IPhone – Browsing the Web through unlimited SMS plan

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I recently purchased a plan for an old iPhone 5, which includes unlimited call and text, but no data. I was thinking: would there be a way to browse the Internet through text messages?

I know there used to be something like this in existence for Android, called the Cosmos web browser, but I am looking for an iPhone solution.

What I want is to be able to, for example, send a url through text message to a server (or to my home computer), and get back the html of the requested page, that I could then plug into an HTML viewer. Eventually, I could copy paste a link from that page into another message, and get back the corresponding page.

Another idea: Since I have limited space on my device (only a few gigs), could I set up some sort of service at my home computer to which I could request a movie title through text, and it would send me the corresponding binary or hex of the entire video file through text… Then, I could copy/paste that into a viewer?

I have a Windows computer at home.

Please let me know if some sort of text web browser exists for iPhone, or if this is even feasible.

Best Answer

A week later, I found what I was looking for. After playing around with Google Voice and SMS APIs, I stumbled across an online service that offers exactly what I want, for free.

It's called txtWeb, and consists of just messaging 898-932 with your command, ex. @www YouTube.com returns:

(X)
(Y)Upload
* Home

* (Z)Trending
* 
      o (X) Home
      o (Z) Trending
  -----
* Best of YouTube

      o (A) Music
      o (B) Sports
      o (C) Gaming
      o (D) Movies
      o (E) TV Shows
      o (F) News
      o (G) Live
      o (H) Spotlight
      o (I) 360° Video
  -----
* 
      o (J) Browse channels
  -----
* Sign in now to see your 
channels and recommendations!

  (K)Sign in
  -----
* 
      o (L) YouTube Red
 (N) Show ad...<br/><br/>
Reply M for more<br/>---<br/><
br/><br/></body></html>

Which is a bit outrageous but fulfills exactly what I needed.

Other commands include @wikipedia [query], or @daak, which offers a rudimentary email checking interface for gmail.

Fun.

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