TEXT messaging is about to grow up, which could mean that the curious
language it spawned is about to meet its F8.
Cellphone users worldwide send 15 billion short message service (SMS)
mailings per month. But New 杏吧原创 has discovered that makers of the next
rash of mobile phones have quietly adopted an emerging standard called the
Enhanced Messaging Service (EMS). This allows phones to send and receive much
longer messages, which will remove the need for the shorthand familiar to every
teenage texter.
EMS-compatible phones will also let you embed sounds and attach animated
graphics to your messages鈥攁nd, unlike now, send them to phones of any
make. To the user, EMS is like e-mail鈥攂ut you won鈥檛 need WAP or an
always-on Internet-style system.
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EMS was designed for 3G phones, but because the market for 3G is uncertain,
the designers have made sure EMS also works with existing networks. 鈥淲ith EMS
you can wish someone happy birthday, complete with music and pictures鈥攐r
tell someone they are an idiot, with words underlined and in bold or italics,鈥�
says Colin Ellis of Ericsson.
Like SMS, EMS sends message data in the control channels designed to set up
speech calls. The network waits until there is space, then transmits the
message. EMS messages will still be transmitted in 160-character chunks, but
longer messages will automatically be strung together like an e-mail. Image and
music files are limited to 128 bytes but can be combined to make longer tunes
and bigger pictures, animations or a scrolling map.