MMS Picture Size Problem

Mixie

I recently purchased a SE t610 mobile (unlocked) from o2, and with it a SpeakEasy Simpack. While I can send and receive MMS messages, those I receive are all scaled down to about 50% of their original size, possibly less. I'm wondering if there's a phone option to enable 100% size of those images (or future messages), or if it's an operator issue?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Mixie

*bump*

wheresmybeaver

Yeah when I send an MMS from my O2 T610 to another O2 T610 the image is about half size. Kinda annoying, does anyone know anything about this? Do O2 only shrink the image when it bypasses a particular limit or something?

Mixie

I found some forum references to this on the internet, and apparently it was a problem with o2 in the UK at one point. From what I can gather, it was because when you recieved any MMS on o2, it was being converted to .gif for some users and while they did this they also shrunk the image in size. I can't verify this since I can't tell the image type of a received MMS picture on my t610, and when I save the image it just defaults to jpg anyway.

I rang o2, and they said it was a SE problem, nothing to do with them. I pointed out that I had found references online to similar problems (which later were corrected by o2) in the UK, and whether by accident or not, I was hung up on.

SE still haven't replied to my emails, other than your standard auto-reply indicating they had received them.

I'm going to return the phone I think and switch to vodaphone. I've been a digifone customer for several years and am thoroughly disappointed with the lack of interest shown by their support staff. I realise it is only a small problem, but with the amount of money I spend on calls alone I think I'm entitled to a better level of service. :mad:

Faltermyer

Did you ring their general helpline or the Online Support??

Call 1740 from your mobile to get their Internet Support. Theyll have a little more knowledge.

As for SE getting back to you - it took them nearly a week to get back to my submission recently.

flywheel

hi mixie, tried to reply to your PM during the week but your Inbox was full...

anyhow had to kill some time this morning so did a bit more testing, here's some of the results:

T610 -> T610 on O2:


T610 -> T610 on Voda:

---

T610 -> i-Mate Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Ed 2003 (XDA II) on O2:



T610 -> i-Mate Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Ed 2003 (XDA II) on Voda:

---

T610 -> 7650 on O2:



T610 -> 7650 on Voda:

---

T610 -> P800 on O2:



T610 -> P800 on Voda:

---

T610 -> email address on O2:

---

so there is a different outcome with O2's MMS system sending T610 -> T610 compared to Vodafone

but also the handset that is being sent the message can be a factor for example the T610 -> 7650 and P800 have the same outcome on both O2 and Voda

BrianG

Mixie

Originally posted by Faltermyer
Did you ring their general helpline or the Online Support??

Call 1740 from your mobile to get their Internet Support. Theyll have a little more knowledge.

As for SE getting back to you - it took them nearly a week to get back to my submission recently.

Yep, tried all of the above I'm afraid

Popped into an o2 shop this morning, and they tried to help. The seemed more interested than the support staff anyway.

DubWirless, thanks for the time you spent testing those different scenarios - very much appreciated. I'll give them another ring and post any updates.

Thanks for all the help!

[edit] Interestingly enough, I sent a large picture (120x160) to a Nokia 3510i this morning. It scaled it to fit the screen, but viewing image information showed the correct dimensions. I then sent it back to my t610, and my t610 scaled it down to 50% of size. Both phones are on o2 [/edit]

trap4

I'm seeing the same problem :mad:

A friend and I sent MMS photos each way between our Nokia 3650 and Sanyo phones. We're both on Vodafone but we both got the small sized photos. Not happy!!!


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-Jim
http://mmsmemo.blogspot.com

Mixie

I got a reply from Sony Ericsson support yesterday saying that it was a design feature of the phone, and was not a fault of either the operator or the handset. If you look at DubWireless's post above though you can clearly see a full size picture was received on a t610 on Vodaphone...

weebrat

I've seen this on several phones. But each time it's been a phone setting, not operator dependent. Mostly tested on O2 (some Vodafone). There's a preference "Image Size" on some phones which is set to "small" rather than "large" or "normal" by default. The effect of this is to compress the image to about half size *before* sending. The phone manufacturers appear to believe this is being helpful....

Haven't used a SE t610, so can't be sure about this one though.

To check this, get the image details of an image you're about to send, say it's 20K. Then attach to an MMS and send. Check the details of the message either whilst sending or in your Outbox/Sent Items. If it's 10K, 12K, whatever, you know it's definitely your phone that's doing it.

Finding the MMS settings can be a pain on some phones to change this setting!

HTH :-)

flywheel

yup - for example the Nokia Series 60 handsets have a Small/Large MMS image size setting

but there's no MMS picture size setting on the T610 - the example above O2 -> 02 and Voda -> Voda used the same settings and same picture

there is a image size setting for taking pictures on teh T610 but the same picture was used in all the above examples (with the 'actual' image displayed from the e-mail attachment test)

BrianG

weebrat

Was the image size (KB) in the message different before and after sending the message for the t610 btwn the O2 and Vodafone tests, as well as the display size being different (should follow of course)?

Do you get the same results sending O2 to Vodafone or vice versa?

flywheel

Was the image size (KB) in the message different before and after sending the message for the t610 btwn the O2 and Vodafone tests, as well as the display size being different (should follow of course)?

original image saved directly to T610 (from camera):


image saved from MMS after T610 -> T610 on O2:


image saved from MMS after T610 -> T610 on Voda:

Do you get the same results sending O2 to Vodafone or vice versa?

just carried out the ones above (on network) - haven't tried cross network yet

BrianG

Mixie

I don't have a second t610 to try cross-network testing here on them, but Sharp GX10i Voda -> o2 t610 = small , o2 t610 -> GX10i Voda = big.

wheresmybeaver

When you send an MMS on the T610 it saves it in the Last Sent folder. When you check this the photos are the same size as when you started, so photos don't seem to get shrunk on the phone when you send. I would imagine its a funny compatibility thing that happens with particular conditions, mostly on the O2 network. Could be one of those things that resolves itself in a few weeks or when O2 upgrade or change something somewhere.

weebrat

So I reproduced this on a 3510i as well on O2. From Brian's results:

t610 288x352 original --> t610 72x88 received (1/4 size)

Mine:
3510i 288x352 original --> 3510i 144x176 received (1/2 size)

I downloaded Brian's original over WAP to test. So pretty much the transcoding appears to be on receipt of message as suspected. It halves the message, then halves it again until it thinks it can fit by the looks of it. It obviously has a strange idea of what can fit on a t610.

Hopefully the network gremlins will get flushed out....

Mixie

Originally posted by weebrat
So I reproduced this on a 3510i as well on O2. From Brian's results:

t610 288x352 original --> t610 72x88 received (1/4 size)

Mine:
3510i 288x352 original --> 3510i 144x176 received (1/2 size)

I downloaded Brian's original over WAP to test. So pretty much the transcoding appears to be on receipt of message as suspected. It halves the message, then halves it again until it thinks it can fit by the looks of it. It obviously has a strange idea of what can fit on a t610.

Hopefully the network gremlins will get flushed out....

I tried sending a 160x120 image to a 3510i from my t610, and while it displayed it smaller (smaller screen) the dimensions of the saved image were still 160x120.

crowbar

Originally posted by weebrat
So pretty much the transcoding appears to be on receipt of message as suspected. It halves the message, then halves it again until it thinks it can fit by the looks of it.

yes the mmsc definitely it deals with transcoding on receipt of the message - it has to. the various different handsets don't support all types of image encodings (eg. jpg, gif, etc... too many standards ...) so so the mmsc sometimes has to transcode the image to a different encoding when the receiving handset is incapable of displaying the encoding type that the originating handset used. there's no definitive way the mmsc has any idea what handset it is dealing with until it gets the retrieval request from the receiving handset and looks at the user-agent in the http header. there may also be some logic used to resize images depending on whether the receiving handset can cope with large images (both in terms of picture size and file size - all handset have limitations but they are all different.)

is there any way to show the image encoding that is being used from the handset itself? i don't have any mms handsets to check, but they would all be different in any case.

so anyway for cross-network mms messages it's the destination mmsc that must do the transcoding as the source mmsc doesn't know what type of handset is being used to retrieve a message. hence anomalies in the results between sending o2 -> voda and voda -> o2 - i think another poster saw this happening.

it makes no sense however that a t610 -> t610 picture needs transcoding, same or cross-network though! that particular problem sounds to me like an mmsc software anomaly/feature, or a handset type profile configuration error on the destination mmsc.

weebrat

Could the published UAprof files for each phone be causing it? Look at these:

http://wap.sonyericssonmobile.com/UAprof/T610R101.xml
<prf:MmsMaxImageResolution>120x160</prf:MmsMaxImageResolution>

http://nds.nokia.com/uaprof/N3510ir100.xml
<prf:MmsMaxImageResolution>352x288</prf:MmsMaxImageResolution>

The t610 one seems to suggest that Sony Ericsson have published the capabilities of this phone as only being able to receive smaller MMS messages than it can itself produce using the built-in camera. Which seems dumb?

Mixie

Originally posted by weebrat
Could the published UAprof files for each phone be causing it? Look at these:

http://wap.sonyericssonmobile.com/UAprof/T610R101.xml
<prf:MmsMaxImageResolution>120x160</prf:MmsMaxImageResolution>

http://nds.nokia.com/uaprof/N3510ir100.xml
<prf:MmsMaxImageResolution>352x288</prf:MmsMaxImageResolution>

The t610 one seems to suggest that Sony Ericsson have published the capabilities of this phone as only being able to receive smaller MMS messages than it can itself produce using the built-in camera. Which seems dumb?

If I'm reading the t610 xml correctly, the max dimensions would be 120x160, which is certainly the largest picture I have received @ 100% scale on my t610. However, if you look up a few posts, you'll see that DubWireless managed to send a 288x352 px image from voda t610 -> voda t610.

weebrat

This might only mean that O2 have implemented transcoding and Vodafone haven't (either for this handset or any). No transcoding might be better in this scenario, but worse in others....

Faltermyer

Just a little bit of kinda relavent info that I found out today.

Meteor MMS can currently be up to 100kb in size .... phone allowing of course.

Though there is no cross network MMS on Meteor as of yet(Not that it always works right Voda <-> O2 yet afaik -open to correction here tho)(Cross network will mean the recipient gets an SMS with a URL valid for 3days where they can view the MMS).

weebrat

To complete the picture, AFAIK Vodafone network is limited to 38KB, although the Sharp GX10 (their most common phone) is limited to 30KB. O2 has no limit (or it's very high).

O2 to Vodafone interconnect should be OK now I thought - what problems are you getting?

Stephen

What a pain in the ass.

I have this problem with my T610 on O2 as well, receiving pictures from a Voda GX10i. Except in this case the received image was 60x80! It was full-size on the GX10i, whatever resolution that is.

/slaps O2

pleba

looks like the problem has been fixed!
t610 images on O2 are ok now

weebrat

Yep, problem fixed in O2 for 610 now.

Stephen

Nice one.

Just received a message, full size

ridi

HI

can anyone please give me a link to an O2 XDAII or any similar pocket PC UAP,

Thanx kindly

Ridi