How To Fix People Not Getting Picture Messages from Your Android Device

Ever try to send a picture to your friend with an iPhone and it sends out, according to your phone, but then your friend tells you they never got it? Maybe this has happened with sending an MMS to another device, too? Well, it seems that sometimes this has something to do with the message size limit on your friend’s device and carrier. For example, if your friend’s iPhone on AT&T has a size limit of 300kb and you send them a 600k picture, they may just not get it.

So, how do you fix this? Well, Android doesn’t natively have a way to change the size of converted images for MMS, but some third party messaging apps do. Let’s show you.

I. Setup Handcent

1. Head to the Market on your device and search for Handcent SMS, download and install it.

2. Now, to save you some headache, head to your normal messaging app, click Menu then Settings and scroll down to Notifications and uncheck it (this way you don’t get two notifications for every text message you get; one from Handcent and one from the normal SMS app).

II. Adjust the MMS Settings

1. In the Handcent app click Menu then Settings > Send Message Settings

2. Scroll down to Maximum MMS Size and select it.

3. This part will take some trial and error depending on what device and carrier you are sending pictures to. Either way you’re going to change the settings here down to a lower setting. iPhones will definitely work at 300kbs but you can try higher or lower depending on what works for you when you try to send it.

4. That’s it, now using the Handcent app, try to send a picture to your friend and see if they get it this time, if not, lower the setting and try again till it does.