So, yesterday in my daily perusal of the web, I saw that AT&T had started silently rolling out MMS functionality for the iPhone in small batches.  It didn’t seem to have a rhyme or reason–some people on iPhone OS 3.0 had it, some on 3.01, and some on 3.1, all in different locations.

Some people in the Dallas-Fort Worth area were reporting working MMS, so the question at the forefront of my mind was HOW DO I GET IT!?  I’m an impatient girl, and I didn’t want to wait another 11 days for MMS on my iPhone if I could get it now!  A little more Googling and a few visits to the HowardForums gave me the answers I needed.  How can YOU get MMS working on your iPhone?  Well, I’ll show you.

Note: I’m running OS 3.0 and I am jailbroken.  I won’t go into the whys or wherefores of my jailbreaking, just know that it doesn’t make a difference–you do not have to be jailbroken to perform this trick on your iPhone. Also note that there is not a 100% guarantee that these steps will get you early MMS on your iPhone.  All I know is that they worked for me!  Be aware that any hacks to your iPhone may void the warranty in the eyes of Apple!  I don’t know if this counts as a hack or not, but just be aware!

1.  First, you need to download the updated AT&T carrier file.  This file will enable MMS functionality on your phone but may not make it work.  Some people only had to update the carrier file on their phones and MMS started working immediately.  I wasn’t so lucky, but I’ll tell you how I fixed that in a minute.  The AT&T 5.1 carrier file can be downloaded here.

2.  Then, you’ll need to tweak iTunes slightly so that it will let you update the carrier file manually.  Here is how you do that:

For Mac – Open up Terminal, and at the prompt type defaults write com.apple.iTunes carrier-testing -bool TRUE and hit Enter.

For Windows (32-bit) – Go to Start > Run and type in command, then hit Enter.  Then, at the prompt, type “C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.exe” /setPrefInt carrier-testing 1 and hit Enter.

For Windows (64-bit) – Go to Start > Run and type in command, then hit Enter.  Then, at the prompt, type “C:\Program Files(x86)\iTunes\iTunes.exe” /setPrefInt carrier-testing 1 and hit Enter.

3.  Then, plug your iPhone into your computer and fire up iTunes.  Once it’s all loaded, go to your iPhone in iTunes and hold down SHIFT (or OPTION on the Mac) while clicking on the Update button in the main iPhone panel (not the sidebar).  This brings up a dialog box that allows you to choose a file for updating.  Go to where you saved the AT&T carrier .ipcc file and open it up.  You will need to choose the .ipcc file type from the files of type drop-down menu in the dialog box in order to find it.  This takes just a moment to update.

4.  REBOOT YOUR IPHONE!

Now, when you go to your Messaging app on the iPhone, you should see a camera icon to the left of the text entry field.  This should allow you to either take a new photo or upload an existing photo.  You will also have the choice to send a picture by MMS when working with it in Photo Album.  Like I said earlier, this worked for some people–MMS was not only enabled on their phone but working!  For me, no such luck.  I had the icon, and I could try to send a picture, but it would give me a message that the picture could not be sent.  To get it to work, I had to do two more things – update my MMS settings, and update my text message plan.

To update your MMS settings:

1.  On your iPhone, go to Settings > General > Network.  If everything worked as it should, you should see a choice on the screen called Cellular Data Network.  Choose that, and then scroll down until you see the MMS settings.  It is most likely you won’t have anything filled in except the MMSC, MMS Proxy and Max Message Size.  Here are the settings I input into my phone (thanks to some people on HowardForums):

Simply changing these settings worked for some people and they could send MMS messages.  After I did this, I was still getting the message that the picture could not be sent.  Then I saw a tip in the HowardForums thread that someone had updated their text messaging plan to a family plan and MMS started working immediately.

So, I logged into my account and sure enough, my husband and I had separate text messaging plans.  It wasn’t much more a month to upgrade us to the $30/month family unlimited texting plan, so I did.  The change takes place immediately, and one minute later I was able to successfully send an MMS message!

Your mileage may vary, but if you can’t wait until September 25 for MMS messaging on your iPhone, it’s worth a try.  Happy messaging!