Receiving multimedia messages on the iPhone
Although the iPhone cannot send video or picture messages (except by email), I was curious about what would happen if someone sent me one. It seems reasonable to suppose it might be displayed using the phone’s built-in photo or video functionality, but in fact it isn’t - you get a normal SMS message letting you know that someone has tried to send you a multimedia message. A little disappointing, but it does direct you to viewmymesssage.com and provides a message ID and password with which to log in. This would be perfectly acceptable, except that I can’t get it to work. Neither of the ID/password pairs I’ve gotten with MMS messages have actually allowed me to log in and see the messages themselves. So for you other iPhone users: have you successfully used the site to view a multimedia message, or does it not work at all?
It does work, but it takes forever. I’ve had to wait as much as 24 hours before it let me actually log in to see the picture message. Let’s hope that the supposed update coming this week fixes this problem.
The only MMS that I know was sent to me just went into a black hole. I hadn’t heard of viewmymessage.com before now.
I’ve received more than one MMS, and the time I had to wait before i could retrieve it varied wildly. I have also realized (to refer to an earlier caoine post) that entering those ID/password pairs is another instance in which I find myself wishing for cut-and-paste functionality.
Apart from an uncontrollable urge to murder whatever genius at AT&T designed the viewmymessage.com application, who apparently thought generating a brand-new user and password for each message rather than just attaching them to your wireless account was a good idea, it works fine for me. Or at least, it works as intended. Which is, you know, less than fine.
T-Mobile does the same thing, both with my old Blackberry and current PEBL. I pretty much hate it.
I’ve only received a couple of pictures, but the website has never given me any trouble..
Does anyone know if you can save pictures on viewmymessages.com? I right click on it but save is not an option. And using “file/save as” doesn’t work. If someone sends me a picture is it gone forever in 7 days?
I have tried it from the iphone, but it is so far below any acceptable limit of usability. All my friends get a polite message back to email me the photo, since that actually works.
this is the only thing about my iphone that i absolutely HATE. i have never ever been able to retrieve those messages, because the first DOZEN times i tried to even go to the website viewmymessage.com, it did not even work! at this point i just gave up and then didn’t try to look at those pictures. now a couple of months later i go to viewmymessage.com on my laptop to see all of the picture messages from the last few months, and none of the logins work. i assume that the pictures have “expired”, which is really terrible. my friends and family have sent me pictures that are gone forever, thanks to at&t or iphone. i can’t imagine why you can’t just set up a one time login and password and see and edit all of your photo messages on one page that doesn’t expire.
So, I thought that the tech world might think things through when it came to… oh… everything. Especially the iPhone, which manages to take some steps backward when it comes to capability. Never would I have thought (and didn’t) that a $400 cell phone can’t receive a picture message. Really weak. I can waste my life watching meaningless shit on youtube but I can’t get pictures of those people most important to me. Great. Did I sign up for an organ donor plan I didn’t know about too? Shit, I mean come on! Then there is viewmymessages.com which does absolutely nothing. I see absolutely no where into which I can “sign in”. That site is the biggest advertisement in the fucking world. The corporate jerk thinks, “How can I attain a value greater than the entire GDP of South Africa?” Well, that site is a good start. Every link on it gives me search results for the entire WORLD WIDE WEB. Thanks for nothing. Deevolution never looked so pretty! Just fucking great. Anyone know how to get messages from that god awful site?
cbk: Try viewmymessage.com instead.
I GOT A MESSAGE SAYING “I SENT YOU A MULTIMEDIA MESSAGE. YOU CAN VIEW MY MESSAGE VIA THE INTERNET AT VIEWMYMESSAGE.COM USING MSG**** PASSWORD****” I WENT 2 VIEWMYMESSAGE.COM ON MY IPHONE BUT IT WOULD SAY “SAFARI COULD NOT OPEN THE PAGE BECAUSE THE SERVER STOPPED RESPONDING” SO I COULD NOT GET MY PICTURE. I HAVE BEEN GETTING PICTURES FROM PEOPLE BUT EVERYTIME I GO TO THE WEBSITE IT WOULD SAY THE SAME THING. I HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO LOOK AT ANY OF THE PICTURES I GET. THE WORST PART IS THAT THE PICTURES GET LOST FOREVER IN 7 DAYS WHAT KIND OF SHIT THAT. IM FREAKING PISSED OFF. I LEARN FROM ONE OF MY FRIENDS THAT U CAN GO ON THE COMPUTER TO LOOK AT THE PICTURES. I GO TO THE WEBSITE ON MY LAPTOP AND IT GOES TO WEBSITE BUT WHEN I PUT IN THE MSG INFO AND THE PASSWORD BUT IT SAYS “THIS PAGE HAS EXPIRED”. IT SAYS TO GO BACK AND THE MAIN PAGE AND TO PUT THE INFO AGAIN. I DO IT ABOUT SIX TIMES IT STILL DOESN’T WORK. WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO LOOK AT MY PICTURES. IT ALSO SAYS SIGNUP FOR A MESSAGE PACKAGE. DO I HAVE TO SIGNUP FOR A MESSAGE PACKAGE JUST TO LOOK AT MY FREAKING PICTURES.
I need to be able to recieve multimedia messages, any help. I found out how to send messages, but not recieve, please help me, I need this badly, I am projects manager for a lrage Industrial Maintenance company, and I need employees to be able to send me multimedia messages, and I know noe that I can send
The site viewmymessage.com works… barley. Sometimes it takes several login attempts even when you enter the correct message id and password. Once you’re logged in, the response time is very slow. It’d be nice to click on the SMS message and have it open the MMS message for viewing in Safari with no login. But really, who needs MMS when you have email? Oh yes, all those people out there with “legacy” cell phones.
What do you mean the Iphone can’t receive MMS messages? My cell phones for the past 5 years have been able to receive them.
I truly despise this lack of a simple feature. The login and password only work sometimes! Most of the time I don’t bother. It really sucks.
The Iphone’s inability to recieve multimedia messages is unforgivably stupid and incompetent! That viewmymessage.com site hasn’t worked for me yet. Idiotic.
Ok! Here is the truth this bs. This Dom as phone can’t do the simples thing like recieve a pic. Ok ya know this but what are they going to do about I can’t even take a video with this phone if I had paid for it I would be piet beyond anything.
so what are they going to do about it?
My viryzon phone was my best friend I had it all and if I wanted the Internet there was my lucky side kick (my laptop) who is sick now so I am post for that too.
there is no cure for THIs they left us out to dry. The phone is hot but the hottest feature doesn’t work. Ok if anybody with power to change is reading THIs. DO It! I have girls that send me shit that I can’t see man. Help me please.
With the new update 1.1.4, nothing new about SMS or MMS features. Still have to view them on “viewmymessage.com”. No problems loggin onto the website via computer, but using safari, forget it. Once viewing the MMS on PC, no way to save the content. Also, still no voice dial, digital recorder or update on the camera (ie. zoom in/out, brightness).
iphone SDK is out soon. someone or some company going to create one for us… att also need single sign-on feature. I can’t believe they need to text your login/password for viewmymassage.com. dont they know who you are already?
did apple fix the multimedia picture problem yet?
ok yes some of the iphone shit need improvment, but i have found a way to save the MMS pictures from viewmymessages.com. When you go to the site and have typed in the nessecary information and your picture has poped up, use the zoom feature on “Internet Explorer” and zoom to about 150-175% whatever quality you think looks best then click the “Prnt Scrn” key. This takes a screen shot of what ever is on the screen and copy to your clipboard. Then go in to paint or any other graphics program and click paste. You can now crop out the picture and zoom in or whatever u would like to do then save the picture only, copy to your iPhone and you will be set. I thought i might have trouble with quality but on the iphone screen the pictures are fine there not great quality but good compared to the fact you have just takin the picture from a screen shot.
It’s ok
You can save the pictures, on a Mac at least, by right clicking on the picture. A Flash player menu will pop up. Select Print from the menu, then when the print dialog comes up, tell it to save as a pdf. Open and crop as you see fit, convert to jpg. Not the best solution, but it works.
You can save a few steps to that by selecting Preview, then using Grab or Command+Ctrl+Shift+4, then using the crosshairs to select desired portion of the picture and it will screen capture to the desktop.
This is the one aspect of the iPhone experience that I HATE. I mean, make me very angry hate. How the heck did Apple and AT&T blow this part so badly?
I thank you for your steps to save a MMS pic. However, if you don’t want to grab the photo (it turned to a .tiff ) file then…How do I move a .jpeg pic from saving it in Pictures to iPhoto?
This phone is great but not seeing a MMS message when these free crappy Nokia phones can, really irritates me! It is making me so irritated that they haven’t found a simple fix for this yet!
the viewmymessage website is not accessible by the iphone’s safari software. The only way to see the site is via mac/pc. Yes, extremely unfortunate for iphone users…myself included :(…hints of a software update that includes pic messaging availability has been in talks since iphone 1st released. Who knows when we will actually see it. ::sigh::
Use Firefox in OS X and set to wml mode, you can right-click, save as!
I called AT&T b/c I have been unable to open the viewmymessage.com site, and the tech guy told me it is NOT an ATT website. He also said people can send text messages to your e-mail account just like they do with your phone number. Just have them enter your e-mail as a secondary number and text all picture messages to it. Hope this helps.
It makes me murderously angry that MMS is not supported by a phone as high-end and meticulously R&D’d as the iPhone. Apple and AT&T seem to have little interest whatsoever in fixing this obnoxious problem and dismiss the issue every chance they get. What the fuck, Chuck?
People send me cool, funny stuff and it’s too exhausting to go get it from that damn website so they just think I’m a jag off-when in fact, Apple and AT&T are the true jag offs.
Why is it so god damned hard for a phone to support MMS? My aged mother’s equally aged cell phone can send and receive pictures, so why the fuck can’t my shiny new iPhone??
Yeah, I’ve tried to use this method multiple times and it sucks ass. I JUST got it to work today after reading this thread and figuring out that you just have to sit there and wait for the page to load. Give yourself an hour of doing nothing but waiting.
What’s even more retarded is that the page does not render on an iphone browser. Um, who is the corporate idiot responsible for drawing up such a horrible user experience strategy on a whiteboard in an air conditioned room, thousands of miles removed from reality?