As I spent about 4 hours doing a little of this and a little of that I thought I'd share some lessons learned when trying to get the iPhone 3.0 to have MMS now.For those that are not clear, MMS is coming to iPhone 3.0 users in the States at the end of the Summer.

While the iPhone 3.0 is ready for this basic feature now, in the States, AT&T is not.  Fortunately, it is possible for those motivated enough to do a little work and get MMS turned on now.

How did I get started?On twitter, a buddy showed off his MMS enabled iPhone:

and gave a link to http://x.insideroot.com/o/mms/ as the HOWTO on how to get it setup.

After deciding to go ahead with the challenge, I tried to follow the directions on the above page.  Very quickly I hit a roadblock.  The file the page was referring to *.IPCC and I couldn't get it to load in iTunes as a restore file.  It was not selectable.The issue turns out that I was using Safari to download the file and Safari was trying to be helpful [NOT!] by unzipping the file before I got it making it unusable. 

A quick google showed that using firefox got it to work.That was just the first roadblock. 

The second roadblock was trying to enable medianet at the end of the instructions.  The medianet page kept saying: SORRY YOUR PHONE DOESN"T SUPPORT MEDIANET.This was very frustrating as I had changed the type of phone on my account to Blackberry Bold as the doc said but still no go.

 Then another quick google uncovered this:

+++You'll need to do the following for MMS to work:

4. Call AT&T Tier Two Technical Support at 888-892-9760 press option 15.

When talking to representative explain that you are a registered software developer for the iphone and need to have your phone activated for MMS.

These are the things they need to do to make it work.

Make sure you are on a standard texting plan and not the iphone texting planb. Enable Media Net and WAP Pushc.

There are two areas in Snooper that need to be checked off to enable MMSd. They need to do a push OTA (over the air activation)

+++

So after a quick phone call to AT&T and following the script, the helpful CSR changed my messaging plan to a normal SMS [not iPhone] plan and enabled MMS and Media Net.  She then pushed the data OTA after I turned my phone off.  Voila.

That did it!  I saw my first MMS successfully sent. 

How do you know it's successful?  Well the SENDING progress bar was no longer stopping 4/5 of the way through and the red exclamation point indicating an error was no longer showing up.  That is obvious enough isn't it?

Here is what the new MESSAGING app GUI looks like when MMS is enabled.  Note the little camera icon next to the text input box.  That enables you to take a picture or choose a photo to send. 

Its very straightforward and user friendly:

The final lesson learned? If you don't enter the data into the MMS section of the CELLULAR page on the first webpage, the camera icon will disappear!  It's seems to be enabled only when it sees the proper setup on the MMS section.

I hope that helps anyone who is keen on getting MMS on their iPhone in the States now.  Of course, you can always wait!

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