Group MMS
 

I posted this on an existing question on TJC, but I thought I would see if you guys had any thoughts, also.

I know that group mms is a thing that is mostly used in the US, but is there ANY chance of an official OR unofficial way to get this working? I am contemplating switching fully to Sailfish, but too many people in my life use group mms for me to feel comfortable not having it. I understand that Android apps are not able to be used in this way, correct? (I am using a Sailfish port on my Nexus 5 without Android, so I can't test it personally.) Any help on this would be very appreciated.

Re: Group MMS
 

So how does that work, I use a lot of sms/mms messaging but usually only to single contact per message?
Do you mean you cannot send mms to multiple recipients?
(as I think I have done that, unless I remember wrong)

Re: Group MMS
 

Group MMS is a conversation with multiple people in a single message thread. Think more like a chat room. If I send two friends the message "When are we meeting for dinner?", everyone can see everyone's responses. That way six separate conversations don't need to happen. We are all informed without having to forward messages to the other people.

Re: Group MMS
 

Is that handled differently? I've always thought of a group MMS as basically an implicit comma between each number.

Re: Group MMS
 

To me, an implicit comma would mean every recipient would receive a separate message from me- and the reply would only go to me . That is NOT a group MMS. That is bulk sending an SMS.

Group MMS makes a multi-directional dialog possible.

In Sailfish, it only sends bulk SMS, and receives group MMS as single sender- text only MMS. The only way to tell it was a group MMS and not just a regular text message, is looking at the messaging apps cover.

Re: Group MMS
 

OK, so it looks like this multi-party MMS is a network feature and not a device feature.
Do you know where that is implemented, in android probably? Does iOS and WP have that too?

Re: Group MMS
 

No, this is a device software feature. Android, WP, iOS, BB10, all have the ability. Symbian, Hartmattan, Maemo, and Sailfish have been the only platforms I know of that don't utilize it.

Re: Group MMS
 

hmm so bear with me as I still don't understand; if it is not a network-based feature then it means that everyone participating sends every message for everyone else?

Say, you've got 10 pals and you send a group MMS to them in the group, and when everyone replies to you they also automagically reply to all others so there is totals an exchange of 100 MMS'es?

Sounds a bit wasteful to me...

So in the end it is just a way of grouping messages in local database?
Is the "group" free-form, like, if you forward a group SMS to somebody, then she'll also get the list of recipients in the group, and when she replies to you (as the 12'th group member), she will also automaticallly send the message to the 10 other pals in the group?
Or do you have to "create" the group from contacts prior to sending a message?

Is this MMS header containing the recipients defined in some 3GPP specification or is is unofficial addition?

Re: Group MMS
 

It honestly is far from wasteful actually. You will receive responses in the same thread, collected as part of the discussion/messaging.

Sure, you can point and say, "Why don't you use <insert third party app like Slack for instance>?" but the only necessity for entry is simply to possess a phone with group MMS capability.

No extra app needed. No extreme workaround required. Group the people that you want to send and share the conversation.

I use group MMS to broadcast to many people one item that would only be replaced with sending 10 people the same damn message over and over. Now that's wasteful.

Having to convince friends to install an app; equally wasteful to me.

Re: Group MMS
 

This exactly.

Anyone have any guesses on how to make this work on Sailfish?

Re: Group MMS
 

How hard to implement can this possibly be? I am not a programmer, so really asking.

Re: Group MMS
 

Nonono, you got me all wrong!

I did not mean "wasteful from the point of the user", since this is absolutely efficient from the point of the user;

I meant "wasteful as there are many messages to be sent on the background, invisible to the user"
And also costly for those people that are on subscription that charges for number-of-sent-mms'es

Re: Group MMS
 

Not very difficult if it is implemented the way I described.
But, just as I had never heard about the feature or thought that it could be necessary, same might well apply to the developers at Jolla.

Re: Group MMS
 

I have not heard about group MMS either. But that is hardly surprising given that I have never sent or received a single MMS in my entire life. Still, I find this thread rather educational.

But Jolla developers are (should be) different animals. They develop an application implementing a given standard, they should know that standard.

Re: Group MMS
 

Yes, but that's just the point!

"Group MMS" is not a 3GPP standard, it seems to be an extension thought out later and implemented on some platforms.
@imaginaryenemy says it works on Android, WP, iOS and BB10 but as I googled a bit it seems it does not work correctly even on some Androids. :D

Re: Group MMS
 

I would imagine that any issues with group MMS on the platforms I mentioned are with third party apps.

At this point group MMS is as ubiquitous call waiting.

Re: Group MMS
 

Never even heard about the thing. I guess it isn't used a lot in Europe. The few MMS I've received in my life usually didn't contain the picture that was sent (some error at either end). I haven't received or sent an MMS for years.

Re: Group MMS
 

I use a lot of MMS'es, almost daily.
And indeed this is the first time I ever heard about Group MMS.

However, as @imaginaryenemy said, it seems to be a client implementation feature.

Re: Group MMS
 

On the topic of network messages that SFOS doesn't implement: the other day I was reading about the missile that overflew Japan, and citizens living in the area received an alert on their phones. This reminded me that I've seen those alerts before, on Android phones, for flood warnings or Amber alerts. This seems like something SFOS should implement as well; it would not be good to be less safe in the event of a disaster because our OS did not display the warning.

Re: Group MMS
 

Cell broadcast? That is an old technology, implemented since the days of dumb phones. It would be a shame if SFOS did not implemented it but not surprising. There are quite a number of features that old "dumb" phones implemented better than new "smart" phones. Probably because they were phones, not multipurpose devices with the phone functionality bolted on.

Re: Group MMS
 

This. So much this.

I'm particularly old school in a lot of things, but I actually use my phone to call people. Whenever it can do everything BUT that one function, I start to question it. Too many people are too concentrated on auxiliary functions that tend to be nowhere near communication on these phones/devices, but more like they're replacing a computer.

I found it appropriate that the N900 was considered a "pocket pc". Much like I was fond of the separation of the "internet tablets" that the 770 through N810 represented. It wasn't a phone, those labels managed expectations and I had no misconception of what I owned.

Now? If it can send an emoji or connect to some social media, folks call it a phone if it fits into your pocket. Whether or not it can actually do "phone things" is often a secondary thought.

Back to topic though... I feel as if this feature was overlooked because it seems to be a rather North American thing. It's not unique, but it seems to be something that works well here. But then again, the original release of the N900 saw that it had no MMS capabilities. Go figure.

Re: Group MMS
 

It makes sense for a company that has yet to enter North America not to waste resources on a feature that only benefits those in North America. I was just hoping that with Sailfish X official making it's way to our shores, either Jolla or a skilled developer might take a look into this.

I guess I won't hold my breath!

Re: Group MMS
 

In case anyone from Jolla checks this, yes, this would be an appreciated feature to have on Sailfish.

For those who haven't used this, I shall give you a use case:

Working with a group of 10-12 people distributed in a convention center who are technicians monitoring the distribution of live video content for attendees. I'll be in the broadcast studio with phone on silent. Each person has their own phones, which these days has been narrowed down to iPhones, Android-based phones, and me, which up until this weekend has been an N9. A group MMS is set up and everyone just replies to that.

I'll send out an instruction and everyone needs to see that. But if one person observes an anomaly in the broadcast where they are located, they immediately report it. Everyone gets the message and they can start chiming in with their observations. We quickly determine whether this is an isolated glitch, or a system-wide problem.

The people only work with each other for the duration of the broadcast and we may not see each other again. So trying to get people to install an app, set up an account just to work a few days is problematic. It's just easier to get everyone's phone number and do the group MMS. Anymore, I may not even program them in as a contact and just have the phone numbers show up in the chat.

Doing this with the N9 was torturous. All the messages come as separate threads based on the person sending it. If there was a conversation taking place, I could click on person A, read ten messages from them but not understand context because I had to click on person B to see their messages, and so on. It definitely has not been as efficient as it is for everyone else on the team.

What I did not know until reading this thread is that this is a pretty much U.S.-only thing. Then again, as someone pointed out, when you pay by message, that would be crazy expensive really quickly. It is only a thing in the U.S. because of the unlimited messages plans I guess.

Oh well. I'll add my vote to a request to see this implemented in the future, but I get the business decision to not allocate resources toward this if it's just the U.S. market that uses it.

Re: Group MMS
 

It is a huge mistake to underestimate the importance of this feature to those who use it. I have been trying to adapt to the limitations of Sailfish, and this missing feature has been tough. But may have just hit a real roadblock due to this. One of my parents just became very ill. My siblings and I are about to have many group text messages to keep informed and coordinate needs. I have to be a part of that. And this feature--which must be trivial to implement---my be the straw that broke the camel's back. I truly can't imagine how others don't want this simple feature.

Re: Group MMS
 

Agree. I wish they will fix it. This is the primary reason, I cannot use Sailfish OS as my daily driver. I am a big fan of Sailfish and used it for few years, suffering through this shameful :o limitation. Now more people are using group text/mms and it has become a necessary feature and I have started using Android :mad:

Re: Group MMS
 

Oh, I am sorry for the family situation. That really is difficult. Most of the time, my phone has been a fun project for me. Yes, I use it for daily life and it's both a blessing and curse to have these things, in my opinion. Overall, it's a project of interest for me. You guys, the community, the hard-working people at Jolla, even Sony allocating resources to help with Jolla - it's all fun for me to watch and even be on the outer periphery of the experience.

However, there are times when "ain't nobody got time for that" and one really needs the tech to work "for real". Lancewex, you are in one of those times. If I could just spend a few hundred bucks to make group MMS "just work" on Sailfish for all of us, but especially you right now, I would. :(

Re: Group MMS
 

So, I've been a long-time user of Maemo/MeeGo, but I stopped for a while after Nokia scrapped it. This is the first post I've made after lurking these forums for nearly a decade, but it won't be a happy post unfortunately.

I finally got a phone with a decent Sailfish port the other day, and right after I install Sailfish, suddenly someone I know has fallen ill and there's a ton of group texting going on. I honestly hate Android, and I was using the woefully outdated Firefox OS until I got the chance to jump back to a real Linux OS. The fact that I may have to swap my SIM card to another phone or flash Android just to 'solve' this issue is frustrating to say the least.

What makes this especially annoying is that Sailfish is better than I had expected in every other area I care about. It's essentially the perfect user experience for me with the exception of this one critical flaw. I don't get into group texts on a weekly basis or anything, but when they do come it's usually fairly important.

Is there really no workaround for this? I can't find any patches in Warehouse on a cursory look, but I wouldn't imagine this to be overly difficult to implement. If Sailfish X officially supported North America, I expect this would already be a major issue. In any case, I would personally be willing to pay to get this feature implemented.

Re: Group MMS
 

Creating a group MMS application probably would not be a big deal, it's practically just the way messages are indexed together when shown in the UI and creating a list of messages-to-be-sent automatically when replying to the group.

Possibly something anybody interested could whip up in a few hours and polish up to publishable form in days.

It's just matter of nobody taking interest in it, maybe there really are no active SFOS developers in NA? As you know, people tend to make applications that they themselves need and as I previously stated I had not even heard of such a thing before reading this thread, GroupMMS is just not used in Europe...

Re: Group MMS
 

I'm reading this as another European and I'm wondering why you are using MMS to have what appears to be a pure text conversation when SMS is cheaper. Is the difference between the two recognised in America or is this another pants/trousers situation?

Thinking on implementation if these are temporary groups all it would need is to clone the messaging app and a add a list of numbers and a start and end date/time and filter the standard message database to show anything that matches. This would mean any non-group messages from someone in the group would appear randomly in the middle of the conversation but that's liveable.

Now, is the messaging app open source...

Re: Group MMS
 

I think it's because MMS has this group thingy. (which we don't use really in europe, at least I don't even as I use MMSn heavily)
It's probably a header extension in the message that defines it is a part of group or something...

Besides whether MMS is cheap or expensive depends really on the operator contract; maybe they have a set amount of free MMS'es per month or something.


Yes, I thought of the same but have not really even checked if it is open. And even if it is not, it would probably be not that difficult thing to make from scratch.

Re: Group MMS
 

I am very surprised how few people have voted for this here.

Re: Group MMS
 

As far as I know, no. At least I did not find it when I was working on the character counter.

Re: Group MMS
 

The conversation about this on TJC got a lot of attention recently. Though most of it was just people yelling at each other, juiceme and another person came up with some pretty good insights. Are we any closer to getting a working solution? I would love to help in any way I can (testing, money, etc).

Re: Group MMS
 

I don't think anyone is working on it really. The problem with making a lot of noise on TJC is that people on TJC are mostly users with no developer background, hence there are bound to be a lot of misunderstanding :p

People on TJS would like Jolla to fix this in the sailfish messaging application but as I see it it is easiest to do the thing by creating an alternate messaging application to replace the implementation; After all that's how it is done in android too, there are countless alternativa messaging applications in play store...

It looks to me the thing itself is not that difficult to implement; it just needs a messaging application that can extract the user list from message header part and do the multiple sending. Something that could be whipped up is a few days.

So here is easy pickings to some aspiring developer who wants to have recognition, seems some people really do need this :)

Re: Group MMS
 

...the kind of people who like making a lot of noise ;)

(Which, incidentally, is why I am no longer visiting TJC.)