How to send full resolution photo through text.

anon6136263

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Jun 24, 2013
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I'm in my 2nd week with my S4, switching from my iPhone 4S. My question is, how do I send a photo through the Messaging app (using Samsung's native) that retains the full image quality? I never had this "too large, compressing photo" on any of the iPhones I used through the years. The picture quality after compression is terrible.
 

paintdrinkingpete

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Dec 12, 2009
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I'm in my 2nd week with my S4, switching from my iPhone 4S. My question is, how do I send a photo through the Messaging app (using Samsung's native) that retains the full image quality? I never had this "too large, compressing photo" on any of the iPhones I used through the years. The picture quality after compression is terrible.

It depends on the carrier, but most limit MMS messages at anywhere from 300KB to 1.2MB*, and photos taken with full resolution on the S4 are two to three times that size.

If you are sending iPhone to iPhone, remember that you are actually using iMessage, and not standard SMS/MMS protocols for exchanging messages, which is why you can send full resolution pics from iPhone to iPhone (pics sent from iPhone to other non-iPhones still need to be compressed, for what it's worth). It would be nice if iMessage was a universal service that everyone could use, or if there were some other MMS alternative that allowed sending larger files directly from device to device...but there isn't.

This really isn't an Android issue or a Samsung issue, the issue is that SMS/MMS are antiquated messaging systems by today's standards. Apple improves upon this by integrating iMessage seamlessly with text messaging, but again, that only works if you are sending and receiving between 2 Apple devices. There are a lot of things I don't like about Apple and iPhones, but iMessage is definitely NOT one of them. It will be interesting to see if Google Hangouts is able to provide similar support once SMS integration is supported (a feature Google claims will be available in the near future)

Best advice is to use email if possible rather than MMS to send pics. You can definitely send full resolution using Gmail with no issues at all.

*EDIT: This number is based on what I could quickly find online. Verizon states, for example, that MMS size limit is 1.2MB, which is actually pretty high.