Ok, so I have now confirmed that the 160 character limit is dependent on the towers near you. I just tested texting while roaming on Verizon with the exact same setup as before. The tweak works. No wonder it wasn't working for me! It now makes sense why Sprint disabled this option!
Now, if you get it working off of one tower does that mean once the fix is in it will work on the tower it previously did not work at or will texting be broken?
I don't think so, though I have yet to find out for sure. I will try this once I am home. It wouldn't make any sense at all if it now worked at the previously non-working towers, because it doesn't have anything to do with the phone and just with the Sprint network towers. I'll post back just in case.
MY FINAL RESULTS:
This method is dependent on the towers near you, because of the following*:
Some Mobile Phone Operating Systems are designed to split up texts whens they are sent over the 160 character limit before they are sent to the network (even dumb phones can do this). Windows Phone does not seem to have this capability, it sends your message in its' entirety to the network and hopes that the network can sort it out into split texts. The problem is, not all Sprint towers seem to support this. For that reason, Sprint completely disabled the option to send a text over 160 characters.
When you know this method will work**:
1. Make the registry Edit (Reboots is not really needed, WP dynamically monitors the registry, it seems.)
2. Send yourself a text over the 160 characters. (It should allow you to after the registry edit.)
3. The text will give you an error either instantly or in a few minutes.
4. Reboot, if you want (just to be sure.). Then, resend the same text.
5. It will send without errors and you should receive the content back in more than one text. Done.
When you know this method will NOT work**:
1. Make the registry Edit (Reboots is not really needed, WP dynamically monitors the registry, it seems.)
2. Send yourself a text over the 160 characters. (It should allow you to after the registry edit.)
3. The text will not give you an error. After a LONG time (an hour or so, you will get the error.)
4. During the time between you sending the text and receiving the error, your MMS and SMS will be broken and you most likely will not receive or be able to send texts.
5. Reboot your phone and things should be back to normal. Change the registry back to default value to avoid making an accidental text over 160 characters. Go yell at MS and Sprint.
* Only speculation after my trials
** YMMV
Hope you dont mind, im adding this to the first post. Thanks man. that sucks though... again, I had issues at first and then they went away... maybe I was hitting an older tower at first??
Thanks for your help on this.
seems everyone I got has capable towers. No issues anywhere so far.
Im not having any luck either. I get an error message about 30-40 minutes later and ya texts seem spotty with the hack on, yahoo email too.
I'm in metro detroit if that matters, and I have the same results across town
Those were my settings when I tried the hack. Has anyone tried baking that into a rom? I'm not a cooker but I wonder if that would have any positive effect. The thing that I can't let go with the towers, is that I remember reading a yr ago about a guy who got his Verizon trophy on the sprint network and the texts worked fine. It made me think instantly that it was a phone or rom issue not a sprint or wp7 issue.
MY FINAL RESULTS:
This method is dependent on the towers near you, because of the following*:
Some Mobile Phone Operating Systems are designed to split up texts whens they are sent over the 160 character limit before they are sent to the network (even dumb phones can do this). Windows Phone does not seem to have this capability, it sends your message in its' entirety to the network and hopes that the network can sort it out into split texts. The problem is, not all Sprint towers seem to support this. For that reason, Sprint completely disabled the option to send a text over 160 characters.
When you know this method will work**:
1. Make the registry Edit (Reboots is not really needed, WP dynamically monitors the registry, it seems.)
2. Send yourself a text over the 160 characters. (It should allow you to after the registry edit.)
3. The text will give you an error either instantly or in a few minutes.
4. Reboot, if you want (just to be sure.). Then, resend the same text.
5. It will send without errors and you should receive the content back in more than one text. Done.
When you know this method will NOT work**:
1. Make the registry Edit (Reboots is not really needed, WP dynamically monitors the registry, it seems.)
2. Send yourself a text over the 160 characters. (It should allow you to after the registry edit.)
3. The text will not give you an error. After a LONG time (an hour or so, you will get the error.)
4. During the time between you sending the text and receiving the error, your MMS and SMS will be broken and you most likely will not receive or be able to send texts.
5. Reboot your phone and things should be back to normal. Change the registry back to default value to avoid making an accidental text over 160 characters. Go yell at MS and Sprint.
* Only speculation after my trials
** YMMV
ok I have a bit of a problem I tried this on my DFT Gold C arrive and it didnt work. When I change the registry value and try to send the message it appears to go through but I never get a text back and I never get an error message and restarting otherwise just breaks text messsaging (and email too appaently).
Texting over 160 characters isnt at all essential to me but it would be nice to have, maybe ill give this another try after some more feedback.
maybe Ill try leaving the tweak on overnight, I guess if by the time I wake up I dont either get an error message or my actual message sent back to my phone I will know that it isnt working.
Is that a logical way of thinking about it?
Id leave it for longer but Id rather not be stuck a full day (or longer) without texting (especially considering it seems to have broken email on my phone as well)