G-Portal has just added its MMS Plus service which allows anyone with Internet on their phone to send photos to their friends and family via SMS. Just enter the URL 'da.gp' into your phone's browser and choose 'MMS Plus' from the top menu to get started, or read more below.
The photos are resized to fit perfectly on the various phones that are used to view them, which is a huge improvement over old MMS messages that network operators offer. Other than that, the service is technically quite similar to how MMS works under the hood.
- Make better use of your Mobile Internet to send camera-phone snaps to your friends.
- Images are resized to fit each phone that views them - a perfect fit on screen, smaller downloads, and typically far higher quality than that of traditional MMS.
- With auto-sized images, even the largest photos shrink down to allow around 65 images per MB. Even if someone isn't on flat-rate Internet and pays, for example, £2 per MB for Internet, that's only 3p per picture viewed!
- While SMS and Internet are usually bundled with your contract or PAYG deal, MMS often isn't, so this gives you a better service for less money (or no money at all!)
To use MMS Plus and send photos to your friends with only SMS and Mobile Internet, just enter the URL 'da.gp' into your phone's browser and choose 'MMS Plus' from the top menu to get started.
Only photos are supported right now, but I plan to extend it to allow us to send mp3 files and videos from phone to phone over the Internet. I may wait until flat-rate network access is the norm though.
Please be aware that this service is only really suitable for people with flat-rate Internet on their phone. Image files can be quite large, so if you pay per megabyte then it may work out expensive to upload large files, such as 3 MegaPixel photos from your camera-phone.
If you don't yet have flat-rate Internet, it might be worth considering. Three UK are offering some of the best deals for flat-rate Internet (5 pounds a month, or 150MB free with a 5 pound top-up, valid for 90 days!), but other operators have been offering increasingly competitive deals.
Comments and suggestions, especially if you're having problems with the service, are appreciated. Mail me kevin@susa.net and I'll get back as soon as possible. Remember, with so many devices out there, if you don't tell me there's a problem, then I may never know to fix it.