Text messaging is much more complicated than it wont to live, especially when iPhones and Humanoid devices are mixed together. Referable a few different factors, media attachments look-alike photos and videos bum end up dissipated in quality when sent over textual matter messages, contingent on who the recipient is and what kind of phone they have.

If you've of all time wondered wherefore videos transmitted over text to/from an Android gimmick don't look arsenic good every bit videos dispatched over iMessage, you've come to the right place. Here, we'll explain why your memes and cute videos of pets look terrible when sent ended SMS, and how to get around the job.

Why your videos look terrible

Multimedia system Messaging Table service, Beaver State MMS for short, is how phones send media content to other phones complete text messages. It's a standard that was created in the early 2000s — a time when the photo tone of most cell phones was only a few megapixels — and then perhaps it's not too surprising that smartphones cause outgrown the engineering science.

MMS has a abstemious file size limit.

The main problem with MMS is that most carriers have an incredibly strict limit happening the size of files that can be sent. For example, Verizon only allows images up to 1.2MB to exist sent over text messages, and videos capable 3.5MB. AT&adenylic acid;T is even stricter, only allowing videos adequate 1MB in size. If an image Oregon video is too large, it is compressed automatically.

You can see the difference in the below samples of my mumm's dog feeding the cabbage cord happening some window blinds. The first video is the master copy 54MB transcription (only when taken by YouTube's own compression), while the second video recording is the downgraded 348KB version transmitted over AT&T.

By compare, Malus pumila's iMessage platform has a less-restrictive file size limit — somewhere close to 100MB. That's why videos generally look amended when sent from an iPhone to another iPhone, because the media ne'er leaves Orchard apple tree's servers. Media sent from an iPhone to an Android device, or anything dispatched between Android devices, will typically use MMS instead.

How to process around the problem

There's no fix that pot improve videos conveyed over MMS, because the register sizing limits are enforced by carriers. However, there are workarounds that involve using different messaging protocols.

The easiest solution, in most cases, is to use a third-company messaging service that you and your recipients can agree on:

WhatsApp, the de-facto messaging standard in numerous parts of the creation, bequeath provide you to send videos raised to 16MB big, but if you select to commit videos as documents (aside selecting "Document" instead of "Gallery" in the gem clip menu), you can go skyward to 100MB without further compression.

Telegram is another popular selection for sending messages between phones, and it has an even higher limit of 1.5GB.

Skype is available on Android and iOS (as well Eastern Samoa PCs), and allows files up to 300MB in size.

Signal has end-to-end encoding along all messages (if privacy is most important to you), and supports videos adequate 100MB.

If the recipient already has Google Photos installed, you can also ploughshare supported photos and videos to other people directly in the app. Just pick the desired TV operating theater exposure from the Photos app, iron the share button, and select one of your contacts (surgery create a nexus, then send off that to the receiver).

One more option is to employ Unwholesome Communication Services, or RCS for fleeting. Information technology's the intended replacement for MMS, with support for greater file sizes, and carriers are tardily all caving in to use Google's implementation As the one unifying standard. Google Messages offers RCS functionality and is generally available to everyone World Health Organization has a phone number in the Combined States and, by now, many parts of the rest of the world. Merely there are still stacks of problems, with hoi polloi continuing to run into issues with RCS connected Google Messages.

Google's Messages app is currently also experimenting with a new way to send images and videos via SMS/MMS by sidestepping these protocols and instead mechanically creating a Google Photos link that the recepient can open, with the full media quality intact. Neat, simply not ready for prime time barely yet — just something to look overbold to.

With big parts of the US still relying on text messages and MMS for communication, it's a bummer that carriers just can't seem to close to offer a simple solution, even if they'd just up the draconian file size limits active for MMS. But in the rife state of personal matters, decreasing back connected internet-founded messaging platforms is the simplest and well-nig logical matter to dress.

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About The Author

Corbin Davenport (3633 Articles Published)

Corbin is a technical school diarist and developer who worked at Android Police from 2016 until 2021. Deterrent out his other work at corbin.io.

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