Accidental MMS Sending and How to Avoid it.

[MI5]

Hopefully this guide will help with understanding why sometimes you may inadvertently send an MMS (chargeable) instead of an SMS (usually free from allowances).

First we need to understand the difference.

An SMS is a normal text only text message (short message service).

An MMS is an SMS that contains a picture, short video clip or any type of “media” (multi media service).

One standard SMS is 160 characters. Most phones have a character count (sometimes you need to go into settings and turn it on) that will display how many characters you have typed. 

It will be in the format “20/160”. If you go over  160 your phone will automatically add another blank SMS which doubles your character count to 320.

This will happen up to a maximum of 3 times meaning the maximum “single” SMS you can send contains 480 characters. However, it will take 3 SMS messages from your allowance, or charge you for 3 SMS messages.

If you go over 3 SMS (480 characters) your phone “might” auto convert to an MMS format which is because in MMS format, more data can be sent.

Again, on some phones, Samsung in particular, you can turn off the auto MMS conversion function if you don’t want it to happen. You can also set a “warning” that an SMS will be converted – watch for a pop up on screen when this happens.

Adding “Emoticons”

An emoticon is a smiley face, a thumbs up or any other tiny picture that many people like to add to their SMS messages.

THESE ARE THE BIGGEST SINGLE SOURCE OF ACCIDENTAL MMS SENDING.

Adding an emoticon by itself won’t, in many cases, force the message into MMS format, but, what it will do, is eat up your character count.

A simple smiley face or wink will use 90 characters.

With this in mind it is easy to see how just by adding 3 emoticons actually reduces your character count to only 210 letters (that’s not much!)

You can avoid this by inserting a smiley using keyboard characters rather than hitting the emoticon key and choosing a picture. A smile can be written as : ) or a wink as ; ) 

On some phones you will find 2 versions of emoticons (pretty ones and basic ones).

The basic ones will use less characters but you should always keep your eye on character count and auto MMS conversion.

Group Messages

Another popular way of sending an MMS unintentionally is by sending a group message.

O2 recommends that you send group texts in baches of five recipients to prevent this.

Turning Off

If you are not interested in sending (or receiving) MMS messages at all you can either turn off the option in settings (most phones provide this function) or disable the MMS apn.

Under your phones network settings you will see a section called “access point names” or “apn’s”. You will see either one or two apn’s listed. If you have two, the second one will be the MMS control. If you only have one the MMS control will be down the bottom of the apn settings. Just highlight the apn and choose “edit”.

Look for:

MMSC - http://mmsc.mms.o2.co.uk:8002
MMS Proxy - 82.132.254.1
MMS Port – 8080

and insert a * or # at the beginning of each line.

This will disable the apn completely but you will be able to easily edit it back again if needed at any time.

Alternatives

Other options are available these days and MMS is old clunky tech that can be avoided.

BBM, Whatsapp, Facebook, Viber email etc are all popular alternatives for sending pictures, video’s and large files that will use your data allowance and therefore will prevent the additional charges generated by an MMS message.

I’ve tried to cover as much as possible in this guide, but as always, I will have missed a scenario, so feel free to add any more tips or instances where you have found an MMS appearing where you were expecting an SMS.

Link to O2 offcial advice here

[Anonymous]

The addition of a subject will change the message to mms sometimes. On my Note 3 I have no problems using a link inside a text and it doesn't convert to mms.

Are you sure on the number of characters?

[jonsie]

maybe it's an HTC thing? Note 4 using KK, no problem.

[pgn]

If the URL is copied/pasted into the Messages app, it seems to stay as an SMS. If you use the browser "Share" function, "share as Message", it gets converted to MMS, with URL in message body, and URL title as a Subject. Doing it the long way, via copy/paste to clipboard, is safe eenough. Lesson learned, for 33.3p + VAT.

[Anonymous]

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@jonsie wrote:

Strange that I sent a link to my son this morning and it didn't convedf to mms?

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Simple answer is that if there is just ONE 'nonstandard' character in the link, or any other text pasted in to an sms, that cannot be sent as an SMS, the WHOLE message is converted to MMS.

That might be something as subtle as an accented character like é.

Complex answer, (in simple terms).

SMS was designed to cram 160 characters in to the space that would normally hold 140, by restricting the characters that could be used.  Sounds silly now, but made a lot of sense when it was invented back in the days when technology was more limited and expensive.

As a result, some characters cannot be sent by sms.

If you try, your phone has to make a decision:

1. Prevent you from sending the message

2. Convert it to MMS where the problem does not exist

3. Send it as SMS by 'breaking the rules', which may mean that the receiving handset, (as well as the network message centre), may mess it up, because it's not being sent in the normal way.

Any particular phone could do any of the above.  Depends how it's set up.

In my experience the best option is 3.  If everybody does the same thing, on modern phones, it 'just works'.

Is that as clear as mud now? 

[Anonymous]

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@pgn wrote:
I discovered the hard way that pasting a web URL into a standard SMS can result in the message being sent as an MMS... So excellent tips here in how to paralyze your phone to prevent that happening. Thank you.

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Edited by me - sorry did not see the previous messages that cover point I was going to make.

[AuraTodd]

Thanks this is very useful. 

[Cleoriff]

I think I included it in one of you previous posts @AuraTodd. It is useful and there are so many cheaper ways of sending pictures...

[Anonymous]

Found the MMS , MMS Proxy, and MMS Port but my Samsung Note 2 will not let me into any of those headings to put in *or #. Can you help please?

thanks

Carol

[MI5]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Found the MMS , MMS Proxy, and MMS Port but my Samsung Note 2 will not let me into any of those headings to put in *or #. Can you help please?

thanks

Carol

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If you can't edit an existing profile, just create a new one but do not include the MMS info in it.

[Anonymous]

Now you have really lost me! How do I create another profile? Sorry, I'm usually quite savvy with this sort of thing, but this defeats me! 

Thank you again

Carol