Modifying the existing carrier settings file can enable MMS whether a phone is jailbroken or not.

I am no apple fan, but even i didn't assume their customers were that dumb.

@Kevinv: Wow... People are retarded for wanting a simple functionality that should be available to make their lives easier?

Do you realize the actual market for iPhone users consists of probably 80% non-technical people that don't fully understand how to E-Mail a MMS message? You also need to know exactly what address convention the carriers use, and if someone switches carriers, you'll have to edit it each time.

MMS is simple, as are many iPhone users. There is a percent of higher end users, but let's face it, the majority usually think "oohhhh...shiny"

Basically, use iTunes to upload the file to your phone and bam. Working. Most of the time.

@sleze69: Well, I'm not sure how this will apply legally, but here in Japan, MMS works fine. So, technically Apple DID provide the capability. And I'm sure it's the same in other countries. So, does this mean that it's all AT&T or what?

Wwithout MMS, the size of one SMS message in bytes is so miniscule compared to a 1 minute voice call, that charging $0.20 per TXT is highway robbery. Even at $0.025 (200/$5) per message it is still much more more profitable than making a voice call. I read an article where someone calculated that is is much cheaper to write out a text message on paper (in 1's and 0's) them mail it via the USPS than pay for a text message.

AT&T is no longer making money from voice traffic, the real dough is in text messaging. Charging for SMS's is thousands of times more profitable than charging for minutes ... and MMS will probably be even worse!

@FooSchnickens: 1+ you are right on the money. VV ( with non in skin or external VM's) in alot of business in house systems use a dedicated comm port for just the same reason you stated.

I know with my phone with a 3.2MP camera i have to shrink them before i can MMS them, with email the sky is the limit.

@italianscallion33: If they were scared of that, than they should not have advertised the capability. However, this is not a particularly steep increase in data. You crazy savvy iPhone users have certainly figured out that you can email pictures.

MMS is not that big a deal, data-wise. Oh, and your supposition is crap. Blackberry users are where the data users are.

But people are retarded and want to pay extra for a service they already have.

Why didn't you read my second response? ;)

@Rachacha: Makes perfect sense.

@From the cubicle of PGibbons: Yeah, but MMS works on other carriers in other parts of the world, yeah? So, Apple is not lying by saying that the phone does MMS. It does.

It'd be like the advertisements for a sale. McD can say "$1 Big Macs this weekend*"
*at participating McDonald's

Or is this a completely different beast?

Same answer. Different uses, different ways of communicating.

Or in this case, the less att wants you to know.

Geez, you can't expect EVERYTHING they tell you is included in your phone/plan to actually be there, now can you?
=======================================

Good one - let's blame the OP and greedy trial lawyers once again!!!!

AT&T and Apple should have enough brains to know that this little technical workaround ain't the standard "MMS" they have been touting to pimp the iPhone.

Sorry, I would hope no judge or jury would buy that B.S. People bought an expensive phone that claims in all its advertising to provide a feature and then it turns out that it doesn't. Then the manufacturer/carrier shines people on for months claiming it's "almost" ready in a blatant fraud to keep them from returning the phone or canceling the contract. This kind of monopoly/fraud crap makes Microsoft's games look like small potatoes.

A $50 used Treo 755 off Ebay combined with a Sprint "all you can eat" plan may not be as flashy and "hip" as the iPhone, but it runs circles around what the iPhone can actually do, even after a "billion" downloads of mostly throwaway software. Quantity isn't quality. Treo records video and audio, has SMS and MMS (really), removable battery, upgradeable memory, more comfortable to hold than the iPhone, etc.

Oh yeah, and tethering software available from third party developers for about $30 bucks, and it works great.

I read somewhere (I suck at citations) that AT&T is scared of iPhone users in particular because we know how to use all the features on our phone compared to, for example, BlackBerry users. So we use the features more often, which will probably happen with MMS too.

As a side note (kind of), I've gotten comments from my dad and my sister in the last week saying "I sent you a picture, you didn't get it?" I ask something to the effect of "Was it in a text" and they say yes and then I go, "I can't do that yet."

How lame does that sound? I have what I consider to be the (otherwise) best phone out there, and I can't use the features built into it.

I forget the exact way that it works, but basically VV pings att's servers periodically for updates a few minutes after any kind of data/voice transmission from the phone. So if you make/miss a call a few moments later VV checks to see if there's a message. Constantly updating apps do the same thing, like stock tickers, for example. There was one guy who went 18 days without getting voicemail because his stock app was updating so often that it kept interrupting the VV update process. Somewhere in how apple designed MMS to work on the iphone would cause the same thing to happen with att's current setup.

So, in short, apple made MMS how THEY think it should work instead of making it so it would work with what is already in place. And since apple refuses to change how it works via software, att has been forced to change how their network handles everything which are the "system upgrades" that are happening in "late summer."

@bornonbord: What you say is true: Legal copy will never protect you from getting sued (I can sue anyone for any reason), but it may protect you when it comes time for the court trial. If they can point to their legal copy and show where it clearly states that a certain feature may not be available, it may help them to win their case.

@profet9: " If you want to overpay for a piece of hardware..." $99 for a smart phone is hardly overpaying.

I have an iPhone, and I have an old iPod Nano...the only 2 apple products that I own, so not necessarially what one would consider as a "Fanboy". For me, the ability to read actual web pages in the way that they were designed (not all scrunched up with the menus garbled) is worth the price of admission. My wife had an HTC smart phone, and while it was nice, the iPhone simply blew it away.

Personally, I don't want MMS, and won't care if the iPhone never gets MMS. The iPhone has issues, and is not perfect, but in my opinion it is currently the best smartphone out on the market. Lack of a keyboard was an issue for me, but I can type very quickly and accurately with the touchscreen keyboard. I love my iPhone, but agree, it is not for everyone.

@speeder: Thankfully, iPhone reps know when the autumnal equinox is? There is hope for the universe!

This lawsuit seems a bit premature. AT&T promised by the end of summer. Summer technically ends September 21, 2009, after which point then a lawsuit would be valid. So lets see...a typical class action will take (I am guessing) 5-10 years, and the result will be that the members of the class will get $2.47 and MMS in 2018.

I have a Blackberry now that does all of that and who needs 8,000 worthless apps that don't do anything. My phone does everything an I phone can do except that it doesn't have a touchscreen, which by the way makes it slower to type on and much more inaccurate. That, and if I drop mine, I don't have to worry about the glass shattering or cracking and thereby rendering my phone useless. And by the way, I have used an Iphone and think its nothing but flashy crap that people buy because it's shiny and they have good commercials. If you want to overpay for a piece of hardware that is up to the standards of most smartphones because you get a touchscreen, be my guest. However, you are overpaying for the phone and the service. Esquire, you seemed to have missed the point in that while fanboys like yourself tout the phone as the best thing ever, it is really behind in fundamental ways.

Did anyone ever think that the iPhone is just a well marketed piece of junk?

And second, practically every other one of AT&T's phones supports MMS. What if they were all using another kind of phone? Would AT&T's network have problems coping with that? How exactly does the fact that Apple initially excluded MMS support from its phones cause a problem for AT&T's network?

Here's the answer: Apple excludes certain features from its phones (and other products) in order to differentiate certain products from others, and so they'll have "new" features to implement in future products.

Why did the original iPhone not support 3G, when most other phones in the year or two before supported it? Or why did Apple decide to exclude a number of iPhone apps from the iPod Touch at the time of its release, then add them in the form of a $20 "software upgrade"? And the "new" video recording support on the iPhone 3GS...I can understand if Apple did not believe that video quality was up to their standards, but WHY did they ban video recording apps from the App Store when the jailbreakers could obviously do it? Those are just a few examples...

I've since removed the "features" tag.

There is an IPCC that you must install on your iPhone via iTunes. Problem is, the new version of iTunes must be configured to allow you to upload an IPCC to your phone. All you need to do is run cmd and paste the command in there. After you succeed, go to iTunes, and upload the IPCC into your phone by using the Upgrade feature.

Then, take your sim and put it into another phone, after an hour or so, pop it into your iPhone and it should work.

The iPhone supports MMS on all official networks except AT&T, and apparently AT&T supports it on other phones, and there are modifications to get the iPhone to do it on AT&T. It really is a bit of a mystery, though it is possible that they want to do something like reducing the number of text messages in plans to compensate for the free MMSes they're giving, which would be messy from a contract point of view.

Apple is a phone manufacturer, and their phone has all of the capabilities they advertise. AT&T has an exclusive contract in the US, but the iPhone is sold and used worldwide.

It's not as if Apple just surprised AT&T with the new MMS functionality - AT&T would have known about that before development even started.

"The only other thought could be that Apple is using AT&T as a scapegoat, and AT&T is being paid well for it."

You think Apple is paying AT&T? For what now? No, AT&T is paying Apple - a lot. AT&T paid a huge amount for exclusivity, and they pay Apple a portion of each contract. Apple isn't paying AT&T squat.

Hopefully, this will prod Apple and ATT to get along with it at least. I just never could figure out why "a multimedia phone" couldn't MMS to start with. So far, I love my iphone, just hate not having MMS.

Exactly. The end result of a class action lawsuit.. All iphone users will receive $5 credit on their bill. And they still won't have MMS. LOL.

My AT&T service has been pretty stellar, signal and speed are very reliable where I live (Washington, DC)... so it really makes no sense for me to lack MMS but everyone else on AT&T and every other network having it.

Nothing can be done until AT&T lets it happen though, or Apple jumps ship. :(

@sleze69: to any "modern" phone? Wouldn't one of those be cabable of doing something relatively simple as sending/recieving email? My guess is that ATT hasn't figured out the right pricing plan to rape their iPhone customers "properly" yet by adding a "feature".

All this talk of the god phone, and people still can't MMS on it. It took three generations of this piece of crap to get cut and paste and video capability. I am truly amazed at how people fall for Apple's marketing while locking down and overcharging for their hardware and services. My last phone was a Nokia regular phone and could send MMS and shoot video. Phone cost me $20 three years ago. Way to be cutting edge apple and apple fan boys.

Only Lawyers profit.

The iPhone does support MMS as of version 3.0, it really is AT&T that is holding things up. AFAIK MMS works in other countries with the standard iPhone firmware.

What else would you expect, honestly? This is AT&T we're talking about. I'm glad they finally gave up begging me to return to their exorbitant long distance service (does such a thing exist anymore?)

I would love to join the class action myself.

I could care less about MMS messaging.

@twophrasebark: Well putting in a phone number is a lot wasier then number@vzwpic.com or number@boostmobile.com, ect ect

@DeeJayQueue: Well said.

I can't figure out something, someone explain me this:

For years Apple never built MMS into the Iphone and said to the world "We don't need it!"

I even believe the 2nd generation Iphone didn't have MMS capability either.

So finally in the 3rd generation them wonderful people at apple finally decide "We will do MMS now" and now everyone is bitching at at&t when they didn't or were not prepared for it?

Seems to me pot-kettle your black syndrome. This seems just as much or if not more Apple's fault than AT&T's?

The only other thought could be that Apple is using AT&T as a scapegoat, and AT&T is being paid well for it.

They may have phones with email capabilities but they have not set up the email on them. For them, texting is their email. And they are accustomed to getting images via their texts.

At the same time, I don't buy the "billing" issue - Huh? I have an unlimited data / SMS plan with AT&T for my slate and their billing system seems to handle it just fine.

@twophrasebark: To send it to any other modern phone that doesn't have email.

@bornonbord: What you say is true: Yes, things like federal and state laws are the restrictions that may apply. They're getting sued for offering/advertising a service and not delivering it. It's like if I ran a restaurant and you ordered a hamburger, you only get a bun, and thats all I charge you for. If I put, restrictions may apply on the bottom of the menu, that's not gonna cover my ass. Moreso, it would be legal if I was the only place allowed to sell burgers anywhere.

I wonder if this lawsuit will bring up the real reason that this whole craziness is going down.

Also, does it matter that in the advertising and on Apple's website, they always put legal copy of "some restrictions apply, etc etc etc"? Isn't the whole point of that to protect themselves from being sued?

But like what italianscallion33 and what DeeJayQueue says a few posts further down, "The river can support a few boats, but there are thousands who'd like to float on it. "

@Laura Northrup:
How many stories have been on the consumerist though of iPhones causing issues on AT&T's network? I get where youre coming though.

This is what I got in response:

Thank you for taking the time to e-mail AT&T regarding when we are going to turn on MMS for the iPhone since it is already late summer. My name is Eric Bonitz, and I am happy to help you with your inquiry.

AT&T will enable MMS for iPhone 3G and iPhone 3G S after launch in late summer 2009, after completing system upgrades to ensure that our customers have the best experience with MMS. AT&T is in the process of making final network improvements, necessary to deliver the best possible experience once MMS is made available to our iPhone 3G and 3G S customers. Once the network enhancements are in place, you will be notified via free text message and MMS will be automatically enabled on your iPhone 3G S. I know you feel that it is late summer, but the Autumnal Equinox is not until 9/22/2009. MMS will be here for the iPhone 3G and 3GS soon.

Besides, by the time the suit rolls around they'll have fixed it anway.

AT&T towers don't support MMS? I get MMS on my BlackBerry with AT&T, unless I'm missing something here?

Wait. Can't jailbroken phones use MMS? Doesn't that prove that Apple is lieing?