AT&T's iPhone Finally Getting MMS via iPhone OS 3.1?

iPhone users in the U.S. will finally get a long-anticipated feature: Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS). With a patch from iTunes, AT&T iPhone owners will be able to quickly send pictures and videos to their friends. Of course, a lot of people seem to forget that almost every other phone has MMS capability. In fact, the iPhone has been MMS-capable since June, when iPhone OS 3.0 was released. The delay has been because of AT&T, which has been furiously upgrading its infrastructure to handle the increased stress that MMS will cause on its network.

Confidence in the strength and reliability of the AT&T network is at an all-time low. Dropped calls and 3G outages have been a constant source of customer complaints, especially in New York and San Francisco, where the cores of the tech and media world live and work. Customer revolts don’t helpA little over a month ago, the next update to the iPhone firmware - OS 3.1 beta - was released to developers. With the updated firmware, there are a number of bug fixes and a few new features, including voice control over Bluetooth, copy and paste for phone numbers, vibration feedback when re-arranging screen icons, and more. However, the most notable change in the latest OS update is the re-inclusion of MMS. For unknown reasons, this feature was removed from the fifth beta and the public release of the OS, but now it's back and enabled by default. Although the functionality isn't working over the AT&T network yet, there are reports that the next iPhone update will indeed enable MMS.

MMS Switched on in New Firmware

There are several reasons to believe why the upcoming iPhone OS 3.1 update will include MMS. Most importantly is the fact that the update firmware actually includes the functionality switched on by default. There are changes AT&T will have to make in order for it to work, of course, but now all that's left is for AT&T to "flip the switch," so to speak.

Although Apple hasn't officially confirmed a release date for the OS 3.1 update, it's expected to arrive sometime in September. That timing nicely coincides with AT&T's public statement that MMS will arrive "later this summer." (September is still summer, right?) An anonymous commenter on iPhone-watching blog FSM said that a rep told him the release date is September 6th and, at the latest, September 8th, but obviously, you can't put any weight behind those statements (you can only hope!).

When we spoke to an AT&T rep ourselves, we were told to wait until the "end of August or beginning of September" - which isn't really new information, unfortunately. However, the rep also said that Apple "has the update already" and that AT&T is "just waiting for Apple to release it." This statement could easily be construed to mean that when Apple releases the updated firmware that is OS 3.1, AT&T will be ready to turn on MMS functionality. Another reason why this seems plausible is because the rep said you'll be alerted to the update via a text message