Lack of MMS is a shortcoming that really affects only North America. MMS is not widely used elsewhere. Really, getting Whatsapp to work through an Android emulation layer like Anbox is the higher priority for much of the world now.

I'd much rather the only open source phone in the world not focus on proprietary messaging protocol, especially one which is overly hostile to third party clients.

I think Anbox is a mistake for the Librem. If you want android apps just run android. All this effort to have a totally independent OS, but really just run android apps on it.

Anbox is more meant as a "transition" than a end-goal, similarly to forwarding your email when you change addresses. It isn't meant as a permeate solution, more as a way for users to transition to FOSS tools without having to leave everything immediately. At the same time, we have had plenty of time to migrate so I see where you are coming from.

Untrue, here in France I regularly use MMS. There are 1000 different messaging apps, some are on whatsapp, some are on telegram, some are on "new thing".

But MMS works with anybody with a phone, and you don't even need a good internet connection.

For a quick picture, a contact card or a small voice message, it's great.

I'm from Belgium, I've received about 10 MMS in my life. All failed to download. MMS use is apparently extremely country (or person) specific.

> I've received about 10 MMS in my life. All failed to download.

same here in germany. nobody ever uses it

Well can you back this with data? I am french too and beside my mom nobody use MMS in my circle. We did like 10 years ago.

Data, no, it's an opinion.

But we all have mums (or other people not using a chat app), and a lot of us write text messages to them. If the text message is more than 3 sms, congrats, you use mms. If you use the feature "send contact" or make any attachment to your text message, you use mms. If you send an emoji in you text message, you may also use mms.

You don't have to be aware that you are sending an mms to send one. Most sms apps do it transparently.

The biggest sender of mms is probably iMessage from iOS, because it makes let tech saavy users ignore the difference between chat and sms (the infamous green bubbles). So users just send stuff, and sometimes, they do so using mms.

The less technical the user, the more likely they are to send mms without knowing they are.

Does everybody use MMS, or do you regularly use MMS? Because your complaint about messaging apps sounds like the usual Linux user stuff. Most people will just use whatever app is more common (which according to this is Messenger)

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/7RQwoJ8z83Zi65NDMvmHKVU0Wx...

People don't use mms, they send stuff using their sms app, which decide to use an mms or not. In fact, long text messages are often turned into mms under the hood. People just don't know about it. As long as it works transparently, they don't have to.

Do people actually use SMS? Aren't they bloody expensive?

Sms, mms, and phone calls are included in a lot of cheap unlimited contracts accross europe.

It's free in a lot of places.

I believe there are Matrix/Element - WhatsApp bridges. They require some setup and its not for everyone but for me it would be an option.

No audio/video calls though.

Neither via Anbox currently unless it is massively better on Librem 5 than on PinePhone.

I agree about Whatsapp but I'm really curious about the reason why MMS is a thing in North America. It's been basically dead in Europe even at the launch of 3G in 2003.

What are you talking about? I live in Sweden and tons of people (including me) does not have whatsapp and uses MMS as a protocol that works with everyone. Most people here have one or two other means of messaging but it is not the same type so MMS is the safe fall-back when unsure or if it fails.

that honestly surprises me, it isn't the case in the UK or any of the EU countries I visit ; I haven't seen or used an MMS for maybe 20+ years

it would be interesting to map MMS usage worldwide, maybe it's a more important feature than I thought

EDIT: correction, I actually tried MMS once or twice with a phone circa 2007-2008, just checked (so not quite 20 years)

Can confirm, never seen MMS used for anything but my service provider sending me notifications about voicemail. Everything and everybody else uses SMS.

SMS and MMS are completely integrated here in the US, you have no visibility into wether it's an MMS or SMS you're sending/receiving - it's just "messages" in my experience.

So if you take a smartphone photo, and send it to a phone number contact in a message, boom, you just sent an MMS.

A majority of random american public wouldn't recognize the MMS acronym, despite likely using it regularly.

sending "pics by SMS" is something people wouldn't even expect to work here in the UK in my experience (and it probably doesn't work for most of them, several networks/plans don't support them or bill them separately)

visiting the US back in the day I realised just how different the "phone culture" was, for instance there was such a thing like being charged for receiving calls (in ~2008) and drastically different coverage maps, etc - I have no idea how things are now over there

Basically it's the data plan that matters. The call time allotments are so large that they don't matter anymore.

Coverage is still an issue.

Group messages are also (usually) MMS.

if you say "group messages" here in the UK, everybody will assume you are talking about whatsapp, or blackberry messenger (before)

one of the reasons why I suspect MMS went completely unnoticed here in the UK is that Blackberry was extremely popular rather early, and then Android ate it

I don't think I've ever sent a single group message over MMS

I use a dumb phone in the UK and MMS no longer works on it, not that I ever used it much (but it did work not so long ago). I agree with the sentiment of your comment that the networks probably killed it. buuut...

> I haven't seen or used an MMS for maybe 20+

That's a bit of an exaggeration:

> The first MMS-capable phones were introduced around 2002 in conjunction with the first GSM network.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Messaging_Service

You are right on both accounts.

I remember the model of the phone I used MMS last, but couldn't remember the exact year. Just looked the model up and I see it's not as old as I thought. It was about 12-13 years ago actually around 2007~2008.

I'm pretty certain I haven't even tried MMS in any other phone since. With blackberries I used their messenger, with Android I used various apps, never MMS. I still use plain SMS occasionally.

Could be à carrier configuration issue.

> MMS as a protocol that works with everyone

> MMS is the safe fall-back when unsure or if it fails.

Except when it isn't.

The mechanic who services my cars is the only person I know (since at least 15 yrs) who has this strange thing for MMS. He always tries to first contact me with MMS before calling me, and I've never received any of those, not even once.

I never really bothered, but the last time I checked (15 yrs ago), MMS required some additional setup.

So "MMS works for everyone" isn't really a thing

To be sure there is no misunderstanding: MMS (also pictures, images, video) or SMS (only text)? I checked my Android phone and it probably sends a MMS of I attach a picture to a message in the Messages app. First time I even noticed the icons to attach multimedia content. Never received one.

I used to work in a mobile operator (not Sweden) and MMS didn't have any usage worth talking about.

I also live in Sweden, and all pictures I send to my parents or grandparents are over MMS (the rest are on Facebook messenger or telegram). It is simply the most convenient way if you only have someone's phone number. Might be a cultural thing? I'm absolutely certain my usage of MMS is very common here.

It's probably a network effect. If enough people use them eventually everybody use them. I could be the only one among my friends to even know they exist.

My understanding is that the US got free unlimited texting long before Europe did -- so Europeans were still paying by the text when WhatsApp/etc arrived and they jumped on that, but since they weren't/aren't paying per text Americans were/are much less motivated to switch, so social inertia keeps MMS alive. This could be totally wrong though, my evidence is just from talking to European friends.

Sounds reasonable, something similar happened in Hispanic America, SMS was really expensive, so as soon as WhatsApp showed up everyone jumped to it. Actually I’ll bet WhatsApp was the main motivation to get a smartphone during those years.

It's the default messaging app on every phone everywhere so there's nothing to install or convert to (from MMS, which everyone is already using) and nothing to get everyone to agree on. It's kind of crap, but it works and is ubiquitous.

I'm kind of surprised it isn't still a thing in Europe. Did cell phones just not take off until the mid 2000s when there were other options available.. so MMS didn't have the inertia it has in the US? It is pretty ingrained here, for example all take out services use MMS to give you order status and, AFAIK, they don't support other messaging systems.

SMS does exist, it's just that mms that's weird for EU users. It used to be expensive and support was horrible. My current provider doesn't even support mms anymore.

Ok, that makes sense. MMS is more the default here and is used mostly instead, not exactly sure why. But SMS would work fine for most of the use cases.

It was the cost. It drove people away from SMS to IP protocol messaging systems which also had a better UX. SMS used to cost quite a lot.

> I'm really curious about the reason why MMS is a thing in North America

Everyone on almost every phone has MMS, no matter what else they might have. It's the common language.

Early adoption -> early cultural incumbency.

e.g. Mexico had cellphone penetration so low until recently that it got to skip the SMS/MMS era entirely.

You would have needed a certain critical cultural mass using MMS to still be using it in 2020.

Do you have any numbers to back up that bold claim? Smells like a sweeping generalization to me.

Not out-of-box in a user friendly way yet, but hackers gonna hack: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/chatty/-/issues/30#note_12542...

Who cares about MMS? Isn't that like using http in this day and age? Just use a secure app.

Tell that to my friends/family who only use MMS, and can't be convinced to switch. Some people just don't have a choice

Drat. That's the one loophole that drives all these compromises on tech people make.

What 'secure' app ?