Weird - why does typing a long dash (—) make texts unable to be sent and shorter?

[Doju]

I insert a — and the text character limits goes from 160 to 70, and the text won't send, even if under 70.

Why? I like that character…

 

[Daveoc64]

When you use certain characters, the iPhone (like any phone - for real, this isn't PR!) has to send the message with a different character encoding set.

That different character encoding set (presumably UNICODE) uses more data per character, resulting in you being able to send a message with fewer characters.

A regular dash (-) doesn't have this problem.

 

[Daveoc64]

I've looked into this a little more (this got me interested in the area again) and Bell doesn't support Unicode SMS.

That's why your phone can't send it.