Non-ASCII characters in SMS

Some languages use text characters that take up extra space when encoded (stored in your browser or computer) — this lowers the total number of characters that can be delivered in a single text message.

Technical Details:

Messages containing non-ASCII characters are limited to 800 characters. This is a requirement in SMS technology in how messages are encoded and sent to your recipient’s devices. Characters in languages such as Hindi, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or Cyrillic alphabet languages must be encoded using the 16-bit Unicode character encoding.