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[Updated] Google Working MMS Support into Google Voice?

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While Google Voice users can send and receive calls, access visual voicemail with transcriptions, and fire off text messages, MMS messages have remain out of the realm of possibilities. That may be changing, as Google appears to be working in support for picture messaging. Users are reporting to have been notified of incoming MMS messages sent to their Google Voice number via a standard SMS, with the attached picture then forwarded to their email address. It isn’t a complete, streamlined system, but it shows that there is hope for multimedia messages within Google Voice.

At the moment, the functionality has only been noticed by users on Sprint, Virgin Mobile, and T-Mobile, but GV’s pseudo MMS is slowly rolling out to more and more places. You can check for yourself by enabling “SMS forwarding” as an option in Google Voice’s settings and having someone send you an MMS.

Update: The Google Voice Blog has officially announced the rollout of these new MMS features. While we mentioned above reports from users on various carriers receiving MMS messages, the blog post only mentions Sprint support for the time being. It is also mentioned that the Google Voice team is working on displaying MMS messages directly within the Google Voice app.

[via LifeHacker]

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18 Comments

  1. First

    1. you win!!!!

      1. >:)

  2. That’s a big GV icon.

    1. Click it twice and it gets even BIGGER :D

  3. Now this might make me change to google voice..Although I need to be sure I get my pictures cause the one time I miss my girls pics I would be pissed!!

  4. What is google voice?

  5. Where’s the + 1 button!?!? I need the + 1 button! Quick someone help me find it! I just gotta have GV MMS capabilities!

  6. That’s a terribly hokey workaround for a multibillion dollar company. Pathetic.

    1. If you think that’s bad, you should look into the technical specs of how MMS actually works… it’s amazing it has ever worked at all considering how much of a hack it is on top of SMS (it actually doesn’t work like SMS at all).
      I looked into it a while back when the iPhone was released without any MMS support, I wondered “how did a multibillion dollar company not have this on their phone on day one?!”

  7. About time. I’ve been waiting for this feature since the beginning of Google Voice. Never understood why they don’t use some of your 7GB gmail storage to hold the pictures and text a link like the old Sprint picture mail service.

  8. Can’t wait!! I’ve been using GV for over a year now and this will complete the user experience. I won’t have to have pictures sent to gmail

  9. GV needs integration with G+, hangouts, and built directly into Android.

  10. Over a year overdue, but about time. Now all we need is for all those web services that offer to send you text notification to work with Google Voice numbers too.

  11. GV needs a Dutch release!

  12. This would be fantastic. SMS/MMS is generally cheap enough on a family plan that I’d just as soon toss it on there (for the non-data users in the family), but this is great for those people who don’t have a text plan. Many an MMS has been missed because the recipient was a GV user.

  13. Can’t wait. I hope this can work seamlessly and I can stop paying Verizon ransom for txt messages. The sad part is people could just send them to my email or chat on gtalk if they have a smartphone, but most people aren’t savvy enough to do that.

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