txttools v6.4 to bring 2-way Unicode SMS support.
Soon, messages can be sent containing characters outside the standard GSM alphabet e.g. Arabic or Chinese. A warning will appear on the Compose page when sending a message with a character outside of this charset. Note the standard length of a Unicode message is 70 characters instead of the usual 160, and not all phones in the UK can support these characters. See our youtube video for a full demonstration.
Unicode inbound messages are only supported on new long numbers.
Speak to support for full details.
API Changes:
With the introduction of Unicode messaging, we have updated our XMl and SOAP Messaging APIs, adding a new flag to suppress sending the message as a Unicode message.
By default, if a message sent via an API contains a character outside the GSM charset, the message will send as a Unicode message, splitting the text into blocks of 70 characters. However a new flag has been added to suppress this i.e. the message will send out as a standard message and use 160 characters, however this means the message will not display correctly on the recipient’s handset.
