Creating SMS Fill-in form?

August 25, 2006 11:26 PM

Can an SMS be formatted/created in such a way that when it reaches the cell phone it looks like a fill-in form?

For example, I'd like to be able to send someone an SMS with the question "How old are you?" and when the message is open I want it to show a field into which the user would be able to input their answer and hit send.
is that possible?

posted by bokononito to technology (9 comments total)

I don’t think so: regular SMS is ‘limited by the constraints of the signalling protocol to precisely 140 bytes (140 bytes = 140 * 8 bits = 1120 bits). In practice, this translates to either 160 7-bit characters, 140 8-bit characters, or 70 16-bit characters.’
posted by misteraitch at 11:51 PM on August 25, 2006

SMS isn't programmable in this way. You could send them a link to a WAP page and hope they have it set up on their phone, but really you just need to work within the system as is.
posted by cillit bang at 4:33 AM on August 26, 2006

No, not at all possible
posted by bonaldi at 4:34 AM on August 26, 2006

SMS is not a mark-up language. You could send something like XHTML in the body of it, but I don't believe there are any phones that would render it correctly.

Even most American cell phone email clients don't do well with HTML email. The closest you could get would to SMS a URL and make a Mobile Compatible microsite.
posted by Ookseer at 4:38 AM on August 26, 2006

Hell, my phone doesn't even show line breaks properly.
posted by odinsdream at 8:40 AM on August 26, 2006

Hmmm... what led me to believe this is somehow possible is that on my Nokia phone I get special messages - when someone sends me an application, or when i request "configuration settings" from my mobile provider. So, if it is possible to send these types of messages, how come not the fill-in form?
posted by bokononito at 10:32 AM on August 26, 2006

most of the time, such messages come over the data part of the cellular network (GPRS or whatever depending on what kind of phone you have) or as a specially-formatted packet to the phone. they don't go over SMS. you might want to look at MMS instead - MMS is there for sending rich media stuff (think picture messaging/ringtones and all that jibjab) and might have the features you want.
posted by mrg at 11:14 AM on August 26, 2006

Effectively, you'd have to send a standalone program over MMS, and then prompt the user to install it. That program would have to include all the form fields you want and a mechanism for using your phone's GPRS to communicate back with the server in question.

Short answer: not at all possible over SMS. Is there an easy way for you to parse the information?

A contest I was running accepted entries over SMS. The SMS system would ping back any user submitting an entry saying "Thanks for your entry! Please enter a1 if you are 18-24, b2 if you are 25-35, c3 if you are 36-45 or d4 if you are 46+ to confirm your entry."
The system then took whatever response they sent and recorded it appropriately.
posted by disillusioned at 12:04 PM on August 26, 2006

Why not just send "how old are you?" and then they send back "20" or whatever. Where's the need for a form?
posted by reklaw at 2:35 PM on August 26, 2006