‘If I’d had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter.’

Sound familiar? Then you may like SMSzipper, a mobile app that lets you send much longer text messages from your Nokia S60 device than is otherwise possible.

Text messaging is technically known as ‘SMS’, which stands for ‘short message service’. Short, indeed: SMS text messages are limited to 160 characters — that is, letters, numbers or symbols.

But what if you want or need to send more than 160 characters at one go? This is where SMSzipper can help. By using text-compression algorithms, the mobile app lets you send SMS messages longer than 160 characters from your Nokia device.

In fact, SMSzipper lets you text as many as 480 characters in a single message. It does so by compressing the characters by up to 66 per cent.

SMSzipper’s user interface is available in either English or German, but you can send text messages in other languages, too. In fact, SMSzipper lets you select compression ‘codebooks’ for different languages. To do this, go to Settings and select the languages that will be used by the sender and the recipient. Then the app picks the most efficient compression method for each. Currently, the app’s language options are English, German, French, Russian, and Latvian. In the screenshot below, I have set the conversation for two English speakers:

Two requirements of SMSzipper merit a caveat. First, to send and receive compressed messages, both the sender and the recipient must have a copy of SMSzipper loaded and running on their Nokia devices. In other words, if your friend does not also have SMSzipper running on their phone, then you cannot send them a compressed text message. (There is, however, a ‘regular’ SMS’ feature in the app for sending shorter text messages of 160 characters or less to friends who don’t have SMSzipper.)

The second requirement: To receive a compressed message from another SMSzipper user, you must have the app open and running. Incoming compressed messages appear only in your SMSzipper inbox, not in your phone’s ‘regular’ SMS inbox.

This next screenshot shows how ‘normal’ a long incoming message will appear when it lands in you SMSzipper inbox. The message exceeds the regular 160-character limit, so it has been compressed by the app. Yet it appears fully and with no obvious compression on the receiving device’s screen:

These differences aside, much of SMSzipper will be familiar to anyone who has ever sent a text message. The app provides you with an inbox and outbox, as well as folders for drafts, sent messages, and trash. To create a new SMS, you simply select New SMS, add the recipient’s phone number (and SMSzipper can ‘see’ your phone’s address book), key in your message, and hit Send.

I tested the free version of SMSzipper, but there is also a paid version that offers three extra features. The first, Self-destruction SMS, automatically destroys an SMS message after it has been received and a certain amount of preset time has passed; it sounds useful for spying, illicit affairs, and whatever other secretive activities you have in mind!

Second, Dated SMS lets you send a message now, but define a future time and date when the message will appear in the recipient’s inbox; sounds great for ‘remembering’ birthdays.

And third, Subjected SMS adds a subject line, similar to what you get with e-mail, to your SMS messages.

There is at least one other difference between the free and paid versions. On the free version of SMSzipper, after you click on a compressed message in your inbox, you must wait about five seconds before the message opens; and while you are waiting, a flash screen appears encouraging you to buy the paid version. On the paid version, apparently, received messages open as soon as you click on them.

The paid version of SMSzipper is not available on Ovi Store, but you can purchase it from publisher Acticom’s SMSzipper site. There, a single license costs 9.90 euros, and a partner pack with two licenses costs 14.90 euros. Acticom also offers several packages ranging in price all the way up to 99.90 euros.

SMSzipper Free is available on Ovi Store, and it runs on most Nokia S60 — both touchscreen and non-touchscreen — devices.