iPhone Tips & Tricks: Send and receive MMS on your iPhone
You might already know it but when I read this trick over at iPhone Central @ MacWorld, I thought of sharing it you. One of the features missing in the iPhone is it's lack of integrated support for MMS. If you were used to using MMS in your previous mobile phone then it can be that much more painful. However, there is some good news for you.
You can make use iPhone’s built-in support for email to work around this lack of functionality to send and receive picture messages and importantly without the need of some nerdy iPhone hack.
So how does it work? You must be aware that all wireless providers assign their subscribers an email address. So there is the secret of this iPhone trick, if you send an email to that email address which is based on your phone number, the email will get delivered as a text message. Similarly sending a picture to that email address using iPhone's built in "Email Photo" functionality will result in it getting delivered as a picture message (MMS).
The important part of the trick is also knowing the address of the contact you want to send a picture message to. Below is the list of common providers thanks to folks at Uneasy Silence, however do get it confirmed with your friend:
(All you will need to do is enter the recipients 10 digit number into the appropriate carrier field.)
Alltel = xxxxxxxxxx@message.alltel.com
AT&T = xxxxxxxxxx@mms.att.net
Boost Mobile = xxxxxxxxxx@myboostmobile.com
Cingular (AT&T) = xxxxxxxxxx@mms.mycingular.com
Einstein PCS = xxxxxxxxxx@einsteinmms.com
Sprint = xxxxxxxxxx@messaging.sprintpcs.com
T-Mobile = xxxxxxxxxx@tmomail.net
US Cellular = xxxxxxxxxx@mms.uscc.net
Verizon Wireless = xxxxxxxxxx@vzwpix.com
Virgin Mobile = xxxxxxxxxx@vmobl.com
The same principle works while receiving picture messages thanks to the built-in email client. All your friend needs to do is send the picture as an email to the email account that has been setup on your iPhone for you to receive a picture message.
Though we now have a workaround to the MMS limitation on your iPhone, you will agree that its not the ideal (Apple) solution, lets hope Steve Jobs is listening and enables true MMS support in future firmware updates.
[via iPhoneCentral]
Don't forget to rate this post:
Now I can send MMS messages but what about receiving them? Does anyone know the POP3 information for doing so?
Posted by: Matt | August 27, 2007 at 07:24 AM
I have tried numerous times to send a picture through email on my iPhone, and it doesn't work. The receiving phone (a Motorola Razr), gets the text and the subject of the message but no picture. This is very aggravating, as I send a lot of pictures and it's not working!!!
Posted by: lizzah | August 31, 2007 at 05:03 PM
this did not work for me. my friend has verizon and i got a failure notice sent back to my iphone.
Posted by: eric | September 13, 2007 at 10:27 AM
worked, i send one to my other att cell and its worked.
Posted by: ryan | September 15, 2007 at 12:24 PM
Is there any trick to send a text message to an email address? This function sure would be nice. My last couple phones did this no prob.
Posted by: Cory | October 01, 2007 at 10:18 PM
Why do people keep posting these useless "hints" EMAIL is NOT MMS.
Posted by: Useless | October 07, 2007 at 07:11 PM
This works great, but one downfall is that it doesn't count as "in network" messaging for your friends when they send you picture messages. Pretty lame Apple/AT&T
Posted by: Danny | November 14, 2007 at 10:24 PM
I still cannot send or recieve pictures!!! I keep getting the message that the connection to outgoing server "imap.emailsrvr.com" failed? What does that mean and how do I fix it? I am amazed that with all the technolgy this phone has, that it can't simply send or get pics????
Posted by: Heidi | November 16, 2007 at 09:15 AM
It worked for me!...iPhone to Razr, Razr to iPhone.
Perfect!!
Posted by: Sabra Bartlett | March 04, 2008 at 08:38 PM
well all this talk of mms there has been an application developed called swirlymms which will allow you to sed out mms messages the recive funcation has yet to be desined hoped this helps.
Jailbroken iphone need to run this app
Posted by: Gary Davies | March 15, 2008 at 09:40 AM
I have a much better idea. If you guys have Installer, install the application "Swirl MMS" you can send pics as long as there is Wireless Internet. Just recently i started receiving Picture Messages, however; I have not figured out to which file or folder the pics go to. Thanks to Adel Hallak for this info!
Posted by: Adel H | March 31, 2008 at 07:11 PM
I have a much better idea. If you guys have Installer, install the application "Swirl MMS" you can send pics as long as there is Wireless Internet. Just recently i started receiving Picture Messages, however; I have not figured out to which file or folder the pics go to. Thanks to Adel Hallak for this info!
Posted by: Adel H | March 31, 2008 at 07:11 PM
Emailing totally works for me. I send my boyfriend pics all of the time, he has Verizon and it always works. We still haven't figured out how to get it to work for him sending me pics though.
Posted by: AnaLee | May 14, 2008 at 10:55 PM