[Q] Force SMS encoding from Unicode to ISO - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hey there.
I'm from Portugal and here we have some accentuated letters like "à á é ç ã õ".
When the system language is set to English and we insert one of these letters the SMS limit falls down from 160 charachters to 70 because it changes the encoding of the SMS .
What I would like to know is if it's possible to come with an hack to force the system to encode the SMS in a particular way so these kind of letters don't cut us 90 characters off the message please.
Actually this is a problem in a lot of countries. Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and the list goes on... Any country that speeks a latin language really.
So, can anyone help us out?
PS: I own a Samsung Galaxy S at the moment

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Same problem here
Got a Magic 32A from Portuguese operator TMN
I'm running CyanogenMod 6.0.0 RC3
What happens is that if i set Android in Portuguese language the SMS's work as expected.
If you change the language to English, when writing an SMS, if a character like "á" "é" is used you end having only 70 characters available.
My interest was to use Android in English but send SMS's with latin characters whithout having only 70 characters available per SMS.
In Windows Mobile 5/6 there was an option to disable unicode.
Any help? Thanks in advance

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This problem also happens with CyanogenMod 5.0.8

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anyone? please?

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Samsung Galaxy has the problem solved.
I guess that they solved it by themselves. Neither Google nor HTC give a $hit about it. For instance, HTC still has this problem on all android devices.
I owned a Legend with Android 2.2, and the problem persisted. As it was still in warranty, I returned it to the store, got refunded, and bought a Samsung Galaxy

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you should feel fortunate that at least you can send the unicoded characters here in the US, most carriers do not properly send unicoded characters, and instead they arrive as BLOCKS on the recipient phone. So imagine wanting to send an SMS with a foreign language that contains accents or unicoded characters when living in the US. You really can't.
To that end, it'd be nice if one of the SMS programs had an option to convert all Unicoded text messages to ASCII prior to sending. This way you can continue to use your foreign language keyboard and dictionaries with accents and unicoded characters and be confident that the message will not be corrupted when sent. And it'd allow a 160 character ASCII message as well.

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this is native issue of the SMS, not the phone or OS issue
if you want to force encoding without Unicode, characters like à á é ç ã õ will convert to a a a c a o accordingly.

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Still have the same issue. This is stupid really

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Please use the Q&A Forum for questions Thanks
Moving to Q&A

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Anyone? I have the same problem in runnymede.

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Samsung Galaxy 3 on Froyo has solved that...
EDITI've heard also about Samsung Galaxy Ace, both in Poland.)

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Use Handcent SMS app
I had the same problem. I am a spanish native speaker, hence my SMS are sent in spanish. Due to autocorrection, some words automatically add the accent in some words. I had not found any solution to the native application for SMS, however I noticed that using "Hancent SMS" app, although the accents are added, the number of characters are still 160!

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some temporary solution
Some letters are included in english character set, which you can use without the automatic change of the character set, so the sms will remain 160 chars, instead of 60 or something like that.
these characters are definitely included:
(à,ä,æ,å,é,è,ü,ú,ö,ò,ß,...)
You can try out when you start writing an sms, and turn on the "remaining characters counter" and try it for your self which characters you could use.
for example you can use "à" instead of "á" it still stays 160 chars.

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The feature "Strip Unicode" for CM http://review.cyanogenmod.org/#/c/19381 solves the problem. Well, not quite like in Nokia and many other phones (they let you write diacritics but strip them only after you click "send" – and they send pure GSM chars) but it changes every char right at the moment of input:
– if you type letter by letter: when you type the diacritic (e.g. "ć" or "Ü") it instantly changes into its GSM alternative ("c" or "U");
- if you use dictionary: you type in letters, dictionary shows you propositions but when you choose the proposition(word) (by tapping it or typing space) it inserts the word with Unicode chars changed into their GSM alternatives.