Gadgetory

there are lots of ways for us to communicate with one another using our smartphones today many of those use text I'm Joe Levi with pocket now today we're going to talk about whether SMS is still even relevant SMS or short messaging service grew out of the GSM standard the global standard for mobile communications now of course that's not the actual acronym but that's essentially what it means in addition to these voice packets there are other kinds of data packets that fly across this network as well there's internet of course and then there's overhead now this overhead is essentially your phone talking to the towers around it and saying hi Here I am here's my imei number and just let me know hello how you doing the towers then respond with kind of the same thing but they include some information back like signal strength directionality kinda sorta and other things that are necessary for your device to be able to connect to the network these towers then communicate with one another and one tower says to another tower this guy needs to talk to you now I'm going to hand him off and there you go so that way when you're driving a car riding a train whatever the case may be your call doesn't drop when you go from one tower to another it facilitates that handoff those packets have a secret little hidden spot at the end that's 128 bytes long and for the most part empty okay it's not much of a secret that's where all of our text messages go but 128 bytes isn't all that big but when you think about it if you're not sending a text message it's wasted space it's just empty but it has to be sent back and forth so why not put it to use text messages do that like I was saying 128 bytes isn't a lot but if you use a special alphabet that has seven bike characters you can fit up to a hundred and sixty characters into that message that 7-bit alphabet is the GSM standard for texting it's not enough to accommodate all languages some languages require 8-bit character in which case your message is reduced to 140 characters other languages require 16-bit characters in which case their text messages are only 70 characters long that sure seems like an awful lot of complication just to get a short message across and really since we've got the internet now with a whole bunch of other services that we can use to send and receive messages using text why do we still have it around it's a great question and one that pocket now reader Alex s brings to us he says my question came to me the other day when my friend texted me and later got mad at me for not writing back i was using facebook Messenger and Google Hangouts that day question I have for you guys is SMS still relevant it's tedious using the service from our carriers when these other services exist sounds terrible but I for one think those are way better option Alex you're right all of those services require that you're signed up for those services and they're not available in all countries and in all places so that's kind of the first reason why we might want to keep text messaging around second is there are some services that don't work on other platforms leaving friends that use those well unable to communicate with you SMS is the lowest common denominator it works with anyone that has a GSM compatible phone and many people that don't have gsm compatible phones that are still on cdma and other technologies so there is that to keep in mind but the biggest is the advantages that you get because those packets their overhead there are two reasons why that's really important the first reason is when it comes to crowds when you're in a very crowded area whether that's a big game or whether it's just you know an event or whatnot you might not have enough bandwidth to make a phone call or to get any data through on the internet but you're still talking to that tower and that towers coming back and saying sorry all circuits are busy sending a text message using your carrier's texting service can get that bit of information out to the tower and because it's so small when ever there's a gap it can send that message on through it's a very very good thing because not only do you have that ability but the tower is also going to queue it until it has that space you can send it and forget it and it might take five minutes before that text gets out but you don't have to keep trying for that whole five minutes you're going to be doing something else the tower is going to take care of it for you we're texting really shines is in case of emergencies you can have a natural disaster where everyone is trying to locate their loved ones or tell their loved ones that they're okay that clogs up all of the bandwidth that that cellular network has especially if any of the towers were damaged for the same reason that we just mentioned texting can come in really handy to get a message out there's another reason however if you're in the middle of nowhere and you look at your phone and it has no bars that doesn't mean that your phone's not connected to a tower or talking to a tower it could mean that that tower acknowledges that you're there but it also acknowledges that your signal is too low to get any kind of data or any kind of voice communication through it's not going to show you any bars but it's still talking so send a text message using your carrier's stock text messaging app whatever is the stock app so you make sure that doesn't go through the internet like google voice does it will then try and send that out to the tower and as soon as the strength is high enough that it can get it through it will send that text message whether that's right now an hour from now or in the middle of the night it'll send that message to the tower the tower is then going to pick it up and it's going to send it on so even if you can't talk to anyone on the phone you might be able to get a text message through to someone asking for help Alex thank you very much for writing in and I'm glad that I was able to feel that question for you of course I hope I answered it to your satisfaction if you've got other questions or want to see other stuff make sure you hit the subscribe button down below so that you can keep up to date with all the stuff that we're coming out with on a regular basis if you liked the video give it a thumbs up and of course hit us up on all of your favorite social media networks 4-pocket now I'm Joe Levi i'll text you later