Picture this: being charged extra to send emoji texts
by Miles Brignall from Technology | The Guardian on (#ZCSE)
You may have been delighted to get that smartphone for Christmas, but using it to send a smiley face will not make you happy when your bill arrives
If you received a smartphone, and particularly an iPhone, for Christmas, be careful how you send any future text messages, because you may well find yourself facing an unexpected bill for picture messages - even though you haven't sent any.
It's a little known fact that, depending on your handset and network, adding an emoji - a picture icon such as a smiley or a sad face - to a text message, or sending a text to an email address, can result in you being charged as much as 40p a time. On some phones, even typing a simple emoticon such as ;-) can cost you money when the software replaces it with an image file.
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