MMS-capabilities coming soon to a Swedish iPhone?
By Laura June 
posted November 18th 2008 5:18PM
posted November 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]
does anybody know why they didn't include MMS to begin with? Chances are this app gets taken down anyway. There was a copy/paste app a while ago that got taken down really fast. It's just so stupid. I really do hate Apple, but I bought the phone because it rocks. I had a WinMo phone, it rocked as well, but I just like the iPhone better. So I'm keeping it. Not gonna stop me from wondering why they can't bang out a quick system for copy and paste. Or MMS. Got a little off topic there, didn't I...
Yea they did-
Here's the reason Apple isn't including MMS and video recording.
For MMS to work, you need to scale down the picture. The iPhone takes pictures at 1.2 or 2 megapixel quality (correct me if I'm wrong), so the image would have to be scaled down and reduced in quality a lot to be able to be sent. This, however, make its look crappy, especially on such a large screen; so if Apple put MMS and demoed it, it would look pretty crappy. They'd rather just not get into the whole rescaling/resizing mess.
Same thing for video recording. For smooth FPS video, the quality would have to be scaled back, making the video look bad. The thing about programs like Cycorder is that they take higher quality video, but the frame rate depends on the lighting conditions.
Lastly, copy and paste is probably an interface issue; how would they make it work, and be simple enough? With no buttons, implementing copy paste is tough, although it can be done. They just don't want to confuse people and make interfaces more complicated. Apple is very big on this stuff (think Human Interface Guidelines).
So will we ever see MMS/video recording/copy + paste on iPhone? It's very unlikely. The fact that they haven't released it after almost a year and a half just confirms that it's extremely unlikely that the new firmware will contain any of these features.
Maybe next June... after another $200 and two year contract.
Um no, try again.
Please stop with the excuses. When a product is missing things, recognize it, don't blindly defend.
iPhone has a average-to-crappy camera as cell phone cameras go (2MP). Free phones with better cameras than iPhone's send their pictures just fine. So picture quality has nothing to do with it.
Everyone knows that on a camera like iPhone's, good lighting is required for smooth video. So what? Not nearly enough of a reason to cut it out entirely. Plus, if some guy working in his basement (no offense to saurik intended) can make video work on iPhone, I'm sure Apple could figure out some way of getting it to work. Just a thought.
And as for copy and paste, there are multiple ways in which to implement in an intuitive way. The Storm does it with multitouch, and RIM doesn't even pretend to be a master of UI like everyone says Apple is. If Apple knows how to do user interface, they can come up with a simple copy-and-paste system.
With a company like Apple at the wheel, there's no excuse for shortcomings on a flagship product.
The image are already downscaled when sent through emal...
The n95 with its 300mhz cpu can record VGA quality video... And every recent smartphone can too... So it's clearly a question of how the software is done not the hardware's fault.
Copy paste on Windows Mobile drag stylus on text, tap and hold and select copy. Possible way on doing it on iphone: double finger tap and hold , select text to copy. double finger tap and hold again and select done.
It's not really rocket science.
Wow.. I wasn't really defending Apple... I'm saying that this can be done, but why it isn't. I'm saying it's entirely Apple's fault, not saying they couldn't do it because of such and such. I'm saying that's why they *won't*. Which is a bad thing.
I guess I wasn't really clear..
Umm and 8 megapixel phones can do MMS??? How does that make sense?
@Mobius_1
They scale it down. I'm not saying Apple can't, I'm saying Apple doesn't want to.
Yeh GREG thats the reason. You keep believing that.
Have you noticed how much the Iphone Camera sucks? One slight move and you have a blurry picture.
It sucks!
The penis mightier than the sword.
jobs still cant figure out mms ? and this thing is "jesus phone" hahahaha my chocolate has mms and "shazam" i mean v-cast song identifier.
@ Ducky: the iPod had "missing features" that all the clones and iPod "killers" included (i.e. FM radio), and look how that panned out...
oh STHU KENDAL.
You are sad to think that its ok for apple to be missing simple crap like this.
There is no excuse for it period. The only reason they hold back these simple things is so that they sell it to you suckers in the furture releases of the iphone.
I was one of them when they came out with 3G. When 3G had already been around for years.
Hahaha... The speed with which Engadget discussions disintegrate continues to amaze me :)
Hooray for jailbreaking your iphone. Free MMS apps and free video recording apps are already there.
Hooray for voiding your warranty in other to get basic functionality.
Just because you can jailbreak doesn't mean it shouldn't have been there in the first place. It's things like this that blur the lines between smart and dumbphones.
This is awesome. I really hope Apple will allow the app though. It's nice to see Telia doing something about it, but it's also quite surprising, as they're mostly known for providing expensive services. But maybe that's just it.. Telia seeking to get more money about of MMS costs on our bills? Anywho it's a good thing! =)
I bet this MMS app will probably contain carrier specific settings hard-coded... so even if the app does get released, it'll probably only work on iPhones that use Telia as a provider...
At least it's something, I guess.
You can send sms using email. Just send an email to the phone#@vtext.com for verizon, every service has some bridge. Then the service will send the message along to the phone. Keep your messages short and your pictures under 2 Megs and most services will pass them nonchalantly onto the receiving end. The sms folk can send sms's to an email address in most cases by simply formatting the to line from a phone number to an actual email address. There are tips on the web for doing all this kind of stuff. Someone just needs to package an for iphone that keeps a list of all these email address services, limits texts and then sends them along. It doesn't sound like rocket science. If this was a windows mobile device I could make an app, but I have never wrote a single line of code for an iphone I couldn't help. Anyone of you able to write an app to do this, if not you could probably write a page that renders on webkit to do this...
:/ I have a crappy lower end phone that I wish I could do half the stuff an Iphone or a G1 for that matter could do.
copy and paste sounds nice but flash is what im really looking for, imo that should be at the top of the list.
Of course, the problem with this is that making me get MMS from a third party is like asking me to go to a third party for an app that will let me create a directory in an operating system because the creator didn't think I needed directories when every other OS anyone else has created has that ability... Which phone OS doesn't allow MMS? Is there one?
WTF IS MMS????? yes im stupid
MMS is multi-media messaging. It includes the capability to send pictures, audio, and video messages via your phone. It also allows you to send text messages without the limit of 160 characters. Most phones include that feature already from all manufactures.....except the Iphone :(.
who tha hell uses mms? I have had a cell phone for 10 years and never once even thought of using picture messaging (sounds like something for school girls). And what with all those crappy phone UIs and data plans it would have been difficult and expensive to use anyway.
Alot of people use MMS, considering I'm an engineer who implements MMS for operators :). And most companies include an unlimitied messaging plan that include all messaging of text, pic, audio, video.
Just a small correction, the name of the company is TeliaSonera since Swedish Telia and Finnish Sonera merged in 2002. Telia is just the overall name for some of their services in Sweden.
I can understand why some people don't care about this function, but I assur eyou there are way more out there that do. With friends and family members having children and experiencing new things it is nice to be able to send a quick picture and share. It is obviously very basic as a function in todays age. Maybe we have been spoiled by it. I just don't understand not having it standard.
Its that big of a deal. There's that app in the app store which can hep you kind of do it called flutter. It works decent and was free to the beta users. Now there's a small fee attached i think.
Its NOT that big of a deal I mean. Sorry for the double post.