Group MMS is terrible (group chats in general) and you can't really expect a group of people to all download and install a new app because one person has it. In all likelihood, you will simply be excluded or if it's important, you will be forced to use something like facebook messenger, google hangouts, instagram, etc which is worse than SMS.

Wait, I can't expect everyone to download an app, but I should expect everyone to buy a $500-1000 phone? That's ridiculous.

I'm curious, why do you say it is terrible?

It becomes terribly low-res. The MMS media limit means each video, if longer than a few seconds, has its bitrate crippled to fit in the limit. Photos too have their resolution lowered, less so than videos but if you send a bunch at once it gets worse.

I posted a longer explanation here of why that's the case if you're curious why:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26970035

TL;DR: This is carrier related.

It might be carrier related but the carriers seem extremely uninterested in solving the sms/mms problem at all.

It is solved if phones use RCS. RCS allows many of the features you love in iMessage - e2e encryption, typing indicators, large files, delivery receipts, reactions, etc. And it is all standards-based and backed by the carriers.

Android phones do support RCS. Apple will not implement it. Apple will only support the bare minimum of SMS/MMS and then people wonder why it doesn't work well.

Carriers have worked to improve messaging. And Apple won't work with them, preferring to make "green bubble" a horrible experience. People should be outraged that Apple is able to e2e encrypt their chats but refuses to implement the standards.

https://9to5mac.com/2019/01/06/apple-rcs-support-imessage/

RCS doesn't solve the core issue that carriers are bad at providing messaging systems and even worse at interconnecting their messaging systems.

If carriers were good at messaging systems, SMS wouldn't be so unreliable and expensive. MMS would have worked well. But sure, maybe their new system works? Except, for the most part it's only rolling out widely because Google decided to be the default RCS server, so it's yet another Google messaging service; 9th time is the charm.

Google deployed e2e in rcs at the end of last year... But does that mean it works everywhere? I'm guessing probably not.

> It is solved if phones use RCS.

Unfortunately, if the carriers impose the same attachment limit, it really won't help. The limit on MMS is largely artificial (considering the phone and the MMSC talk HTTP...sending an MMS is literally an HTTP POST).

RCS does not use MMS so attachment limits do not apply.

RCS is its own technology. If everyone in a chat uses RCS, SMS and MMS are not used at all. It is like iMessage - but based on an open standard

I think you missed my point......

The reason there is an attachment limit is because the carriers enforce it in the first place. It isn't a limitation of the MMS standard.

As such, what would stop carriers from enforcing the exact same limitations on RCS?

In all fairness, the only reason I found this out is through experimentation while I have been working on importing an MMS implimentation.

There isn't really a demand for carriers to increase the limits.

That logic would've applied to imessenger when it first appeared on the scene. Yet it is possible for challengers to displace the previous method despite not (yet) having the requisite network effects.

To now argue that nothing can or should supplant it is just Applecronyism.

Sure, I agree, but that's not the majority of the population...