Message Types

MMS supports a broad range of media files that can be attached in the message. Note that depending on mobile devices media may be displayed differently, or for old devices may not be supported (pre smartphones).

Unlike SMS, MMS does not have strict character limitations when it comes to text. Standard text lengths for MMS can be up to 1600 characters, and some operators allow more (under the condition the message does not exceed the allowed MMS size).

Maximum MMS sizes vary depending on the network operator, but all operators will reliably handle messages of up to 300 KB of data.

Most of the US and Canadian carriers can handle up to 1 MB (results may vary).

Here is list of file formats recommended when using MMS to send media. Note that the list does not include all potentially supported file types.

As extra assurance for some media types, it's recommended to test sending MMS messages towards a device commonly used in your region.

Images

JPEG, JPG
GIF
PNG

Audio

MP3, MP4
MID, MIDI
WAV

Video

MPEG, MPG, MP4 – Support may vary by handset
3GP

Text

TXT, TeXT, US-ASCII – UTF-8, US-ASCII (not UTF-16)
vCard – Limited support; some handsets do not accept vCards

Application

PDF – Support may vary by handset; installed PDF reader required
SMIL – Support may vary by handset
Passbook – iOS only

vCards

A vCard is a file format that delivers the contact details for a person (or business) and can be sent via MMS. The file format is called Virtual Contact File (.vcf).

Support for vCards via MMS has some limitations:

For iPhones, you can send vCard files as long as the content ID ends with .vcf.
Some feature phones will accept vCards
Use the Content-Type: text/vcard and specify the character encoding

A vCard can contain special characters, as well as different types of content, and will be successfully processed by the major carriers (Tmobile, Verizon, ATT, Rogers, Telus).

The most common special characters and content types are:

@
<, >
/
A URL
An encoded image within the vCard (the vCard as text and the image encoded in base64)
The use of accents within the vCard (Hola, cómo estas?)
¿, ?

For most carriers, the recommended character encoding format for vCards in MMS is UTF-8.

To help you to increase the success rate for your campaigns, consider the following guidelines in the request body:

Accents should NOT be used as part of the name of the content in the header: Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=UTF-8; name="ÓNE/SIZE.vcf"
The use of accents within the header will result in message processing failure and the error message Invalid String format in VCard contentType/contentId will be displayed

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