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Send Free SMS with iPhone and iPod Touch

Martin Brinkmann — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:56:54 +0000

Phone Providers are making lots of cash from SMS, the Short Messaging Service. It’s interesting in my opinion that they charge that much for such a small data transfer. A new trend that they probably do not like that much is the addition of new technologies that create free or low cost connections to the Internet because those connections can be used to send text messages for free.

It’s just a matter of finding the right service that is compatible to the mobile phone. In the case of the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch the My Digital Life website posted a nice trick. Users can grab the AIM client for their clients and install it on the device. Then it’s merely a question of adding phone numbers as clients in iChat or any other instant messaging client on the phone. To be precise the account name will be the complete phone number of the contact including country and area codes. A valid phone number would be +123456789 for example. The + sign has to stand at the beginning.

Now start the AIM client software and send the new contact a message. He will receive it as an SMS. His reply on the other hand will land directly in the AIM client software.

The benefit of this method is obviously that it is completely free if the Internet connection is free. Do you know other ways to send free SMS with the iPhone, iPod Touch or other mobile devices ?

Send Free SMS to 56 Countries

Martin Brinkmann — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 14:04:28 +0000

Why would someone pay for sending an SMS if he could send it for free on the Internet ? He should be sitting next to a computer of course but if the service is reliable there should not be a reason to pay for the SMS. Gizmo SMS can send SMS to 56 countries. Not all carriers are supported though and you should check their list of supported countries and carriers to find out if the carrier that you are sending the SMS to is supported.

The United States are leading the field with 30+ supported carriers followed by India, Russia, United Kingdom, Canada, Spain and Germany. It’s a bit problematic that you have to know the carrier of the person that you want to send the SMS to but it usually is not a problem to find out by analysing part of the phone number. That does not fall into weight when you send a SMS to your own phone to test the service though.

I ran into a problem when I tried to send messages using Firefox, the verification image was not readable at all. A switch to Internet Explorer solved that problem. I’m not sure if it was caused by my version of Firefox or if it is a general problem.

Other than that it was fairly easy to use. After selecting the country and entering the phone number I was able to enter the text of the message which was limited to 80 characters unfortunately and the verification code. It took only a few seconds before I received the SMS on my Nokia N73 mobile phone. It contained the text that I had entered and some advertisement for another Gizmo service.

Send Free SMS To US Numbers with Firefox

Martin Brinkmann — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:58:07 +0000

I don’t know how it is in the states but SMS are a phenomena in Europe. It’s a very easy foolproof way to send someone a short message without having to call that purpose. The limited space seems to have a huge impact on the language used while sending those messages with abbreviations that most adults cannot decipher anymore. If you are living in the United States or know a few people over there you might like the Google Send to Phone [via Tech Yard]extension for Firefox that lets you send free SMS to US numbers with Firefox.

The extension will add a cell phone icon after installation to the browser. If it does not appear automatically you need to customize the toolbar layout to drag and drop the icon into an appropriate place. A click on the cell phone icon opens a form where you enter the cell phone number, the carrier and the text that you want to send. Text that has been marked before clicking on the cell phone icon will be automatically entered as the message that will be send.

Not all US phone carriers are supported yet, only the largest are. You can email Google to ask them to include another US-based cell phone provider.

The service could also be used to send, more or less, anonymous SMS. It’s not completely anonymous because of server logs but there is no direct connection between the person who is sending the SMS and the phone number that appears on the recipients phone.