To MMS or Not MMS , thats the question!

[Watcher]

Email is best! The picture quality is better. I receive it instantly and I don't have a limit on how many I can send. My freinds enjoy telling me that my fancy smancy phone can't receive mms until I say send it in an email. Then they shut up. If they have email on the crap phone it is too difficult to use so they won't.
Of course I'll use it if/when it's available. But for the most part I prefer email. Mms is the wave of the PAST.

I'm with you, trust me, BUT most of the people that used to send me photos all the time stopped doing it when I gave them my email address to send the pictures. I think they just thought it was a hassle to get out of the habit of selecting my phone number and choosing my email address instead, especially when sending group MMS. I can actually understand that. Usually you just type the person's name in and choose them but if you have to go the extra step to navigate and find their email address, that's an extra step most people won't be willing to do.

And the really weird thing? I NEVER used MMS on my other phones that were capable of doing it. Now that I've had MMS enabled on my 3G since the 3.0 beta phase, I'm freakin using it all the time! I swear my friends and family are tired of me sending them photos, probably because they don't have an unlimited messaging plan like I do!

 

[UTVOL06]

Im really ready for MMS..i have friends and family constantly sending me mms photos. Some don't have email on their phones.

 

[phillyslickster]

I'd definitely use MMS. It's a pain to type in all of the information for the MMS email address to the various carriers. I've only stored that for the people that I send MMS to often. Otherwise, I don't send MMS. I post them to my MobileMe gallery and let people go there to look at the pictures.

I'm not understanding what's taking AT&T so long to get MMS for the iPhone.

 

[shutter]

Email is best! The picture quality is better.

This is only true if you copy the photo by tapping and holding the photo, selecting copy, then paste it into the email. If you select the share option in your photo library and then choose email from the pop up...it compresses the photo just as much if not more than it does in the mms app.

I tested this during the 3.0 beta phase when I had mms functioning, email actually sent a smaller file size than mms.

 

[JustinHorn]

I tested this during the 3.0 beta phase when I had mms functioning, email actually sent a smaller file size than mms.

I find this hard to believe, but I guess I should be able to find out for myself in the next few months.

 

[chobbs1]

Second that.

 

[shutter]

LOL, guess I am just making this up.

Emailed Photo - 206KB
MMS Chose existing photo - 418KB
MMS Take Photo - 372KB

Those were the results I got in beta 2 or 3. They may have refined the compression a bit more in the final release, not sure, but that's what it was. I emailed and mms'd to my me.com email address.The only reason I even did it was because I would have some photos refuse to send when mms + take photo.

 

[ericUT]

Considering MMS services will not cost you anything extra, I find it hard to believe I won't take advantage of this feature.

However, I find it FAR easier to just upload a pic to TwitPic or facebook and then ALL my friends can view it at their leasure without pushing some incredibly annoying picture to their phone. What do I need to send anyway? SOme picture of my dog? SO lame.

 

[chobbs1]

Again. We cannot verify. Don't be insulted. I don't just believe because somone said so... Duh.

 

[shutter]

Email is best! The picture quality is better.

Again. We cannot verify. Don't be insulted. I don't just believe because somone said so... Duh.

If you cannot verify, how can you make the first statement? You make unverifiable statements and then say mine was suspect???

 

[JustinHorn]

Alright, lets not get into an argument over something so silly. I was just basing my statement on the idea that MMS is technology made for handling multimedia file on phones that were running on 2G (pre EDGE).

One thing I didn't think about is that maybe the iPhone MMS will be capable of sending higher res pictures to the at&t MMS server and since you MMS direct to your email it didn't get compressed more, but if you were sending to another non iPhone it might have to. It might even been compressed down at at&t server if coming back to another iPhone? Maybe the reason for the MMS delay is they are planning on sending higher res between iPhone to iPhone MMS which is a different setup than what they have for all the other phones?

Like I said before we will all know for sure soon enough, hopefully in the next 6-8 weeks.

 

[anon(1605018)]

I can wait for MMS, ive had it on other phones for years and I bearly ever used it. I maybe sent like 30 a year, ill just be happy if my battery gets better. Its maybe the worst/second worse battery ive ever had.

 

[Duvi]

Also... MMS being sent can only have a max of 500kbs. Email doesn't have that limit. Not sure what happened in the test, but I know whether it's copied into email or using the "share" method, it should have more kbs by email than MMS.

 

[chobbs1]

You got me there I admit I was already making an assumption. It was not baseless, though. I have had phones that could do MMS and the pics were never very good. But emailed pics have Always been better. I am unable to verify that with the iPhone as of yet. But until then I will withold judgement and be a bit more careful as to what I post. Thank you for pointing that out!

 

[chobbs1]

I also did not say you post was suspect. I just agreed that it was hard to believe. No hard feelings, eh?

 

[CoryJP]

ATT says theres no additional fees.. does that mean no fees when they setup MMS on the iPhone or no fees when we send out MMS picture messages to friends and family?

 

[alex6speed]

I personally went with exclusively e-mailing as "texting". Most of the people I'm in contact with have smartphones with e-mail, so it makes things a whole lot easier. This is especially true with mobileme. With my wife also on my account with an iPhone, I can't fathom the thought of paying an extra $30 for unlimited text on top of the $120 I'm currently paying.

 

[Behshad]

I personally went with exclusively e-mailing as "texting". Most of the people I'm in contact with have smartphones with e-mail, so it makes things a whole lot easier. This is especially true with mobileme. With my wife also on my account with an iPhone, I can't fathom the thought of paying an extra $30 for unlimited text on top of the $120 I'm currently paying.

Hand me one of the oars, cause Im in the same boat

I think that AT&T will not charge a fee for setting up MMS but will charge some kind of a fee for MMS, just to &^$& with us .

 

[chobbs1]

AT&T is not charging us anything extra for MMS. They have already stated that it will not do so.

 

[Behshad]

AT&T is not charging us anything extra for MMS. They have already stated that it will not do so.

Link please?