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Using email as substitute for sms?

H

heyp

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 29, 2008
312
0
Has anybody just ditched sms and used email instead? I know it would be kind of a pain to put in every contacts full info e.g. xxxxxxxxxx@messaging.sprintpcs.com, but maybe someone can think of a way to make this easier... maybe if you know the recipient's carrier, you could input that in the contact info and then you could chose to send an email to their number (which they would receive as a sms) and a little script would automatically but the @messaging.sprintpcs.com or @txt.att.net or whatever the case may be

my thinking here is to save money by not paying for sms messaging and also i've experienced that att sms service is pretty sketchy i.e. i randomly won't receive people's texts... it is really annoying
 
I wouldnt trade sms for email because i would HATE to have to look at my phone everyt ime some stupid junk mail pops through and DINGS on my phone.. HOWEVER, if a good IM app comes out (which is SHOULD) then i will use that instead of sms. Email just isnt "instant" enough for me.
 
lindsayanng said:
I wouldnt trade sms for email because i would HATE to have to look at my phone everyt ime some stupid junk mail pops through and DINGS on my phone.. HOWEVER, if a good IM app comes out (which is SHOULD) then i will use that instead of sms. Email just isnt "instant" enough for me.
Click to expand...

Sounds like you need push email. Doesn't have to make the ding noise you know either, so really all you need is a server side spam filter...

heyp said:
Has anybody just ditched sms and used email instead? I know it would be kind of a pain to put in every contacts full info e.g. xxxxxxxxxx@messaging.sprintpcs.com, but maybe someone can think of a way to make this easier... maybe if you know the recipient's carrier, you could input that in the contact info and then you could chose to send an email to their number (which they would receive as a sms) and a little script would automatically but the @messaging.sprintpcs.com or @txt.att.net or whatever the case may be

my thinking here is to save money by not paying for sms messaging and also i've experienced that att sms service is pretty sketchy i.e. i randomly won't receive people's texts... it is really annoying
Click to expand...

I'd think Mail will be pushed over MMS at least. It's like Flash, they're taking a stand. There should be a decent way to script the email addresses. can't you do SMS on your computer as an alternative?
 
I have PUSH email set up on my phone, i have my business and personal email accounts set up so that every time i receive an email, the little number sits up in the corner telling me how many new ones i have. My issue is, on my personal email especially, people send me CRAP. I wish i could stop it but for instance, i get 6-10 forwards a day from my grandma. I usually delete them all because its about how Obama is a terrorist or there are rapist hiding in my car at night. So basically, i dont want to have to check my email every time someone sends me an email, however if i was relying on that the way i rely on SMS for things like "Pick up milk on your way home" I would HAVE to check it more often. I guess when i said INSTANT, i meant that i usually would wait to check my email till i had a few minutes to look through them, not open the SECOND i get one like i would with SMS.
 
lindsayanng said:
I wouldnt trade sms for email because i would HATE to have to look at my phone everyt ime some stupid junk mail pops through and DINGS on my phone.. HOWEVER, if a good IM app comes out (which is SHOULD) then i will use that instead of sms. Email just isnt "instant" enough for me.
Click to expand...

like tom said, if you had a push email account it would be instant... also, maybe this would work better in a separate app, using apple's "cloud in the sky," that could filter for @txt.att.net and the like so it would appear to work just like the SMS app... although this might be rejected by apple


apparently, www.emoze.com will push email to mobile devices for free... so if a separate app wouldn't fly, i think theoretically, you could create filters in gmail to send @txt.att.net and @messaging.sprintpcs.com type of addresses to the emoze account... then you could just check the emoze account for text messages

if emoze can't do it, certainly yahoo push would work with filters on the gmail side, but then the beauty of having one email address is compromised... i'd like to keep things as simple as possible so that my friends just need to know one email address
 
Check out Teleflip

I dont work for these guys or anything .... but some time ago i found www.teleflip.com a start-up email2SMS Free Service where you can enter the phonenumber@teleflip.com and they figure out what carrier to send it to. its not the Fastest delivery ... but it is pretty reliable.

I set up these addresses in my address book so i can quickly send an sms to my friends without leaving my laptop and digging up my phone. also if you want them to reply to your phone you could probably set-up a reply-to address with your phonenumber@yourcarrier.com

Gone are the days of free SMS (does anyone remember those days!?) ... the carriers latch on to whatever becomes popular and exploits it for whatever its worth!
 
Well I know AIM and SMS can talk to each other. Not horribly helpful until the iPhone gets push notifications but at least we're getting it.
 
NAG said:
Well I know AIM and SMS can talk to each other. Not horribly helpful until the iPhone gets push notifications but at least we're getting it.
Click to expand...

this would be a good solution as well as long as at&t doesn't treat IM like SMS messages, as in separate from the unlimited data package, which i think is the case unfortunately
 
I only use SMS because of my technology-challenged friends. If it were up to me, I'd just use email or IM. I hate having to shell out $10-20 for text service add-on's on top of data.

I also use a Blackberry Curve and push email is great. I set up a filter on GMail and Yahoomail and it works great. You can even customize it for senders so that it goes directly to trash or archives. If you don't want every single email from a certain sender to go to the archives, you can also set it so that only emails containing "FW:" "Forward", etc. only get sent to the trash.

I hope everyone gets off of this SMS deal. I'm always connected to GTalk and would much prefer that to SMS. Plus, it's faster.
 
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