Didn't think of it that way regarding the bits, interesting. Although I don't see how it makes saturation (and overly high contrast) more of an issue there, which comes from not having those more nuanced in-between shades so you end up relying more on high contrast colors and full on 255 bit values on the RGB scale, on SMS.

However it's also true that the hardware components of for example the MD will alter the color output, making some steps between shades closer and others farther (sadly it makes darker shades less flexible).
Then there's also shadow/highlight mode for MD which increases the shades by 2x with added in-between RGB values, and while it's a bit tricky to use it saw good use in Ecco 2 and Toy Story for example.