# Handset receipt

> A handset receipt is a delivery receipt generated when the recipient's phone acknowledges the message, the strongest confirmation SMS can give that a text arrived on the device.

When the phone receives the message, it returns an acknowledgement to the SMSC, which forwards a receipt to the sender's gateway. This is the only receipt that proves arrival on the device; it does not prove the message was read, and it is unavailable on routes or operators that stop at acceptance.

Handset receipts also make list hygiene easy: an unknown number fails at the first send with a clear reason, and an absent subscriber is retried until validity expires.

At SMSMeteor: "delivered" means a handset receipt was received; countries without handset receipts are marked on their page, and "sent" is the final positive state there.

Related terms: [Delivery receipt (DLR)](https://smsmeteor.com/glossary/delivery-receipt), [Carrier acknowledgement](https://smsmeteor.com/glossary/carrier-acknowledgement), [Message status lifecycle](https://smsmeteor.com/glossary/message-status)

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Source: https://smsmeteor.com/glossary/handset-receipt (HTML). Generated by SMSMeteor from the same data as the page. Summary of the whole site: https://smsmeteor.com/llms.txt