How to Send Videos via Text Message
Forget hefty MMS charges and low-quality video texts – Smash is your free, HD alternative.
IN THIS GUIDE, YOU’RE GOING TO READ THE OPTIONS TO SHARE VIDEOS VIA TEXT MESSAGE:
Sending a text message is easy. Sending a video via text message? That can be a bit harder.
When you send a file in a text message you are likely using MMS. Now more than twenty years old, the MMS standard for multimedia messaging is running up against some real barriers these days as video files get larger, mobile data connections encourage users to get off text messaging altogether, and users demand higher quality video at full HD, 4K and even 8K quality on their smartphones.
In this article we’ll explain how you can send a video via a text message using MMS, what the drawbacks to doing so are, and why you might want to use a different approach to texting your videos to maintain quality, resolution, and send the movie you really want to send instead of a degraded and inferior imitation.
MMS: Old Tech for Sending Videos via Text Message
For many people, the traditional way to send a video in a text message was with Multimedia Messaging Service, or MMS. First launched back in 2002 to augment the text-only messaging of Short Messaging Service (SMS), MMS gave cell phone users a convenient way to send messages that were anything but texts. Photos, videos, and any other multimedia a user wanted to share could be sent with a few taps (well, button presses back then) while on the go.
Significantly, MMS did not take advantage of the burgeoning data networks that would be known as WAP, Edge, 3G, 4G and, in time, 5G. MMS took advantage of the existing cell phone networks that underlay SMS communications and extended the capacity to finally send a video to a friend or colleague just as cell phones developed better camera lenses.
Today, you can still send a video by text message using MMS and it still takes only a couple of taps on your smartphone screen and in your native text message application – here’s how to do it.
How to Send a Video via Text
Sending a video by MMS is simple. While every phone is a little different and there are sometimes marked differences between the Android and iOS platforms, the steps are similar and it’s no more difficult than sending a standard SMS or text message:
Open your text messaging application
Select your recipient or enter their cell phone number
Tap the + or attachment symbol next to the messaging bubble
Select your video, attach it to the message, and tap the send icon
Android phones will default to sending the video as an MMS or an RCS (Rich Communication Service) message. Apple’s Messages app, on the other hand, will default to sending it as an iMessage if the recipient has an iOS device; Apple will only send a video as an MMS if the user is using a non-iOS device. Why? Well, that’s because despite the ubiquity of MMS messaging, there are some drawbacks to sending a video via text message in this way, and Apple is trying to get out ahead of those issues – let’s take a look at what they are.
Three Problems with Sending Videos via Text Message
You’ve shot a great video, and now you want to share it via text message – so what’s the problem? Here are three that you need to consider.
1. Your file is too big
In a world of constant connection and data speeds on mobile phones that rival connections on a desktop for speed, it might be a surprise to learn how significantly MMS constrains the size of the multimedia you send. Typically, the largest video that can be sent by MMS is just 3MB, with some operators limiting the size of their MMS messages even more. To put that into perspective, 3MB is generally less than 8 seconds of video shot on a modern smartphone, and maybe just a second or two longer if it is significantly compressed. Unless you are shooting and sharing blink-and-you’ll-miss-it video, you’re going to run into MMS’s video size constraints fast.
2. No support from network operators
The rise of alternative messaging platforms including WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, and Messenger has led to some cell phone network operators removing support for MMS messaging altogether. Countries including India, the Philippines, Singapore, Switzerland, and Germany all have major network operators such as Vodafone, Singtel, and Swisscom that no longer support MMS messaging. If your recipient is on one of those networks then there’s no chance they’ll receive your video, short as it might be. While RCS is meant to pick up the slack that MMS leaves behind, you might find yourself stuck trying to send a video by text from your iOS device (no RCS support) to someone in a country of billion and half people (India) and it just won’t work.
3. Compression and Video Degradation
Even if you can send a video from one device to another in your country, there are issues when sending that video by MMS. Unlike sending a video via Apple’s Messages to another Apple device, a video sent by MMS is going to be degraded to ensure it meets the size constraints of the system. Your 6MB video will be crushed down to something half the size, for example, and this means compressing the quality and diminishing the resolution of the video. Forget HD or 4K quality, you’ll be lucky to get something that is not entirely pixelated if it is longer than a few seconds. MMS messages degrade videos that are natively too large for the system, and this can have significant consequences when your reputation or business is riding on the video that you are sharing.
So, is it possible to send a large video via text message without having it rejected for size, rejected by an operator, or compressed down to something unwatchable? The answer is YES or, more precisely, the answer is Smash.
How to Send a Video via Text Message with Smash
Smash is a file transfer service that is built from the ground up to send large files. While it is capable of sending a file of any size, Smash is especially popular for files that are too big to be transferred via traditional channels like email or text message. With a MMS video limited to just a couple of megabytes and the typical video far exceeding that, it’s a popular recourse for creative businesses and individual users alike. Here’s how to send a video of any size via text message with Smash:
Go to the Smash website
Tap on the icon in the middle of the screen, select your video, and upload
Add your email address, add password protection if you like, and then copy the unique URL
Paste the URL into text messaging application and tap to send
The link that you’re sharing is only a handful of characters long which means you won’t have to share via MMS at all. Instead, your video can be messages via the SMS platform so anything under 160 characters will work. This makes the combination of Smash and text messaging valuable not only for those who want to shoot their family and friends a large video by text, but also for businesses that rely on text message outreach to share videos with hundreds or even thousands of recipients.
Sharing a video by text message with Smash is free no matter how large the file might be. If the web portal above is not to your taste, Smash also have native apps for iOS and Android, and an app for the Mac, too, if you are sending your messages via a desktop machine. It’s easy, unlimited, secure and reliable – why would you ever use a standard MMS again?
Conclusion: The Best Way to Send Videos via Text Message
An MMS might have been the only way to send a video to another cell phone two decades ago, but it’s strictly limited in the size and the quality of the video you can share. Luckily, with a file sharing service like Smash, you can easily share a large video via text message and avoid all of the complications and video degradation that comes with using MMS.
With Smash, you aren’t limited to sending a small video file or transferring a low-resolution film that is compressed to all get-out. Instead, you send a link to your video file and share the video you want to share exactly as it really is. You don’t have to worry about whether your recipient lives in the right country or is using a network provider that supports MMS. You also don’t have to worry about the price because Smash is free: use it once, use it every day, the price remains the same no matter how big the video you send or how often you send video by text message with Smash.
Get started today and leave turn-of-the-millennium technology behind – send your videos via text message with Smash!
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Frequently Asked Questions
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SMS is a text-only messaging service and MMS allows you to send multimedia files, too. There are hard limits on both, though, whether it is the 160 characters for SMS, or the file size limits for MMS. Typically, the same messaging application on a portable device will be capable of sending both SMS and MMS, as long as the services are supported in the country where you are sending or receiving the message. Alternatively, Smash is available on every platform and operating system, and will always allow you to send videos for free!
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This is a function of the MMS technology. Instead of sending the video as it appears on your iOS device, your video is first compressed and then transferred to your Android recipient. As Apple devices do not yet support RCS, this degrades the quality and resolution of the vide, often leaving both sides of the transfer disappointed. Avoiding this disappointment is easy, though: just use Smash!
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No! Smash will send any file no matter which format it might be in. Unlike MMS, Smash sends the video as it is uploaded by you. There’s no compression, format changing, or resolution adjusting with Smash, and the outcome is the same: whatever you upload is delivered in the same state, in the same format, and in the same resolution. It’s why thousands of people send videos with Smash every day without ever worrying that the file is too big, the video too long, or the resolution too high – with Smash, it just works!
