SMS stupidity - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 21, 2025, 07:42:47 pm
content: I've noticed something that seems really stupid regarding text messages received on my phone:I leave my "phone" off most of the time. When I turn it on and receive a text message, the time stamp I see is when I turn the phone on, not when the message was actually sent. I have no idea when it was sent.I assume that SMS includes a timestamp when the message was actually sent, yes? Don't actually know, though.So I don't know if this stupidity is due to a shortcoming of SMS, or whether it's on my phone/carrier (Tracfone & AT&T, I think, though not sure who the carrier actually is).Others' experience with this?

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 21, 2025, 08:19:40 pm
content: A little brief research indicates SMS messages when sent do not have any form of timestamp (the sending device may not even know the time, I guess.. this is old, old tech). When received by the sending carrier, they fill out a timestamp as 'sent' time. Phones don't display this apparently because it may actually be incorrect. That, and why would carriers want you to know it took ten minutes for a tiny text message to get delivered?On most modern devices you can check the sent time - on Android, press and hold on an individual message to select it, drop down the context menu (three vertical dots), and 'view details'.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 21, 2025, 09:12:21 pm
content: "View details" shows absolutely zero information of any kind about a message.I guess this is a very low "need to know" area.Just kinda surprised, as it would be so damn easy to implement.Like you wrote, maybe carriers just don't want their customers to know how inefficient they actually are.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 22, 2025, 03:47:43 am
content: I just checked my phone, RCS (which is replacing traditional SMS) has these fields.With RCS, I can see both the time/date the message was sent by the sender, when it was delivered to the recipient's device, and when the recipient read the message.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2025, 07:27:25 am
content: Something to remember about SMS is that it is anextremelylow-effort protocol. It was designed as a free add-on to GSM networks. Free in the sense that it doesn’t create any additional network traffic (in transit) because it piggybacks in otherwise unused fields in the periodic handshakes between handset and tower. (Hence the odd message size limit; it had to fit into leftover space.)**Yes, it needs the messaging servers to forward and store the messages before they hit the radio. But no additional load on the wireless side of the network.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2025, 08:13:55 pm
content: Regarding message length: I was confused here, since I recently got a text from someone that far exceeded the 160 (?) character limit, by at least three times.But I see from an online search that multiple SMS messages can be concatenated into a single message, which is apparently what happens in cases like this.

author: JimboJack
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2025, 10:04:30 pm
content: Little history,GSM overlayed ontop of the ISDN network, the SMS was sent over the D-Channel , control on the ISDN network, basically it used unused capacity of the control channel. if i remember right, long time since i had to deal witrh E1, T1's , STM , SS7, Frame-relay, ATM and X.25 networks.J.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2025, 10:59:57 pm
content: Design parameters that made sensewhen the design was done: it is unfair to call them stupid.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2025, 06:45:39 pm
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on April 22, 2025, 08:13:55 pmYeah, but that came along a fair bit later. It took until around 2010 for support to be widespread (networks and handsets) IIRC.