Yes. I send photos over text messages sometimes. could be memes, could be snapshots. It's surprising to me that others think it is unheard of!

I wonder if this is an issue of different parts of the world? I'm in USA, where my SMS/MMS traffic is unmetered and included in my phone plan unlimited. You?

Additionally, MMS is used for group text messages.

*update* 20 minutes after I posted this, I received an MMS message with a picture of a cat. So.

It's quite used in France. Technically speaking it has no replacement, it's the only system that works natively with any phone, doesn't require you to install a dedicated app, create an account on a third party and do not push all those constraints on the people you're sending messages to.

Yeah but the image quality is... ouch. I wouldn't inflict that on anyone.

I'm not saying it's great :D I would love to have a replacement which is secured and modern.

I use it for all the people I know where we don't share a common proprietary messanging app. I have friends that refuse to use Facebook so don't have WhatsApp. I have friends who are devoted to Apple and don't have anything other than iMessage. I have relations who don't have anything other than the built-in SMS app.

I sometimes need to send these people photos of something.

Presumably every time an iOS user in America sends a picture or video to an Android person. So, quite a lot I'd wager.

SMS doesn't do group messaging or messages over 160 characters.

I have a group of friends and we never were able to agree upon another chat protocol, so we have a group SMS chat that exchanges a a few hundred messages a week; it stared around COVID as we weren't getting together in person.

Anyone who wants to send a message where one of these is true must either use MMS, or convince everyone to sign up for some other messaging service if the people involved are not all either on an iPhone or Android:

- Includes a picture - Includes a contact - Longer than 160 characters - More than one recipient

I didn't use it because at the time where it was useful it was freaking expensive to send an MMS.

I use it to send photos to Android-using friends and family, mostly because it means I can stay in a single messaging app (iMessage). MMS is unlimited on my plan.

I use it to send and receive pictures all the time. If I'm documenting something for a client the I sure as hell won't start trying to find the client on social media.

> find the client on social media

Whatsapp is social media? I always thought it's a sms/mms that works...

I use it every day with my family and friends. We're not all on the same messaging platforms, but we can always reliably send MMS messages for pics on group chats.

If you are still sending SMS that are longer than 160 characters, then you are using MMS behind the scenes.

I thought SMS apps just split the text in 160 character chunks, and merge them on the receiving side. Isn't that how it works?

Yup, the parent comment is incorrect. SMS longer than 160 characters (in GSM 03.38 encoding) are split into multiple parts, each a maximum of 153 characters long, 7 characters are used to glue the parts together.

I believe it depends the implementation. I recall having a phone that would explicitly indicate a switch to MMS when sending longer messages.

I too recall that. I suspect it was a boon for the carriers, eating into your MMS quota. At the time though, my plan was unlimited SMS/MMS, so it didn't really matter to me.

I use MMS regularly for communicating with people who don't have Telegram. Granted most of that is regular old SMS, but MMS capabilities (e.g. low res photos) are expected and used often enough that they will be missed.

Still quite used in Canada, but I think we also had one of the highest penetration rates of SMS/MMS to begin with.

That being said, were it shut off I'd just use one of the other five messaging services on my phone...

i used it to send images when the other person did not have whatsapp.

T-Mobile in Poland uses it so send ads.