Reasons to use MMS - and a couple of tips, too
One of the differences that’s been highlighted between the two latest heavyweight mobile devices, Apple’s iPhone and the Nokia N95, is the fact that the iPhone doesn’t handle MMS messages. If you’ve noticed that your phone does them but you’ve never used them, now’s the time to get yourself introduced!
MMS is multimedia messaging service. Which, never mind that—it means you can send pics and video and STUFF in what is more than just an oversized text message. It’s a feature that’s been a part of S60 for a long long time, but there are plenty of people who never use it. For shame! It’s one of the more entertaining things a phone actually does.
To use it, just open messaging and create a new multimedia message. Key in your text, add a picture or sound or video, or even more than one, and then hit send. Alternatively, if you’re viewing a picture, you can hit Options, select Send, and Via Multimedia Message. You’ll notice this popping up in context menus whenever you’re viewing or listening to something that can be sent by MMS.
So, here are the quick hits for Why You Oughta Use MMS If You Don’t Already:
- A picture really is worth a thousand words. And if you’re the type that wants to write a thousand words on your phone, I don’t know what else to say to you.
- Show someone something you’re shopping for, map directions, the spot in the park where you’re waiting for them to show up with a picnic basket, a diagram you need them to see, a picture of the gang you’re with in the pub as incentive to join the party (or deterrent, depening on how long you’ve been in the pub) or your facial reaction to their last SMS. If you need to show them something instead of describing it, MMS really works.
- It’s instantaneous. You don’t wait for a person to get to their email or to see them in person to show them on your phone. Just snap a pic and it’s off.
- News and radio channels often have MMS numbers (or email addresses). If you happen to snap the right shot of an event, why not send it to your local news?
- Send to another phone or to an email address. Just key in an email address instead of a phone number. Even if you don’t need to send any multimedia, this can come in handy if you haven’t gotten around to setting up email on yoru phone but need to send a message to someone’s email address.
- Many S60 devices come with a little application called “Muvee” in it. I’ll be posting on that one later and I’ll let you explore that one on your own for now, but it’s been one of my favourites for sending something to really brighten up a person’s mood. Simple, big on the personal touch, and extremely silly.
- Nothing says “I love you” like sending someone a new ring tone. It’s possible with MMS.
- MMS is another simple way of uploading photos to a photo community like flickr or to a blog. Many of these places allow you to upload photos via email. Well, MMS can send to an email address, so it works just fine!
Not working?
First off, if your MMS messages aren’t sending, it may be because you don’t have the proper settings in your phone. If your phone didn’t come with the settings already installed, try out Nokia.com support (quick links to settings if you live in the US or in Europe… otherwise just go to your region’s support pages on Nokia.com and look for Settings). Another factor, which seems obvious but isn’t to everyone, is that the person on the other end has to be able to receive MMS messages. If their phone doesn’t handle them, your network provider will often use another solution, such as forwarding a link by SMS to the message.
What have I left out? I know that a large percentage of mobile-savvy people still never bother with MMS, but the criticism (too difficult or inconvenient) is really unfounded IMHO. It’s all in good fun, and occasionally really useful.
All of which are good reasons why you may want to use MMS, however the reason people prefer to send pictures by e-mail is down to cost. It’s usually was cheper to pay for the bytes than the fixed cost of an MMS….
My main application for MMS is indeed sening pictures to e-mails while I’m on the road, as opposed to writing a postcard.
There are two limitations that keep me from doing this more often:
- On most networks I have tried, because of the way charging for MMS works, the recipient of an e-mail cannot reply to an MMS-to-mail (or only reply once, and the result often gets messed up quite severely if the other party isn’t careful about cutting out quotes and such)
- S60 phones seem to be set up to default to scale images down to low resolution, so I have quite often ended up sending rather nice snapshots, only to hear a few days later that they ended up the size of a postage stamp. I know that this can be set up in the Messaging Settings, but if I’m out hiking in the Alpes, I usually have other things on my mind than checking options three menu levels deep.
ciao marcus
I like the idea of MMS but in practise I’ve found it to be more trouble than it’s worth. I live in the UK and MMS has been supported by all networks for several years now. Also it is now *very* rare to see someone who has an old phone that can’t receive MMS (certainly all my friends have capable ones). However, MMS sending is still incredibly unreliable:
Compare that to SMS that is limited but always works - everywhere, on every phone and on every network. I’m not critisizing S60 here btw (it has very nice MMS user interface IMHO), I’m just pointing out general problems that put people off sending MMS. After all what’s the point sending a message at 4 times the price of a text when you don’t even know if it will arrive (and you do get charged regardless… I know because it’s happened to me several times)?
Even better than MMS though is Flickr upload directly from the N series phones.
No matter where I am, I just keep wanting to take pics and upload them straight to Flickr. It means everyone can see the pics at once, especially if you then setup something like a Flickr widget on your blog so that the pics are auto-published to people who might otherwise not have a look at your Flickr pics!
Good post though, I like it
MMS it’s great technology. I use it very often in my phone. Thank you for your article. Greetings
For anyone who had just gotten hold of a brand new PSP, learning how to put psp game downloads to PSP is something that should be learned. Learning how to do so can help a person enjoy his PSP to the fullest, explore all of its features and maximize its use.