Emojis in Sms

Hi marcfarre - I checked in with the team on this and have some advice! 

When sending SMS messages via the Braze REST API, emojis may be removed or not displayed correctly due to the encoding standards used for SMS messages. Here are the key points to consider:

Check Encoding: Ensure that your message body is set to use UCS-2 encoding when including emojis.
Monitor Character Count: Keep track of the character count, especially when using emojis, to avoid exceeding the segment limits.
Test Messages: Send test messages to verify that emojis are displayed correctly and that the message is not inadvertently altered during segmentation.

And here's a bit more detail on those recommendations. 

UCS-2 Encoding: This encoding standard is used for SMS messages that contain non-GSM characters, such as emojis. UCS-2 allows for a wider range of characters but has a lower character limit per segment.

Reasons for Emoji Removal:

Encoding Limitations:
If an SMS message contains emojis, it must be sent using UCS-2 encoding. The character limit for a single UCS-2 segment is 70 characters. If the message exceeds this limit, it will be split into multiple segments, which can lead to issues if not handled correctly.

Message Segmentation:
When a message is split into segments, each segment must adhere to the character limits of the encoding type. If the message is not properly formatted or if the segments exceed the UCS-2 limits, the emojis may not be included in the final message sent to the recipient.

Character Count:
Each emoji typically counts as two characters in UCS-2 encoding. This means that the overall character count can quickly exceed the limit, leading to segmentation issues.