The iPhone received a heavily-requested new feature on Friday when AT&T and Apple enabled multimedia messaging, including sending picture and video messages to other phones.
The MMS capability was enabled by sending a "carrier settings update" through iTunes. If you click "Check for Update" in iTunes, it will appear. Load the update, restart your phone and your iPhone will have MMS.
Sending MMS on an iPhone
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The new MMS update for the iPhone adds a
little "camera" button when you're writing text messages.
MMS Choice
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You can choose to take a new photo or video,
or pick one already stored on your iPhone.
Inline Photo
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Photos in MMS appear as part of a threaded
conversation on an iPhone.
Inline Video
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Videos appear as part of the threaded
conversation, too; just click to play them.
Photo Message Arriving
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When you get a photo message, you see the
thumbnail on your iPhone's lock screen.
Copying a Photo
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You can click that little right-arrow in
the conversation to expand your photo, or hold
down your finger on the photo to copy it.
Receiving a Video
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Videos also have the little right-arrow,
which lets you play the video in full screen.
Playing a Video
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You can scrub through video messages on
the iPhone using the standard iPhone clip bar.
Apple's picture messaging interface is as elegant as the company's other software. Picture messaging is built into the Messages app used for SMS. The app now has a new "camera" button that lets you take a photo or video, or attach a photo or video stored on the iPhone. I sent and received picture messages from AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile phones without a problem.
When you receive a picture or video message, you can expand or play it by tapping on the thumbnail image in the Messages app, or hold down your finger on the picture to copy it. You can then jump over to your Photos app to paste it into your camera album.
iPhone owners have been clamoring for MMS since the phone first launched in 2006; picture messaging has been available on many other phones since 2003. Apple announced the feature for iPhones in June, but AT&T took several months to implement it. AT&T released additional details about the MMS feature on Thursday.
Transmitting video messages, though, may further tax AT&T's already struggling 3G network. As reported by many media including The New York Times, AT&T's network is having trouble handling the massive amounts of data consumed by iPhone users. AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said the carrier was ready to handle as many video messages as iPhone owners were ready to send. That network may get an assist from AT&T's microcell, which will offload some of the AT&T network traffic.
"As you know, we have been preparing for the MMS capability for months and we feel confident that the experience is going to be good for our customers," Siegel said.
source:pcmagazine