I'm brand new to IOS push notifications. I have been reading about them and can't seem to find this information anywhere. I have read that the size limit on a push notification is 256 Bytes. Does this size limit include things such as the device token that have to be sent and other overhead information about the notification. If so what is the actual size I have avaliable for my content. 

Also what format are they using to interpret the text that I send? Is the conversion 1 character = 1 byte or is it more than that. Really I want to know how many characters can I send in a push notifications.

Thanks for any help in understanding the limitations of push notification payloads.