UCS-2
UCS-2 is the 16-bit encoding used when an SMS contains characters missing from GSM-7: capacity then drops to 70 characters per message.
The whole glossary
Definition
UCS-2 is the 16-bit encoding used when an SMS contains characters missing from GSM-7: capacity then drops to 70 characters per message.
In detail
As soon as a message contains a character that GSM-7 cannot represent — an emoji, an ideogram, a Cyrillic or Arabic letter — the whole SMS switches to UCS-2 encoding, at 16 bits per character.
The consequence is immediate: the 140-byte payload now holds only 70 characters. A single emoji in a 100-character message is therefore enough to split it across two SMS.
Related terms
See all termsGSM-7 alphabetGSM-7 is the 7-bit alphabet used by default for SMS: it allows 160 characters per message but does not contain every accented character.Concatenated SMSA concatenated SMS is a long message split into several SMS reassembled by the handset, each segment holding only 153 characters in GSM-7.
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