Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Skype SMS Text Count

I use Skype a lot to send SMS text to China. Since I don't have a text plan and the costs a lot to send international text on my work phone, I use Skype to text out. It costs 5.5 cents to send a 160 character text; the drawback is that the recipient has to text me back at another number since Skype does not receive texts.

Anyhow, I upgraded to Skype 5.x and noticed that the character count feature is gone. The UI used to tell me now many characters are left in the current message before it charges me another 5.5 cents for part 2 of the message. I can't find it anywhere in the options... the cynical person in me thinks that Skype removed this "feature" so users are less aware when they go over the 160 character limit and end up paying 2x for the text message.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

i don't like the new version of skype either. it won't let you attempt to call people who aren't online. if you call someone offline using skype/internet, it won't attempt the connection and it will ask for a land-line number to call.

another way to keep pushing on the revenue generation.

now if they can turn off the auto-answer and the automatic enabling of the web-cam, then it would start to improve.

Unknown said...

Hey you should try whatsapp, and get your girl to install that too. Works like BB messenger, completely free if both of you are on the network, and instantaneous. Queues messages if the other party isn't online.

totochi said...

Thanks for the tip. She doesn't have a smartphone though so I have to think of something else.

Anonymous said...

Same what i just discovered, those freaking &*%@#$&^s of Skype keep messing up a once great program more and more and more. Incredible!