[In development] Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

I just posted a Brainstorm Idea for adding MMS Support.

Please use this thread for discussion about possible implementation options and the like and post any good solutions to the brainstorm. :)

http://maemo.org/community/brainstorm/view/mms_support/


Wiki-page: http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:MMS

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

What I've found so far is two different MMSlibs, one in PHP and one in Java.

PHP: http://www.hellkvist.org/software/

Java: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mmslib/

The java option relies on a jWap class as well: http://jwap.sourceforge.net/

For testing, there's a free, open source MMS gateway downloadable at http://www.mbuni.org/downloads.shtml

I haven't had time to go through the sources and see what's really there yet, but it's a start.

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

MMS Decoder (PHP) http://heyman.info/mmsdecoder.php
Messaging-MIDP (Java SE/Java ME) http://sourceforge.net/projects/fres...essaging-midp/
MMSdec (C) http://projects.xplico.org/mmsdec.html <=- the one I'll try

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

python-mms: http://python-mms.sourceforge.net/

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

Nokia needs to release a Maemo 5 patch with natively MMS support as soon as possible.

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

EDIT: Would also need to know what the N900 does with incoming MMS, i.e. discards it since its invalid as an SMS or not. Couldn't find any documentation on this.

EDIT2: I misread, awesome! ;)

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

Some discussion on IRC about it: http://wiki.maemo.org/Mms_implemention_conversation

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

ASAP? I still know a lot of guys who never used it and never will (/me included). BTW you are in wrong topic this is brainstorm...

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

Don't most network providers accommodate for this?

I know Vodafone in Australia and a few others in Asia would detect that you didn't have an MMS phone and sms you the details on how to download the image from their website.

Again I can only speculate from my limited need and use of MMS in different 3 Country's.

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

Yeah, that's how it works here as well (in .se).

What I really was thinking about when I wrote that (I think) was how to grab the incoming MMS request from the phonestack, and if the code for that is open enough for the community to modify it

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

This is a matter of PRIDE too! For all the "mms-less iphone" comments thrown out there...

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

hi,

this morning a conversation took place in #maemo which begun to discuss the specifics of implementing MMS in the n900
I have posted the conversation onto the wiki, but it requires extensive weeding and cleanup and converting into an outline and spec

please get involved and have a go at getting rid of the extra stuff or attempt to fill in any blanks or problems.

http://wiki.maemo.org/Mms_implemention_conversation

users ab and astorm were the key guys in this discussion and it would be really good to follow up on this :)

gary

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

Added a new wiki page for the problems/solutions: http://wiki.maemo.org/MMS_implementation

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

Just to make sure I'm on the right track here:

The fact that all of this community activity is happening - does this mean Nokia clearly stated meanwhile they would not bring MMS to Maemo 5? Not now and not in a future upgrade (within a reasonable timeline, read "before Maemo 6")?

The reason I'm asking is that - from what I read so far - I was under the impression that MMS was one of the things omitted from the initial release because there was not enough time/resources to do it... and that, of course, Nokians basically acknowledge the need for it and will bring it to the platform later as an update.

Now if they'd plan to do so, they wouldn't let this community work happen without at least stating clearly that it's doubling work already ongoing within Nokia, would they? They would tell us that whatever the outcome of a community led solution is, it would always be second best compared to a fully integrated MMS-solution by Nokia.

So because now we have this thread and wiki pages and the brainstorm entry... and nobody commented along the lines of "hey, you know we're working on it, too"... may I safely assume there's a final decision within Nokia not to support MMS on M5 via a future SSU?

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

I wouldn't make any such assumptions to be honest.

They way I see it, by doing this (possible) double work we show that the community is working towards a solution of this problem - and really wants the feature.

I'll keep working on this until there's an official release note of a SSU where it says its added ;) (Unless I stop, for whatever reason ;))

The situation was somewhat similar on the first iPhones - there were 3rd party apps implementing (somewhat limited from my understanding) MMS support on the phone until Apple released their official implementation of it.


In closing - either we implement it as a community, or Nokia does it with a future SSU. Regardless, I'd say we win in the end ;)

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

I do not see a fixed line between Nokia and the community.

there was a reply today from the -dev mailing list entry I posted which indicated a nokia engineer had discussed the matter with ab (from the original irc convo) which means the right people are at the very least talking.

connections are made, the rest will happen as it does.
nobody expects miracles and instant fixes.

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

Since this is an open source device, the solution to this problem will come soon... eg.

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

chemist, this is you and your needs. In the other hand I know a lot of people that are using MMS A LOT. I even know a person that is not getting the N900 just because the lack of MMS.
I know exactly the purpose of this threat. I just comment on the MMS situation, no need to create this to a VS or anything but if you have not interest on MMS as you said then you are the one in the wrong thread. Even if you never use the service is good to have it and not using it than not having it at all.

MMS and vertical operation is by far the two most important complains the N900 suffers. Knowing Nokia sooner or later they will address those issues.

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

I can only speak for my own telco, Vodafone NL. It seems they have different APNs because there are different connections configured (there are 4, in fact). But that is not the case. They have the same APN name which you can see in details: live.vodafone.com with username vodafone and password vodafone. The only difference is the default homepage. For MMS, it is http://mmsc.mms.vodafone.nl so at least in my case there is no need for a seperate ppp1 please verify in your phone settings about your case. YMMV.

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

Same here, Tele2 Sweden. Only difference between my Internet settings and the MMS is the starting page; http://mmsc.tele2.se.

EDIT: My bad, they actually use different proxyservers.
130.244.202.030 for MMS and 130.244.196.090 for GPRS

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

maybe this is why i'm not getting it. :)

i do expect miracles and instant fixes. unlike the community developers, nokia has all the knowledge about MMS. they've implemented it over and over again. they know the theory (what's in the specs), they know what works in real life (quirks with carrier implementations - worldwide!), they have existing source code.

but it's good to read here that my above assumptions aren't valid for everyone and that people would love working on MMS just for the fun of it, no matter what Nokia does meanwhile. I must have underestimated this community... yet again. ;)

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

Not the same in France (as usual...). Well, for 2 operators at least they don't have the same APN. And the point is that right now, you can only define one APN in Maemo5, at least in the release I've got.

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

Right - are you using a later SW version than the guy at my-symbian? If you can disclose this information of course. He seems to be using 2009.34-15 as seen here.

Otherwise we just got another obstacle to pass :)

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

heh, since my isp stopped trying to count wap traffic and other net traffic separately, i had forgotten about the insanity that is gateway and apn...

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

quick guess here is that they send the initial special sms (some very old phones will show it in the usual sms inbox, i have seen it myself), then if its not reacted to within some timeframe, a normal sms will be sendt, pointing the user towards a telco run web page where the mms can be accessed...

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

The way I understood it, the first message asks the phone what capabilities it has, but I assume there is some kind of timeout for that response as well as you said tso.

Added the problem with only one APN available in Fremantle atm to the wiki; http://wiki.maemo.org/MMS_implementation

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

Given the data received from sender is merely a MIME encoded SMS pointing to URI to download message if you have the same APN all you have to do [as proof of concept] is decode the SMS and download the data from the URI. URI can be WAP 2.1 or HTTP. Then you need to decode that data. For convenience all of this must be automated for end-users, and a second PPP connection must be made only if APN are not same IOW this should be checked. I'm not sure most providers require a seperate APN. I find this a bold statement which requires a lot of recent experience with many international telcos while this might very well be a legacy statement.

If providers have a list of smartphones which supposedly support MMS then this might destroy the opportunity for community-supported MMS.

Indeed Nokia has the inside knowledge of MMS support, but those who implemented it in S60 did this long time ago and are not from Maemo dept. I think if Nokia would do it then need to implement full WAP because sometimes WAP is required instead of HTTP and they can't implement a half-working WAP since they have to respect standards. If community supports MMS it may or may not work completely, and it may or may not completely respect respect standards but if Nokia does it they have to completely respect standards.

The whole Brainstorm entry is about whether Nokia or community would do it, but I don't think this proposition is the only question to be asked. IMO the question should be where the priority of minimal support lies to make most users be able to use Nokia N900 as their phone. My answer to that is: a community project to provide support to receive and read a MMS. As quickly as possible. If 5% of providers need seperate APN I don't find such support very important, while if 95% of providers need seperate APN I do find that important. Also, is it possible to embed MicroB? Then you could use the WAP plugin to download the MMS.

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

Would sending MMS not be the biggest priority? Most telco send a txt msg with a link to a web page where an MMS picture can be viewed/downloaded. This is a simple task on a phone with a high quality browser such as the N900.

However on a dumb phone with little or no browser viewing an email isnt possible whereas MMS msgs work well. So would the main use case for MMS msgs not be sending pictures to dumb phones or people who dont check email/social networking sites often/not at all?

Just my 2c.

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

Just to clarify the "only one APN problem": nothing forbids the MMS application to open its own apn. It's a simple AT command to initialize the modem. However, I haven't tested if the N900 can open 2 PDP contexts at the same time.
If this is not the case, it means you cannot retrieve the MMS while already connected to the internet (as long as you need to use 2 separate apns).

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

and that sounds to me what the nokia people where talking about, that the kernel could not handle multiple connections at the same time, or something...

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

I don't know what's the big deal and why it's so hard to have MMS on a phone. My sorry 5 yrs old phone even got an MMS!! So when i heard story that iPhone doesn't have MMS for yrs and N900 doesn't have MMS....man that is rediculous.

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

Fifteen years ago, my desktop computer could transmit Morse code over a phone line. ATD;-.-./--.--H0 Somehow, that feature is hard to find in computers today.

More seriously, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is the problem. MMS support requires WAP support.

Older phones (and new phones that run operating systems with some history in the mobile space) support WAP because once upon a time, WAP + Wireless Markup Language (WML) were the Big Things that were going to bring the web to small screens on underpowered mobile devices. Mobiles had to support it. It was unlocking the web. It was the future!

Then web developers, by and large, skipped making their sites available in WML because doing so was a pain. Meanwhile, the screens and processors on mobile devices both continued to improve, and bringing real web browsers that could use the real web to mobile devices became the new Big Thing.

Mobile operating systems that lived through the time when WAP was king kept it around afterward, of course. However, iPhone OS and Maemo came later.

In both cases, the development teams had to decide which features were important enough to warrant the investment of limited resources--time, money, and talent--during that hectic rush to meet deadlines. In both cases, legacy technologies such as WAP, now with limited use, didn't make the cut.

Thankfully, the Maemo community is already working out what will be necessary to add WAP and MMS support to Maemo 5 though, so barring any towering, unforeseen barriers, you shouldn't be without MMS on your N900 for long.

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

The Linux kernel can handle 2 PPP interfaces just fine :confused: Do you have a link to this discussion you're referring to?

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

i think it showed up in one of the massive N900 threads that spawned when the "bomb" dropped right before nokia world...

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

My pet theory on the "no-MMS on the N900 is due to a Linux kernel issue" meme:

A recent batch of Memory Management Subsystem commits leads someone to comment that MMS in Linux OMAP is seeing drastic improvements just in time for Maemo 5. Someone else with a less kernel-oriented mindset misunderstands that "MMS" to be Multimedia Messaging Service, and away we go.

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

For translating a client application to C, I would start here: Android MMS App

If changes are needed in the kernel, I would do some Fremantle kernel diffs

here: Android kernel OMAP

and here: Android kernel common

I'm assuming of course that MMS works on Android phones. And if MMS has worked on Android phones from the beginning, the information needed should be somewhere in these Android projects.

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

It can, but routing and DNS are going to be "interesting".

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

Nice stuff!

EDIT: Finding stuff now.
The MMS pdu's are at http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=pla...a24d2d;hb=HEAD
Context packages are at http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=pla...297ab6;hb=HEAD

EDIT2: It seems they do all MMS send/recv over HTTP - or did I miss some vital part?

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

The wiki has been updated some.


If someone got the time, please extract the knowledge from http://mg.pov.lt/maemo-irclog/%23mae...10-03T16:23:59 and add it to http://wiki.maemo.org/Mms_implemention_conversation for future reference, thank you! :)

Re: Brainstorm: MMS Support
 

I added info about another MMS decoder implementation (C++) into http://wiki.maemo.org/MMS_implementation. This one can be compiled in standard Debian and some other systems. If you need help in understanding it/understanding decoding MMS files at all/sending MMS push over SMS, I can help a little - please contact me only.