4 ms·
> Sharing a video via group MMS is fraught with problems, it often doesn't work, or the resolution is garbage. FYI, this is carrier related. Many carriers have
by kop316 5y ago
> Sharing a video via group MMS is fraught with problems, it often doesn't work, or the resolution is garbage.
FYI, this is carrier related. Many carriers have a hard limit on how big attachments are, and will silently reject them if you go over that limit.
What the limit is varies based on the carrier, but it seems that a "safe" limit is ~1.1 MB (This is the hard limit that Android enforces for the largest MMS attachment it allows). T-Mobile seems to allow higher (I think I got up to 10 MB?), but I do not know what would happen if you sent an MMS to another carrier that is that big (they probably silenty drop it).
So you have two options: either reduce how big it is (which Android Messaging silently does), or flat our reject it. So the video is problem is silently reencoded to accomedate the 1.1 MB limit.
Why doesn't this happen on iMessage? Probably because you can set your MMSC (the Server that sends/recieves MMS) to Apple's MMSC, so you can standardise how big it is.
- Nextgrid 5y ago> Why doesn't this happen on iMessage? Because iMessage is not MMS - it uses a custom protocol and works completely independently from the carriers.
- kop316 5y agoFair enough, I admittedly haven't looked the iMessage protocol so I don't know much about it. I just know that if you have an iPhone, you have to set your MMSC to Apple's servers versus the carrier's servers.
- afavour 5y ago> I just know that if you have an iPhone, you have to set your MMSC to Apple's servers versus the carrier's servers. I don't believe this is true. To the best of my knowledge (and a quick Google) Apple has no MMSC servers. I've certainly never input any. SMS and MMS sent on iOS use the same servers an Android phone would. But when the target phone number is detected as being iMessage capable that whole system is ignored and iMessage is used instead.
- kop316 5y agoFair enough. For a day or so I was looking up if I could somehow emulate iMessage on a Pinephone, and I remember a lot of it being a non-starter unless you had an iPhone. It stuck out to me that Apple had their own MMSC for some reason. But perhaps it is old news or I read the wrong post?
- jonfw 5y agoOn an iphone, when you send a text message, apple will take a look at the phone number you're sending it to and check if it's linked to an imessage account. If it's linked to an imessage account, you're not sending a text anymore, you're using an internet service just like whatsapp. There is no technical relationship between SMS and imessage, but to the user it's the same interface