State of MMS on Librem 5

Hardware Librem 5
122

Now, chatty version 0.5.0.beta3 which is the released version in PureOS now, I have MMS working (after entering settings in ~/.mms/modemmanager/mms) but with the annoyance that when someone sends me an MMS that results in chatty creating a “group chat” with myself and the other person. The group chat comes up as a separate conversation in chatty, separate from my SMS conversation with the other person, which becomes confusing.

I think this happens because chatty is unaware of my own number, because none of the SIM cards I have tried (Tele2/Comviq and Telia in Sweden) seem to report the own number. Apparently some SIM cards behave like that. The phone/modem can ask the SIM card about its own number, but some (many) SIM cards just don’t implement that feature, I think.

Does anyone know any workaround for this?

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123

It might be some default configuration, group chats are MMS chats.

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Hello Librem 5 friends. Some of you may recognize me from: “Got VoLte to work by enabling it… by following instructions written by smarter people.” I hope you’re ready for the sequel: Got MMS to work.

Again, for reference, I don’t consider myself a Linux expert by any means, just a user… who happens to like to tinker.

Setting - Phone set to 4G only. Using PureTalk (on AT&T backbone) with their SIM card. Standard texting (SMS) worked fine from the get go, and I fjust recently got VoLte working on the 4Gs. The next battle was MMS, since I couldn’t get group texts or **** pics.

In the Chatty preferences, Protocol settings, SMS and MMS settings I filled out the following:
MMSC: http://mmsc.mobile.att.net
APN: RESELLER [according to them, this must be in all caps]
Proxy: proxy.mobile.att.net

As soon as I exited back out of the settings, all the group messages and **** pics that I missed over the last several days showed up at once.

It was a small victory, but I wanted to share that it CAN work, and provide what got it working for me in order to provide hints toward what may help you.

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125

Is that a different APN compared to the APN you have for the regular mobile data connection?

Is mobile data working for you now, after you got MMS to work? One way to check this is to turn off WiFi and see if the web browser still works.

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126

As I understand it, sometimes you can have a main APN and also a separate one for MMS, if the all-in-one APN isn’t getting MMS. Here’s what Ting (a T-mobile reseller) says on that: https://help.ting.com/hc/en-us/articles/205428698-APN-setup-guide

Relevant quote (pertaining to Android): “Keep Ting Data selected as your APN. Your phone will use the MMS APN settings automatically as it needs.”

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Yes, that should be possible, but I think currently it will not work on the Librem 5 due to this issue:

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128

“RESELLER” is, in fact, the same APN that I had set for the data under the mobile - access point names settings. Data worked when I set it. I have not changed it. I just had to type “RESELLER” in the APN [as well as mmsc and proxy] in the chatty preferences/settings too. However, I did just check data now… and data no longer works. I may have just not noticed data not working since I got MMS going? I doubt it had anything with the update that just pushed. So, Skalman, your question was a good one, and now I’m perplexed. I understand why it would have trouble with a different APN between the two, but not with the same APN set for both.

I’ll walk around the house to verify that I’m not in a temporary black hole or something. I hesitate to play with it more at the moment, because I seem to use MMS more than mobile data.

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I think it has trouble with the same APN set for both because the service provider insists on separating MMS from data i.e. the service provider insists on two different APNs depending on what you are trying to do (MMS v. mobile data).

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And now, without any warning or changes, data started working again. And MMS has not stopped working. Glad I didn’t try to “fix” it! It probably would’ve started working on its own when I did something stupid, giving me the false sense that I did something right.

I see three potential reasons: I WAS in a temporary black hole of service at my house; my MVNO was having intermittent issues; or the phone was having intermittent issues. I’ll suspect the temporary black hole until something tells me different.

To sum up, I’m back to saying, everything CAN work at once.

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131

I’ve been watching this thread with great interest. I saw that I got the required updates to enable MMS on my Mobian Pinephone, but it didn’t work until I tried the ninja APN naming trick. Boom! It worked… for about a week. Since then, MMS or MMS and data more or less randomly stop working, sometimes for weeks at a time. Sometimes there are “expired” MMS notices, other times bunches of group texts or pictures come through at once. :roll_eyes:

Seems like a similar experience, but different hardware? This is good, and getting better all the time. I hope to be as impressed with Purism hardware when I get my Librem 5.

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132

Who is your service provider?

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Mint Mobile (T-Mobile MVNO).

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I have configured MMS on my L5, works great

When one picture is received, a preview is visible in the chat
But if multiple pictures are received, I got the link to the files

2022-06-25-005428
2022-06-25-005428720×348 48.6 KB

I think it’s probably related to SMIL, or some kind of groups MMS not fully supported yet
But, do you have the same behavior ?
Or, is there an option to add somewhere ?

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Similar on Pinephone-Mobian-Phosh. Multiple pix are always presented as links; single pix are a coin toss.

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ok thanks for the confirmation

You have single pix with no text that are presented as links ?

I feel like, for the single pix, it’s always nicely done, unless the single pix is grouped with something else (a text or an other pix)

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This is expected behavior, and is unfortunately a limitation of Chatty:

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Correct. For me, single pictures sometimes display inline, sometimes as links. Very rarely, it will initially display inline, but when I later return to the message, it displays as a link (or visa versa).

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Can you use imagemagick to join the two (or more) images into one image and thereby bypass the limitation? :wink:

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This week, my Librem 5 received its first and second ever MMS messages. So, I am reasonably confident that receiving MMS messages now works for me!

The only thing I am unsure of is whether I need to disconnect from WiFi in order to receive MMS messages, or whether it is enough to be connected to mobile data.

However, I am yet to successfully send one to anyone, except myself.

Are we now at a point where MMS should “just work”, provided I input the correct settings? I’m using the ID Mobile virtual network (UK), which has settings listed at https://www.idmobile.co.uk/help-and-advice/get-your-settings

In Settings > Mobile > Access Point Names, I have an access point named iD, with the APN id.

In Chatty > Preferences > SMS and MMS Settings, I have the following MMS Carrier Settings:

MMSC: http://mms.um.idmobile.co.uk:10021/mmsc
APN: id
Proxy: mms.idmobile.co.uk:8799

I have delivery receipts and SMIL turned off.

If I try to send MMS messages to other people, it doesn’t work. I don’t even get charged for sending the message, so it is clearly not getting past the network operator’s MMSC, or else they would have charged me for it.

So far, there have been two occasions when I have been charged by the network operator for sending an MMS message:

  1. When I sent the message directly to myself. Although I was billed, I never received the message back.
  2. When I sent the message to a group chat containing myself and another person. I was billed for the message, the other person never received it, but I did receive a copy of it back about half an hour later.

If I receive an MMS message, it does not appear in the existing SMS chat I have with that contact. Instead, it appears in a new chat which is displayed as a group chat between “You” (i.e. me), the other person and the contact entry I have for myself. Also, each message always appears twice within that chat. Can anyone say whether this is the expected behaviour? I have tried recreating this arrangement for sending MMS messages; that is to say, I have tried creating a group containing myself and the other person (the “You” gets added automatically) but it doesn’t help; the messages still don’t get through to the other person.

(To be clear, if I try to send a MMS message to a single contact, that doesn’t work either. Sending it to a not-really-a-group was just an extra thing I tried.)

The strange presentation of single-contact messages as group messages makes me wonder whether there is some weirdness going on involving phone numbers, or the formatting of phone numbers.

If I reply within these “group” chats, whether ones started by receiving an MMS or started by me to try to send one, then those messages never get through. (I assume the phone is trying to send them as MMS messages, because it is a “group” chat, even though it isn’t really a group chat.) I can only reply by going back into the existing SMS chat.

It turns out that, for me, MMS messages cost 2.5 times as much as SMS messages. This means that, if I were actually able to send MMS messages successfully, I could save money by sending text as an MMS message whenever it exceeds 2 SMS messages in length. (On the other hand, if I were to pay for a monthly allowance of SMS messages, then I should never send text as MMS messages until I have exhausted that allowance, unless I am also sending multimedia content, because MMS messages are not included in those allowances.)

Thanks to all concerned for getting MMS reception working.

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I can’t help with your actual query but

Or you could send email and not have to worry about optimising your use of your plan? Email is more able to be made secure too.