-To: robert@elastica.com

So a lot of folks in the discussion forums are saying that when you receive an SMS sent via a computer ie. number@cingularme.com then that doesn't count against your quota. Is that correct?

I have a basic question, hopefully i'm just overlooking this feature...

How do i send the same text message (sms) to multiple people at the same time?

Is there anyway you can save your texts? I have the 8 gb iphone but it says that my sms text msg is almost full...I find that kind of odd...but does anyone know how to save the current conversation?

Does anyone know why we cannot sent an sms to an email adress ??

"You can send text messages to an iPhone by e-mail. Yeah, yeah, a lot of you already know about this. But many of our readers do not. And for you guys, here's how to do it: send your text message to phonenumber@cingularme.com (e.g. 7035551212@cingularme.com, just use the numbers, no hyphens, etc). Keep your message brief. Both the subject line and the message arrive on the iPhone."

But why would you even bother with that? If you're already writing an email to someone who has an iPhone, then just email them! That's what Mail on the iPhone is for!

@25

If the contact has multiple numbers, you get two seperate threads. It's quite annoying though, because both are labeled by the name of the person, but not the number.

am i the only one who's annoyed by the fact that you can't send txt msgs to multiple recipients? if you CAN, please let me know how. thanks!

# 2 and #20 -

While these are both excellent suggestions and will work for map-specific or location-specific functions (e.g., "pizza 10024" or "starbucks 90035") there are about a dozen other Google SMS functions that will not work using Google's voice service or Google Maps.

I use Google SMS daily - usually multiple times each day - to get definitions, weather in other cities, area codes, zip codes, currency conversion, translations and much more. It's a powerful tool that offers options most people don't even think about. If you're in business, or an avid reader, or just need a combination almanac/encyclopedia/dictionary/translator at your fingertips, Google SMS will do the trick.

I've written a fairly detailed blog post about it here:

http://www.thewirelesswizard.com/tips-tricks-shortcuts/2007/5/30/-google-search-gets-smarter-perfect-for-mobile-text-inquiries.html

On the matter of splitting the messages - I've already received split messages (those exceeding 160, not 140 characters) on my iPhone so I know the function works.

Finally, I wholeheartedly agree that iChat is woefully missing from this product. There are a whole lot of other things missing, too, including some very basic items like voice dialing and the ability to delete emails in bulk, but the most glaring omission in my perspective is the inability to sync sent mails from the iPhone to your Mail application on the Mac.

I mean, if the iPhone and the Mac are _supposed_ to be integrated, then let's really integrate them. Widgets don't sync (stocks, weather, etc., all need to be set up separately on the iPhone - shouldn't they "sync" the same way addresses and calendar items do?) and calendar items can't even be viewed in full unless you enter the "Edit" mode on the iPhone's calendar.

It's a great product and I've already stopped carrying my Treo, my digital camera and my iPod - all replaced with this one device - but it's still "rev 1.0" and needs a lot of work. Let's hope that the next iteration resolves a lot of these minor, but annoying, items.

For those of you that have the iPhone, I'm wondering... Say one of your friends has 2 mobile phones (a business and a personal one), and you of course enter both numbers under the same contact. Since iPhone threads the SMS conversations under a single contact name, what would happen if I sent an SMS to his personal number and he replied with his business number. Would it still show under the same conversation thread? Can you even choose, under such a circumstance, to which of his numbers you want to send the SMS? Or does this whole affair require me to make duplicate contacts (that would be a bummer)?