[snac]

That's really cool! There are situations where data is unreliable or congested, having a backup is very handy. SMS is very common LMICs as data can be expensive, nevermind the devices themselves are difficult to come by. I could see a UCS-2 implementation being a great feature for a project like this.

I built something similar recently (inspired by this project), a SMS to DuckDuckGo search [1] and weather lookup [2]. The submitted repo's app is Android only, so having a more universal approach is fun to have. I live and work remotely, my closest neighbour's km's away do not have internet but only cell phones with unlimited SMS. With no internet, they would not be able to download the app. Sort a chicken and the egg problem.

[1] https://github.com/snacsnoc/smsferret [2] https://github.com/snacsnoc/tomorrowsms

[lukeasch21]

Thanks for the praise, and yes a UCS-2 based solution would be the natural progression of this project. Unfortunately it becomes much more complicated to encode because of how many code points are available! Your DuckDuckGo and Weather solutions look great, especially since they are focused on specific problems, they are space-efficient and easy to use without an app. It's interesting that you bring up your case of rural neighbors with unlimited SMS but not internet - I do see your point about the chicken-and-egg problem, but my intentions were that since the app is packaged as an apk, the file could be shared around when people meet up over Bluetooth or similar protocols.