The iPhone received a heavily-requested new feature on Friday when AT&T and Apple enabled multimedia messaging, including sending picture and video messages to other phones.
The MMS capability was enabled by sending a "carrier settings update" through iTunes. If you click "Check for Update" in iTunes, it will appear. Load the update, restart your phone and your iPhone will have MMS.
Apple's picture messaging interface is as elegant as the company's other software. Picture messaging is built into the Messages app used for SMS. The app now has a new "camera" button that lets you take a photo or video, or attach a photo or video stored on the iPhone. I sent and received picture messages from AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile phones without a problem.
When you receive a picture or video message, you can expand or play it by tapping on the thumbnail image in the Messages app, or hold down your finger on the picture to copy it. You can then jump over to your Photos app to paste it into your camera album.
(For a visual walkthrough, see our slideshow.)
iPhone owners have been clamoring for MMS since the phone first launched in 2006; picture messaging has been available on many other phones since 2003. Apple announced the feature for iPhones in June, but AT&T took several months to implement it. AT&T released additional details about the MMS feature on Thursday.
Transmitting video messages, though, may further tax AT&T's already struggling 3G network. As reported by many media including The New York Times, AT&T's network is having trouble handling the massive amounts of data consumed by iPhone users. AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said the carrier was ready to handle as many video messages as iPhone owners were ready to send. That network may get an assist from AT&T's microcell, which will offload some of the AT&T network traffic.
"As you know, we have been preparing for the MMS capability for months and we feel confident that the experience is going to be good for our customers," Siegel said.
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