Question about MMS on the iPhone.

FunkTheWorld · Jul 22, 2013

I'm an Android user (a huge fan of Android, though I don't really dislike iOS, I just prefer a lot of the freedom that comes with Android) that is considering MAYBE switching to the iPhone 5/5S when I get my upgrade.

Now, my question is, how does iOS/Sprint (or any carrier for that matter, I'm not sure if this thing would vary from carrier to carrier) handle MMS on the iPhone 5? Jellybean (Android 4.1.2+) apparently has a built in compression "feature" where it compresses the images to incredibly small file sizes thus making the quality of the image diminish. It's pretty annoying having a phone with a great camera that can't send quality MMS photos because of horrible compression.

Does anyone with an iPhone 5 (Sprint preferably, though people on other carriers inputs are very welcome as well) know how iPhones on Sprint handle MMS? My girlfriend has the 4S on Verizon and there's no obvious compression happening when she sends me images, but mine always look terrible when I tap on the preview after sending them (they look great in gallery, it's only when they're sent that they look like absolute crap).

Thanks.

powerstrokin · Jul 22, 2013

I have Sprint on my iPhone 5. I haven't noticed any degradation like you're describing. I imagine pictures are reduced in size and probably quality when sending via mms but it's not bad like you're talking about.

Video via mms is a different story, but I think that's an across the board issue.

Emailing either video or pictures would be one way to get around the loss of size or quality.

Again I haven't had a problem with pictures.

I hope this helps you.

FunkTheWorld · Jul 22, 2013

powerstrokin said:
I have Sprint on my iPhone 5. I haven't noticed any degradation like you're describing. I imagine pictures are reduced in size and probably quality when sending via mms but it's not bad like you're talking about.

Video via mms is a different story, but I think that's an across the board issue.

Emailing either video or pictures would be one way to get around the loss of size or quality.

Again I haven't had a problem with pictures.

I hope this helps you.

Yes, that is a big help, thanks. Video is a problem on every carrier I believe because those can get to being pretty huge files, especially with 1080p footage. Maybe I can try and upload an image here via tapatalk or something to give an idea of how bad the compression is. I forgot to include this part, but I was thinking it's probably something to do with Jellybean (4.1.2 and later) because I can't remember having this issue on ICS or Gingerbread.

And yeah, I've been told to try e-mail, but it's inconvenient for the people I'm sending it to to open up their e-mail just to check for a picture even though I myself don't mind it.

Thanks for the help!

JeffM123 · Jul 24, 2013

Doesn't compression happen on any phone that handles large data (especially smartphones which can take pics and videos in the high MB and GB range)? MMS and SMS has limits. I can't send videos over a few MB on my Samsung Galaxy. I have to convert on my computer or make sure I take video at MMS quality (which usually isn't the best anyway).

Why not send things via Dropbox or some other cloud service? Many people use that to send files of most kinds anyway (thus using your phone as a super duper flash drive if you may).

FunkTheWorld · Jul 25, 2013

JeffM123 said:
Doesn't compression happen on any phone that handles large data (especially smartphones which can take pics and videos in the high MB and GB range)? MMS and SMS has limits. I can't send videos over a few MB on my Samsung Galaxy. I have to convert on my computer or make sure I take video at MMS quality (which usually isn't the best anyway).

Why not send things via Dropbox or some other cloud service? Many people use that to send files of most kinds anyway (thus using your phone as a super duper flash drive if you may).

Yes, compression does happen on any phone that handles data, but the compression I'm talking about is too much. I'm talking shrinking 5mb files down to 27kb and making the quality (especially for text) just atrocious.