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by RickS 2494 days ago
> reduced resolution in photos and videos

This and group names are the absolute killers.

It's tough. My understanding is that SMS is at fault under the surface, requiring that images and videos be compressed to fit a size limit (right?).

My preferred solution would be mandated adversarial interoperability.

Absent that, I wish android could bundle images into a dead simple hosting site that send me a link to all the images, at max resolution, displayed with zero chrome whatsoever, in a browser window. Then I can download them like normal assets (with my press-and-hold browser utils. no third party UI).

Receiving photos packaged in a google library, for example, is a nightmare.
2 comments
jdofaz 2493 days ago
SMS doesn't support pictures at all. MMS is layered on top, where a hidden sms is received telling the phone to fetch the media via http. That is why you can receive text messages without data, but not pictures.

I don't know the details of the MMS spec, but I know the mms picture quality improved when I switched carriers several years ago.

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nerdjon 2494 days ago
> Absent that, I wish android could bundle images into a dead simple hosting site that send me a link to all the images, at max resolution, displayed with zero chrome whatsoever, in a browser window. Then I can download them like normal assets (with my press-and-hold browser utils. no third party UI).

I would not be particularly happy to find out that someone I was messaging on an Android phone could easily just send up any images I send them to a public site.

(Already not happy with Google having data about me that I do not consent to thanks to people with Android phones)

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RickS 2493 days ago
>I would not be particularly happy to find out that someone I was messaging on an Android phone could easily just send up any images I send them to a public site.

There may have been a misunderstanding here.

I was referring to an android phone sending me (on iPhone) hosted images as a fallback rather then sending them via MMS (lossy) or google photos (bloated).

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Wowfunhappy 2493 days ago
It's not really public if it's an "unlisted" url with a sufficiently long/random URL. You could also have them expire after some reasonable amount of time.

As far as Google having data... I'm not clear how what OP proposed would give them any more data than they currently have.

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