Help me get back to sending picture messages from my cellphone!

May 24, 2008 8:52 AM

[MotoQ Filter] Help me send and receive picture messages with my cellphone.

I have a Moto Q smart phone from Alltel. I have had it for around a year and have never ever been able to send or receive pictures via SMS / MMS messaging.

Since picture phone messages are one of my favorite things to send via cellphone I really miss this functionality.

Alltel has told me on many customer service calls they simply don't support MMS on the Moto Q and that I will just have to "email" messages back and forth. This has never worked.

I use Gmail and have it setup via the POP3 feature on the cellphone and it works fine for me sending pictures to email accounts and to my blog etc. However I can't seem to use it to send directly to someone's cellphone.

Here's my example: My wife has the Motorola Razor. She can send me a picture message to my Gmail account and I can retrieve them... it's a hassle, but I can do it.

I can not however, send her a picture via SMS / MMS... period.

I can not, even though they always tell me I can, get a picture message to her cellphone by using her phone email address either. (her address is phonenumber.message.alltel.com) --- They instruct me to use my gmail account to email it to that address. It has never worked, and they can't tell me why.

My goal is to be able to message other cellphone users with pictures. It's frustrating that I paid so much for this phone and its functionality seems so limited.

Any suggestions would be great!

P.S. I have the unlimited data plan.... In case that would help find a solution. Also, I have no problem with simple text messages back and forth.

posted by jseven to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Does Alltel assign you a @alltel.net email address to use with your phone? This may be what they're referring to.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 9:19 AM on May 24, 2008

jseven said "(her address is phonenumber.message.alltel.com) --- They instruct me to use my gmail account to email it to that address. It has never worked, and they can't tell me why."


Her email address would need to have an @ in it somewhere, most likely [e-mail]. If you're using what you typed above, that's likely why it doesn't work.
posted by loiseau at 9:41 AM on May 24, 2008

Thanks for catching my typo... her address is [e-mail]

I do not not of a @alltel.net address. Do you know if that domain used?
posted by jseven at 9:50 AM on May 24, 2008

I have the same problem as you with my Q and spent a long time trying to figure out a solution and I've been equally frustrated.

You've been given good information from your Customer Support but I think you misunderstood them. The Q (or your carrier) doesn't support MMS - plain and simple. That part is true and I can attest to it.

It's also true that you have to email the pictures and you can email back and forth but you can't email a picture directly to someones phone as you describe. What you're describing is some kind of email to MMS (so the other person gets it directly on their cell phone) and that's just not possible. You can certainly do email to email and if the person can access email on their phone then they will get the picture and they can email you back but it`s all done over email and never crosses over into MMS land.

I hope I make sense. The bottom line is that what you`re looking for isn`t possible. With the Q you`re relegated to emailing pictures and other folks will only ever get the pictures as email attachments and _not_ MMS.

I was very disappointed when I came to this realization because it`s pretty crappy to think I bought a high end phone and it can`t do something a cheap $50 phone can do easily. Very disappointing.
posted by fredbaker at 11:20 AM on May 24, 2008

I just did it. I'm on Verizon. It took 8.2 seconds. Only some carriers support MMS,for example Sprint doesn't support it, it's a "server issue".


I opened messaging, selected MMS, switched to the Inbox folder, clicked New, put my own phone number in it, put a subject in, took a crappy picture of my desk, and clicked "Send".

You may find this forum post helpful. It appears that if you use a separate email address, you can use a workaround.
posted by disclaimer at 2:48 PM on May 24, 2008

I have a Q for the sprint, and I email picture messages to people's phones all the time. They receive it just like any other text message. The way I have it set up, though, is that I send it through my SprintPCS email account, and the reply-to email address is my phone number. Does Alltel have something similar?
posted by amarynth at 12:06 PM on May 27, 2008