Sprint, MMS and Windows Mobile: Why They Hatin'?

One question we get a lot as moderators or technical writers in the WM world has to do with Sprint and their MMS service called “Picture Mail”, specifically why is the service not offered for all Windows Mobile devices (as well as BlackBerry) on that network?

For a long time, it was common practice for users to download a 3rd party program aka ArcSoft MMS Composer aka “the MMS hack” to enable the feature, but even that stopped working at the beginning of February. In short, Sprint figured out how to directly block just WM users form the service.

Why so? Will it change? What are the hacks to get around the block? Are you violating Sprint’s Terms and Services? Read on for the scoop…

What's the deal

Let’s cut to the chase: Sprint has never officially offered the Picture Mail service for Windows Mobile phones and if you call about it they simply say as much, assuming the CS rep is half paying attention. (Although as starrwulfe correctly notes in the comments, the 6700 did come labled as supporting MMS)

Why is this? It is obviously not because the our phones are incapable---the old MMS hack (described below) worked for a long time on many devices. No, the real reason was stated recently in an online-chat session with David Owens, director of product commercialization for Sprint on Buzz About Wireless (Sprint’s online forum):

We have in the past made the business decision to not use our picturemail platform for PDA OS's due to complexity. There are many ways to share pictures on those platforms which is our recommended approach. PDA's receive MMS messages with no issues.

So the answer is pretty straightforward and extremely banal: we just don’t want to.

The idea about “complexity” may seem bogus to many but in fact Sprint’s Picture Mail service is highly unorthodox and is not really a true MMS platform but rather a somewhat ad hoc, propriety system—hence why you don’t get the picture actually within the test message but rather a web link = lame.

This has been the official stance of Sprint for a long time and though they are under new management and have said in their forums that they are aware of the demand for MMS on their high-end WM devices, they are not making any promises about future availability—just that they will consider the option.

Some of this controversy may also be mitigated by Sprint’s forthcoming QChat service: think Push-to-Talk but using Sprint’s EvDO Rev. A data network and adding Push-to-Text, Push-to-GPS, Push-to-Multimedia—basically you’ll be able to instantly send various forms of data to other QChat phones. Though an exciting technology, the details and compatibility issues are far from certain and this won’t help with friends on other networks.

1st Gen Hack: Arise ArcSoft, Arise!

A few years ago, some of us from the burgeoning underground WM community (XDA, PPCGeeks, PDAPhoneHome) started looking for alternatives. After all, a similar network like Verizon had MMS working and available on all of their PPC phones, so why not us?

The goal became how to hack the program (provided by ArcSoft) from Verizon WM phones and adapt it to Sprint’s network. Once ROM cooking and decompiling became well understood, it was a relatively easy process to strip the program and build a .cab installer. Then with some info on Sprint’s MMS servers---bam—WM phones on Sprint were up and running with Sprint’s Picture Mail. This trick became one of the top hacks for Sprint users (and hands down one of the most FAQ for moderators and techies alike!)

As habit with Sprint, they appeared to be looking the other way and since a lot of us technically were paying the fee in our Vision Plan, it didn't seem too unethical (in fact many argue the reverse).

And why not? Sprint has now avoided officially supporting MMS on their phones, avoided fees to pay for a MMS license, etc. Just pass the buck and responsibility on to the end-user.

The Great Blockage of 2008

Besides the occasional Sprint outage, all was smooth sailing outside of the plethora of requests from new users (forums became the new product support). When a new device came out, the community worked feverishly to adapt the ArcSoft program and often with high success (smartphones, alas had a much more difficult time and rarely saw the fruits of such trickery).

At the end of beginning of February 2008 things changed. All of a sudden our hack stopped working—you could receive the Picture Mail link, but you could not send.

Most chalked it up to Sprint network issues but after days of outage it was becoming obvious: Sprint was blocking Picture Mail but only on WM phones.

The reasons are two fold. (Your mileage on believability may vary.)

(1) Block pornographic spamming User sbellow81 received a message from a Sprint CR rep which explaining the outage:

Our IT group did make some changes to our MMS server recently. We implemented measures designed to help prevent pornographic picturemail spam, which we received a large volume of complaints about over the last month.

The idea is actually not crazy. WM devices have proved to be extremely hackable—after all we just did hack MMS onto Sprint. The idea, as clarified by Chris Price is such:

If you allow unsigned access to the MMS gateway, anyone can spam the whole network. If you're using signed devices... it's a lot harder. By blocking Windows Mobile, spammers can't script Messenger to spam using accounts. Those accounts are of course security flagged and locked down, but not until hundreds... thousands of spams are sent from them. I do think they need to fix this better, by limiting the sending total on a per-account basis, rather than by limiting software. It's very anti-open-access.

(2) Propriety Software

One thing that got lost in all the ArcSoft hacks that were flying around was the somewhat obvious: it is technically illegal.

Hoshtaylor received a response from Sprint which is not farfetched:

Verizon's MMS software is proprietary and they do hold a copyright on it. As far as we know, Verizon has not given ArcSoft (the maker of that third party workaround) permission to develop their MMS software to be used on a rival carrier. This means that the use of this software is software piracy and therefore illegal. And Sprint allowing customers to use it is also illegal and Verizon could take legal action against us if we did not block it.

Also, legal action could force the company to take action against the Sprint customers who used this program as the use of pirated software constitutes an illegal act, which is a terms of service violation that would be grounds for immediate termination of service with all applicable penalties. This is not an action Sprint wishes to take against customers with the challenges we face already and by proactively blocking the program, the chances of legal action forcing this to happen are much smaller.

We know now that users have been using this program for some time. Upper management was not aware of this program's existence until it was posted on the Sprint Buzz About Wireless forum recently. Given the legal issues involved, once it was realized that the workaround was based on Verizon's copyrighted work and realized what the consequences to the affected customers could be, we had little choice but to block it.

At least these responses boarder on the realm of realistic. Still, it does beg the question: Why can’t Sprint just license ArcSoft, make their own or have some other 3rd party develop software to enable this feature which is offered on free flip phones?

2nd Gen Hacks: Return of the PictureMail (sMMS)

As of today, Sprint is still officially blocking the use of ArcSoft and there are absolutely no signs that Sprint is preparing to offer an official solution to the problem by way of adding the necessary software. So even the upcoming Palm Treo 800w (and discussed here) will not have this feature.

One interesting (unofficial) comment from Sprint was this:

If a *legal* and legitimate third party workaround is developed, Sprint would not be against it's use. Thousands of legitimate third party applications are used on Sprint Pocket PCs every day (and we even have provided a software store, http://softwarestore.sprint.com for the sale of some of these third party additions).

Even if this were not the case, the WM community was hard at work at alternatives. The first to make it to the finish line was sMMS (found here), developed by SomeGuyMMS and hosted at PPCGeeks (the developer asks that you do not redistribute the actual program on other sites).

It requires .NET CF 2.0 or higher and is compatible for WM5 and WM6 both Professional and Standard (e.g. Moto Q and Q9c). A work in development, sMMS is being hailed by many as a very plausible alternative for Sprint’s MMS woes and appears to be a viable alternative for those in need. Users are encouraged to cooperate with the developer in identifying bugs and quirks to help improve the application (it is still early in development).

Conclusion

In sum, there is no technical reason why Sprint can’t do MMS for these devices. They basically feel that they are so powerful that you would rather just email them instead. Or even more likely: money, as they do not want to pay for a license, Obviously these are fairly weak excuses and considering that Sprint is the only one of the major carriers to take such a position, out of line with competition.

Will an official Sprint solution make itself known? Not likely, though a resolution would be relatively easy to implement and could happen rapidly. So stay tuned. Also, voicing your concerns to Sprint by writing them or via their forum may help too ;-)

My personal opinion, by the way is this: I can’t stand Picture Mail in its current form. The idea of texting someone the web link to view my online photo is lame and I’d just as much use my mobile blogging software (<--click for reviews) or yeah, email the photo.

If Sprint were to magically grow a real MMS system, something very unlikely, I would reconsider. Until that day, I’ll still be oblivious to Picture Mail, official or unofficial.