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Encoding	GSM 03.38
SMS parts	1
Chars used	0
Chars left	160
Chars in SMS	160

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Legend

	Regular 7-bit character, present in the GSM charset
ESC	Escape character 0x1B; required to access ^ € \| { } [ ] ~ \
UDH	User Data Header of the message. Required for multipart SMS
	Character present in the GSM charset, encoded as a Unicode character
	Character not present in the GSM charset; forces Unicode encoding

GSM 7-bit encoding

This is the most commonly used encoding for messages with the GSM 03.38 character set. In this 7-bit alphabet you can use only the following characters:

@ Δ SP 0 ¡ P ¿ p £ _ ! 1 A Q a q $ Φ “ 2 B R b r ¥ Γ # 3 C S c s è Λ ¤ 4 D T d t é Ω % 5 E U e u ù Π & 6 F V f v ì Ψ ‘ 7 G W g w ò Σ ( 8 H X h x Ç Θ ) 9 I Y i y LF Ξ * : J Z j z Ø ESC + ; K Ä k ä ø Æ , < L Ö l ö CR æ – = M Ñ m ñ Å ß . > N Ü n ü å É / ? O § o à

There are also some characters in the GSM 03.38 extension table that can be used for the cost of two characters by prepending the escape character ESC (0x1B):

^ € | { } [ ] ~ \

Unicode encoding

Unicode (UCS-2) encoding supports a far greater range of characters and languages than the limited alphabet of 7-bit encoding.

If your message contains any characters not listed in the 7-bit alphabet, UCS-2 encoding is used automatically. Each character then takes up more space, so the message length is reduced to 70 characters.

Multipart SMS messages

When a message exceeds 160 characters (7-bit) or 70 characters (UCS-2), it is split into multiple SMS and each part is sent to the handset separately.

So the handset can reassemble the parts, a special header (UDH) is added to each one stating its order and which message it belongs to. That header shortens each combined part to 153 characters (7-bit) or 67 characters (UCS-2).

	Regular SMS	Multipart SMS
GSM 7-bit	160 chars	153 chars
Unicode / UCS-2	70 chars	67 chars