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mms posts

MMS for iPhone 2G and tethering on OS 3.1.2 explained, not for the faint of heart

by Ross Miller posted Oct 19th 2009 @ 9:49PM

Let's be clear upfront that this isn't for the casual iPhone jailbreaker, but if you feeling like living on the edge, you can give your original model an added boost of MMS capability, or any device with OS 3.1.2 the power to tether. Highlighted in a series of tweets today by iPhone dev team lead MuscleNerd, whiterat (for MMS) and two-bit (for tethering) will get the job done, but both require tinkering with the baseband, which is exponentially more advanced and brick-inducing than, say, installing Cydia. Venture forth with the instructions beyond the read links below.

[Via 9 to 5 Mac]

Read - iPhone 2G MMS
Read - OS 3.1.2 tethering

iPhone MMS is now live!

by Paul Miller posted Sep 25th 2009 @ 1:33PM

All you've gotta do is plug that iPhone 3G or 3GS into iTunes, run the teensiest of updates, restart the phone, and you can at last make that fashionably late entrance into the 21st century you've always dreamed of. That's right folks, MMS on the iPhone is live on AT&T at last.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

AT&T slips some iPhone MMS rollout details for Friday

by Chris Ziegler posted Sep 23rd 2009 @ 3:48PM

We've just heard from AT&T that new carrier settings for the iPhone 3G and 3GS will be available "late morning" Pacific Time (which would be early afternoon Eastern) this Friday, September 25, which will finally enable MMS support. Owners will have to tether up to iTunes to grab those settings, so fish out your cable (as if you don't have it permanently attached to your machine already) and make sure you've got some solid time in front of the computer to check for the update over and over (and over) again, alright?

[Thanks, Frank]

AT&T rolling out MMS to iPhone on September 25, tethering 'in the future'

by Chris Ziegler posted Sep 3rd 2009 @ 2:09PM

AT&T has just announced that MMS -- a much-ballyhooed feature of iPhone OS 3.0 -- will finally be hitting AT&T on September 25. There's still no date for tethering, though the company is holding the line that it'll be offered "in the future." Expanding on the logic behind the tethering delay, they're saying that "by its nature, this function could exponentially increase traffic on the network, and we need to ensure that some of our current upgrades are in place before we can deliver the expanded functionality with the excellent performance that customers expect." We're no network engineers, but "exponentially increase traffic" and "AT&T" are two things we don't typically like to hear in the same sentence -- let's hope the 850MHz, 7.2Mbps, and backhaul upgrades they're cranking on right now go a long way toward sorting that out. As for MMS, they're acknowledging that the release "does indeed fall a few days past the official end of summer," arguing that their support of more iPhone customers than any other carrier in the world made a positive launch experience a bit of a challenge. Of course, virtually every other phone AT&T sells (and has sold for the past several years) supports the same tech, so this feels like a pretty active admission that iPhone users blaze through data-rich features at a pace that the carrier has been ill-equipped to handle.

Stock-looking MMS support hacked onto 2G iPhone

by Chris Ziegler posted Jun 29th 2009 @ 11:50AM

Way back in the heady days of 2007, there was an iPhone without 3G data (hard to believe, we know, but trust us -- we were there). This iPhone, though revolutionary in some ways, was marred by the love-hate relationship its users suffered for missing out on some very basic features that they'd grown used to on mobiles of yore. One of those missing features, of course, was MMS -- and now, some two years later, here we are with a truly integrated MMS experience courtesy of the all-powerful hacking community. Granted, there have been MMS apps available for ages, but there's a difference: this is the same action 3G and 3GS owners are getting in conjunction with OS 3.0, which Apple curiously decided to hold back from original iPhone owners. As you might imagine, getting this going on your own phone is marginally more complicated than downloading from the App Store, so here's the question, you non-upgraders: just how badly do you want it?

[Thanks, Paul]

MMS and tethering functional on some AT&T iPhone 3Gs running 3.0?

by Chris Ziegler posted Jun 12th 2009 @ 4:40PM

AT&T's been feeding us a story that it'll offer MMS on the iPhone only "once [it completes] some system upgrades that will ensure our customers have the best experience," but here's the thing: it seems that it works right now -- if you've got a build of OS 3.0 that'll let it. None of us have been able to get it going ourselves, but we've been sent screenshots from a tipster that seem to indicate that both MMS and tethering are in full effect on the network, so there doesn't seem to be a network restriction involved (we can't verify whether the build we see here was tweaked, so we're thinking there might be some hackery in play). The strategy for ultimately deploying the features to AT&T customers is unclear, but seeing how some folks in Europe running the exact same gold build of 3.0 have access to MMS and those of us stateside do not, it's got to be a software switch that can be triggered remotely. Some form of SMS provisioning, perhaps? Let us know what you've seen out in the field in comments.

[Thanks, Arnoldo]

Update: Turns out the secret to enabling MMS and tethering lies buried in the carrier settings file, which happens to be the same black magic employed to roll out 3G MicroCell support a while back. Customer devices are at AT&T 4.0, but there's an AT&T 5.0 profile floating around the interwebs that turns the features on -- it's just a matter of finding it, installing it, and making sure that your account is provisioned for multimedia messaging. Thanks, everyone!

Gallery: MMS and tethering functional on some AT&T iPhone 3Gs running 3.0?

MMS finally comes to Apple's iPhone via OS 3.0

by Darren Murph posted Mar 17th 2009 @ 12:51PM

Apple's done a decent job of implementing features that we've all been clamoring for into its forthcoming OS 3.0, and aside from copy and paste, there's probably no one single feature add bigger than this. You heard right -- multimedia messaging (MMS) is at long last coming to the iPhone 3G (sorry, first-gen iPhone owners) after years of dealing strictly with SMS. During the keynote, Apple was ~~pretty~~ remarkably short with details, simply noting that MMS "support" would be added. Frankly, we don't expect anything mind-blowing; it'll probably look a lot like the current SMS setup, and it'll definitely make AT&T happy when you start firing away picture messages without first subscribing to an unlimited messaging plan.

Update: Apple's official PR on the subject has given us just a bit more to chew on. We're told that MMS will enable iPhone 3G users to "send and receive photos, contacts, audio files and locations with the Messages app," hinting that Apple may just smash MMS and SMS together into a single 'Messages' app in OS 3.0. Also of note, owners will also be able to "forward and delete multiple messages."

Nokia issues SMS Cleaner to cure 'Curse of Silence' bug

by Darren Murph posted Jan 29th 2009 @ 8:08PM

If your Nokia S60 handset has been stricken by the oh-so-cold 'Curse of Silence,' you'll probably want to pay attention here. Nokia has just loosed the SMS Cleaner on the world, not even a full month after the aforementioned exploit arrived on the scene. The handset maker claims that the application can "clean a Nokia S60 3rd Edition (Initial or Feature Pack 1) based device, which may have received a so called 'Curse of Silence' SMS message, and thereby restricted from receiving any new SMS messages." Installation looks to be pretty straightforward, and the file itself weighs in at a shockingly light 42KB. The read link's where it's all at, so head on down and get your sure-to-be-brief download on.

[Via IntoMobile]

'Curse of Silence' exploit squelches inbound SMS/MMS to Nokia S60 devices

by Ross Miller posted Dec 31st 2008 @ 10:37AM

Here's an odd one for you. Tobias Engel of the Chaos Communication Congress has discovered a rather nasty exploit that'll cause any Nokia S60 devices running versions 2.6, 2.8, 3.0 or 3.1 to stop receiving SMS and MMS messages. The "Curse of Silence," which has been independently verified by F-Secure, is triggered by sending an SMS that begins with an email address that's at least 32 characters long. The attacker must also change the protocol identifier to internet electronic mail before sending. Devices with versions 2.8 and 3.1 lock up after 11 such messages and still have some limited receiving capabilities, while 2.6 and 3.0 devices will go completely mum after just one attack. In both cases a factory reset is required to fix it, and he says there is no other known workaround for the user. We don't imagine this being a pervasive issue, but if you've got any tech-savvy enemies or malevolent pranksters in your life, you've been warned. Video demonstration is after the break, or hit up the read link to see if your device is among those listed at risk.

[Via Hack a Day]

Read - Vulnerability Advisory
Read - F-Secure Verification

Continue reading 'Curse of Silence' exploit squelches inbound SMS/MMS to Nokia S60 devices

Study sez Americans send twice as many text messages as Europeans, twice as prone to thumb failure

by Darren Murph posted Dec 5th 2008 @ 12:49PM

Okay, so maybe that "thumb failure" bit isn't in this particular study, but it's definitely a logical conclusion to draw, right? At any rate, a recent survey from Portio Research has found the mobile messaging market will likely bring in some $130 billion in revenues by the year's end, and that figure could climb to $224 billion by 2013. Also of note, Americans are said to send "double the number of messages that Europeans average each month," and that's despite the fact that 82% of USers never even use the service. Looking for one last tidbit to chew on? SMS was found to be the mobile messaging weapon of choice in every researched nation save for Japan, which (on the whole) relies more on mobile email than texting.

[Via textually, image courtesy of JFDaily]

Mobispine pens tell all about their iPhone MMS app, doesn't exactly tell all

by Laura June posted Nov 24th 2008 @ 11:07AM

We've heard a few things about the Mobispine MMS app supposedly being developed for the iPhone, but the company's just answered a lot of questions, and we thought we'd give you a quick rundown. Interestingly, the app will utilize Apple's announced but delayed push notification, which Mobispine says is due "pretty soon," though carriers may use SMS notification in lieu of the service. The company says that the app will be carrier-branded, and that it will be up to them how much to charge you, the MMS-starved consumer. Mobispine says that the software will "probably" be made available through the App Store, "probably" because it's still in some vague phase of development, and has yet to be approved by Apple. Just let us know when the thing is ready, okay guys?

[Thanks, Carlos]

Mobispine's iPhone MMS application... for the entire universe?

by Laura June posted Nov 20th 2008 @ 2:09AM

We heard yesterday that Telia customers might be getting an MMS app for their iPhones, and that it was being developed by the carrier themselves, with plans to launch in the next two months. Well, today we've gotten word that Mobispine is likely the developer of said application, and that they have plans to offer it to carriers all over planet Earth. Mobispine says that the app will be branded to each particular operator, and distributed via Apple's App Store, but we don't know when all of this is going to go down. Now we'd just like to meet the caveman owner of the iPhone pictured above who needed to be told (on November 15th!) that "Obama will be our next president."

[Thanks, Mike]

MMS-capabilities coming soon to a Swedish iPhone?

by Laura June posted Nov 18th 2008 @ 5:18PM

The oft-bemoaned lack of certain, um... capabilities of the the iPhone is forcing individual companies to take desperate measures, it seems. It's not entirely clear, but MacWorld says it's confirmed with Telia that the Swedish-Finnish carrier's developing an MMS-enabling app for the iPhone. MacWorld says the app will hit the market in the next two months, which is great news for everyone in Sweden. If you live anywhere else in the world, however, you'll just have to continue on, rueing the day you ever encountered Apple's MMS-spurning, copy and paste-hating handset.

Update: Though the source is Swedish, it's entirely reasonable to believe that this'll spread across all of Telia's markets (and the world?). Thanks, commenters!

[Thanks, Martin]

T-Mobile's CAMEO frame shows holiday snaps while you're still taking them

by Tim Stevens posted Oct 6th 2008 @ 9:08AM

It's been nearly a year since Parrot announced its DF7700 GPRS-endowed picture frame, said to possess the mystical ability to pull photographs straight out of the ether. Now T-Mobile has pledged to bring Parrot's magic frame to the US as the CAMEO, a $100 device that, when coupled with a $10/month service fee, can be the recipient of picture-bearing messages. When you get bored with that feature (or that fee), there's a mini-USB port plus slots for SD/MMC cards that will enable it to accept pics in a more traditional manner. Its 7-inch screen has a 720 x 480 resolution and is surrounded by an interchangeable leather border guaranteed to look cheap in any decor -- not just those with golden mirrors astride a marble mantelpieces.

[Thanks, Mark]

Nike PhotoiD lets you create hideous shoes from the comfort of your cameraphone

by Chris Ziegler posted Jun 18th 2008 @ 8:29AM

If you get a pair of blindingly bright clown shoes in the mail a few days after a late night of drunken revelry that you don't particularly recall... well, we think we know what happened. A new service from Nike in some European countries called "PhotoiD" allows cameraphone owners to snap a picture of pretty much anything their little hearts desire, send it to a short code via MMS, and get a rendered shoe in reply that uses the picture's two most dominant colors as its highlights. If you're feeling the kicks -- 1985 Dunk hightops, if you must know -- you can even buy them, which we figure is where things really start to get interesting. Creative on Nike's part, yes, but also a danger to the good sense of shoe-wearing shutterbugs everywhere.

[Via guardian.co.uk]