text messages converted to random characters after using "emoticons"

[rpenland]

I have been having problems with my nokia 820 when sending text messages along with emoticons . When i send a just a text it works fine . When i send a text with a emoji it corrupts the text sent and the person on the receiving end gets a bunch of characters ( mumbo jumbo ) . At that point i have to resend the text without the emoji.
Anybody have any similar problems .NEED HELP.

 

[ryker002]

Well you have to send it to phones that support Emoji. Such as other windows phones, or iPhones and some android phones with users using Go SMS. Hope that helps, unless you're sending it to people with all of the above.

 

[robin_uk_lumia]

I have the same problem with my Lumia 620 (smiley received as two squares by older Nokia phone) and it also showed up when sharing a photo on Facebook. I posted the photo with a comment that ended with a smiley, but the smiley never made it to Facebook. Its really not very intuitive - I mean as a user I expect the emoticons to work with Facebook if I'm given the option to use them when posting to Facebook. Not a good user experience IMO, but maybe they are very nice if the person/system at the other end is able to interpret them correctly

EDIT - After looking on Wikipedia I now understand that special Unicode characters are being used to encode these emoticons. If a device does not support a character it will be replaced by a square, so the result is quite understandable. However, I still think it gives a bad user experience! I have no way of knowing if the person I am texting will be able to see the symbols and so it seems silly to encourage people to use them for text messages.