Sending fullscreen, disappearing SMSs to an iPhone
Where I live (Copenhagen, Denmark) there is a taxi company which offers to send you an SMS when the car you ordered is about to arrive.
The SMSs are unlike any I have received on my iPhone in that they appear fullscreen and are not saved to the SMS application. See this screenshot:
As soon as you press "Dismiss" the message is completely gone. No trace of it in the SMS application.
I was thinking that the ability to do this could be useful for apps in some way. Perhaps offered instead of a regular push notification for super important things. But most of all I am curious to learn what's going on.
Is this a regular SMS or some sort of cell network alert?
How can these be sent? Is it content formatting which triggers this special display or is it a protocol feature?
How would they appear on other phones?
If it is not a regular SMS but some sort of network alert would it be possible to send one to a 3G-enabled iPad?
Answer
Prefix your text messages with *go.
See this link!
Be sure to see this link (link is now dead so view the archive.org version) too as it may cost an additional charge to send them. After research only GSM providers over seas (not in the US) can do this.