Google Voice got just a little bit handier today with the addition of support for MMS (multimedia message service) from nearly 100 North American carriers.
That sounds like a minor update, and it is. But it fixes a longstanding problem with Google Voice text messages: You could send and receive ordinary, 160-character, text-only SMS messages, but media-rich MMS messages, like that cute photo of your niece your sister sent, just disappeared into the ether. There weren’t even error messages to indicate that your message didn’t get delivered.
Google’s Alex Wiesen announced the change today in a Google+ post, noting that AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Bell Canada, Rogers, and Telus were among the carriers with which Google Voice now supports MMS message interchange.
Notably missing from the list: Verizon Wireless.
The service previously worked with just a few carriers, such as T-Mobile and Sprint.
Android Police did some tests and found that the new feature isn’t working completely smoothly yet. Adding to the confusion for Android users: the fact that Google smooshes together Hangouts (a Google+ feature) and SMS/MMS messages, with the result — in my experience — that no one actually knows what medium they’re using to communicate with you anymore and therefore can’t understand why you aren’t receiving their texts.
But we’ll just have to wait another day for a fix for that problem.
