DailyTech - Better Later Than Never: iPhone Finally Gets MMS on September 25

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Gadgets Better Later Than Never: iPhone Finally Gets MMS on September 25
Jason Mick (Blog) - September 4, 2009 11:18 AM

22 comment(s) - last by swampjelly.. on Sep 8 at 10:26 AM

MMS is coming to the iPhone on September 25. AT&T is late on its planned launch window for the feature, which it says was due to network quality issues. (Source: Gizmodo)

AT&T finally gives MMS to its iPhone customers, though missing its target of a "summer" launch

AT&T promised early this year to have MMS ready for the iPhone during the summer. After all, it didn't seem like that was too tall an order considering its other phones offered MMS and the iPhone OS v3.0 came with built-in support for MMS.

Now AT&T has finally announced an official date -- September 25. AT&T will roll out the update to iPhone 3G and iPhone 3G S phones, which will allow them to send video clips and pictures in text messages. The MMS capabilities will be offered for free as part of the existing service bundle.

AT&T says the tardiness was necessary to "to give our customers a positive experience from day one." AT&T adds, "[We needed] to make sure our network is ready to handle what we expect will be a record volume of MMS traffic."

The company says that another OS-supported feature that is highly anticipated -- tethering -- is coming soon but that there is "no set date". AT&T says it "expect[s] to offer it in the future", but says it can't yet, describing, "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."

AT&T's claims may be fair given the poor quality of its voice network and the fact that its data network can hardly be called robust. IPhone customers can at least take comfort in the fact that they will at long last be getting the ability to send MMS.

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What a pathetic excuse

By Ryanman on 9/4/2009 11:34:14 AM , Rating: 5

I don't believe for a minute this had anything to do with infrastructure. What are the chances of ATT actually investing in its network during a span of a couple months, just for iPhone traffic?

RE: What a pathetic excuse

By aapocketz on 9/4/2009 11:43:39 AM , Rating: 2

what do you suggest it was then? By allowing the iphone to use MMS I am sure they will see a much larger taxing of their system. I could imagine them wanting to bring some more systems online to handle that increase.

You would think they already have a huge margin of resources/bandwidth and did the traffic engineering analysis to account for large surges and traffic spikes. Does the FCC regulate this? I can only imagine a terrorist attack or city riot or celebrity appearance could knock out their systems because of the traffic spike. I want my picture message of the alien ship landing at the white house to go through!

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RE: What a pathetic excuse

By shazbotron on 9/4/2009 12:03:17 PM , Rating: 2

If you've ever been to a sporting event you would know that this happens quite frequently.

Last year at a regular season Bulls game in December I was not able to make or receive any calls, though having strong signal, due to 'call volume.' Same thing has happened to me a couple of times at Cubs games.

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RE: What a pathetic excuse

By Ryanman on 9/4/2009 12:04:46 PM , Rating: 2

I suggest they knew they could f around with their customers that bought an iPhone for months and nobody would care. I suggest they did little to nothing during this time period, and I suggest that they saved a couple bucks in bandwidth by pussyfooting around.

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RE: What a pathetic excuse

By zerocool84 on 9/4/2009 7:20:08 PM , Rating: 2

Of course AT&T doesn't care. People want the iPhone so bad they are willing to put up with the crappy company that is AT&T. I don't understand how people put up with AT&T.

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RE: What a pathetic excuse

By HrilL on 9/4/2009 1:08:19 PM , Rating: 2

The networks get overwhelmed all the time. Ever go to a massive event? Like a 60,000 person rave? Calling is completely useless since you can't actually get it to connect. Text messaging can take hours to get to your friends. At&t is the worse at big events from what I could tell. At least in the LA area. All my friends on Verizon had a lot better service. You'd think at sporting events or places where they take place they would have extra coverage for when its needed. Another At&t fail.

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RE: What a pathetic excuse

By HaB1971 on 9/4/2009 1:20:51 PM , Rating: 2

Well you can also look at the fact that AT&T has had to deal with a contract dispute (at least in the south east) with it's line workers, which I know thats nothing to do with wireless but they'd been training OFFICE staff to take over the roles of line workers and others incase of a strike.

I think they've got plenty of internal headaches to deal with including their own sucky customer service and network issues.

So the real answer here is, they just suck.

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As a iPhone owner

By Chaser on 9/4/2009 12:05:37 PM , Rating: 5

It's about *ucking time.

RE: As a iPhone owner

By 67STANG on 9/4/2009 1:09:21 PM , Rating: 2

True, but I'd rather have tethering capability first... You shouldn't have to jailbreak this thing to make it happen. As a 3G owner, I can't believe there's no video recording capability either.... I mean, my 4 year old LG Chocolate could do that. Pretty sad.

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RE: As a iPhone owner

By DaveSylvia on 9/4/2009 3:20:57 PM , Rating: 2

As far as I know you don't need to jailbreak your iPhone to get tethering. See these two sites for help:

http://help.benm.at/help.php

http://tiny.cc/2dLvL

The tiny url is to a Google Cached page that is a how-to for enabling internet tethering. It worked pretty well for me so give it a try!

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RE: As a iPhone owner

By hyvonen on 9/4/2009 11:59:11 PM , Rating: 2

I hope you guys know that tethering is prohibited in the Terms of Contract of AT&T's regular plans (including the "unlimited" data plan). If you're going to do tethering, you need a tethering plan, or risk getting slapped with $1000+ bills...

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RE: As a iPhone owner

By invidious on 9/4/2009 6:09:40 PM , Rating: 3

You knew what you were getting when you bought the phone, and if you didn't then your a stupid consumer and no one should care what you think.

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"Look at this great new feature!!"

By CrazyBernie on 9/4/2009 12:21:33 PM , Rating: 5

I can already see the ads glorifying this wonderful new ability that the folks at Apple and AT&T have cooked up... all for their "Dedicated Customers."

RE: "Look at this great new feature!!"

By HaB1971 on 9/4/2009 1:26:15 PM , Rating: 5

They will claim they actually invented MMS... good thing they decided not to charge extra for MSS otherwise it would stand for Milking More Suckers

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Is there any point being critical?

By dark matter on 9/4/2009 2:54:50 PM , Rating: 2

No seriously. For unknown reasons Apple owners are completely unable to handle any kind of criticism of Apples products or business practices.

The only other kind of people I know who are this fanatical are those sport mad people who support their local team. With sports I can understand how you can get like that, but with regards to an electronics company, it just baffles me.

If there are Aliens, they probably are making sure we don't know they exist and there are warning beacons all around our solar system screaming "stay away!"

RE: Is there any point being critical?

By dhalilahma on 9/5/2009 4:27:33 AM , Rating: 2

Who cares, we have had MMS on the iPhone in the UK for months, its no different to other phones, MMS is for teenage girls with too much time on their hands.

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RE: Is there any point being critical?

By Donkey2008 on 9/5/2009 1:41:25 PM , Rating: 2

True nuf. The 53 replies in this thread by iPhone owners adamantly defending Apple and AT&T are a testament to your belief.

That's sarcasm by the way.

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RE: Is there any point being critical?

By uibo on 9/7/2009 10:27:40 AM , Rating: 2

Apple, AT&T and their iPhone are the top 3 things in the world . . . . . . for me to poop on.

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Useless...

By MattDamon on 9/7/2009 4:33:25 AM , Rating: 2

The phone should have launched with mms....its doesnt even have a secondary camera...i honestly dont understand why ppl waist there money on it.

RE: Useless...

By swampjelly on 9/8/2009 10:26:50 AM , Rating: 2

what's a secondary camera? Some phones have a second camera? if so, what for?

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Tethering

By kmmatney on 9/4/2009 12:18:35 PM , Rating: 2

There has been tethering available for a while (I didn't have to jailbreak my iPhone to get it) but it does run a bit slow. I'd hate to see how it works with more traffic. I almost never use tethering, however, as I can do just about everything on the phone directly when I travel.

No doubt....

By otispunkmeyer on 9/4/2009 12:38:39 PM , Rating: 2

No doubting that when this feature is released there'll be a smarmy, yet slick, TV advertisement on every channel telling you MMS is wonderful and how amazing the iPhone is for having it and how brilliantly it all works. like its never been seen or done before.

their last advert banged on about video recording and cut and paste like it was the 2nd coming of Christ. it made out like they were cutting edge, never before seen features... yet every phone ive used for the past oh 5-6 years has been plenty capable of doing them.

i do like apple products ( i have a MBP and a shuffle), but their head-up-own-arse-be-all-and-end-all attitude really gets on my wick.

they just dont have the right to be like that when they're still giving one of the worlds most expensive mobile phones basic features that other phones have been giving their owners for years.

you know, nokia or samsung dont shout about cut n paste or video recording on their TV ads because its par for the course. apple however trumpets it about like alien technology from outer space.