Send MMS photo/video and NOT an album from Google Photos

[AC Question]

A friend of mine has an android phone and I have an iPhone. He keeps trying to send me photos and videos but it just sends me a link to a Google Photos album. This does me no good because I can't save them to my phone. I have to take a screenshot of the photos, but am SOL with the videos.

How can my friend send me mms messages like I send him?

And I am asking because he is brand new to the world of smart phones and I smashed my only android machine because of its backwardsness.

 

[ManiacJoe]

All carriers place a small limit on the size of data that can be sent using SMS/MMS. This limit is often 600K. This makes sending photos difficult and sending videos all but impossible. iMessage and the multiple third-party IM apps do not have this problem (or use a much larger size limit).

This sending of URLs instead of the actual picture may have something to do with the integration of his SMS app and Google Photos. Which SMS app is he using?

For receiving the images on your end, you should be able to long-press the image and save it to your phone (or whatever similar feature the iPhone has to the long-press menu popup).