How do I save a video I received in a text message on a Droid Mini?

[AC Question]

Bought my 1st "smartphone" so I could save photos and videos my kids text me of my grandbabies. So far I'm not able to save any of the videos, and they are so small and grainy they're hard to see. How do I save videos?
Thanks

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Try long-pressing the video (when you're in the message conversation view), and see if options come up to save.

The reason why it's so grainy is that MMS (i.e., sending videos or photos over the text messaging app) has an attachment size limit of about 1.2 MB. High resolution videos are going to be way bigger than that, so in order to send, they have to be downsized greatly (which means losing a lot of fidelity). The better way to share high quality videos is to upload them to a cloud service like YouTube, Google Drive, Google+ Photos, or Dropbox. Then share the link privately with the recipient. You can also send a video using Google Hangouts, which is Google's IM system (similar to Apple's iMessage). If you send a video via Hangouts, it gets uploaded to your Google+ Photos account, then gets shared privately to the recipient. So tell your son/daughter to try one of those options when sending videos. (If they use an iPhone, then remind them that Android phones don't have iMessage, and therefore can't receive their videos in full resolution.)