j.modjeska

Unlike the rest of the known universe, Sprint has chosen not to support the Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) for picture messages on Windows Mobile phones such as the Treo. This is annoying for many reasons, but most of all because it severely limits your ability to upload photos from your Sprint phone to Facebook. Facebook only allows mobile uploads via MMS or text message, and in some limited ways from mobile email as some iPhone users have figured out. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to work with emails sent from Windows Mobile phones; Facebook returns a message stating that “you have uploaded from an unrecognized or unsupported address.” What is a poor Sprint user to do? Read on …

First, make sure you have activated your mobile phone within Facebook. Follow the instructions at facebook.com/mobile. The process will involve sending a confirmation code to your mobile phone via text message so Facebook can associate your phone number with your account.

Next, make sure you have access to Sprint’s PictureMail application. To do this, login to pictures.sprintpcs.com. You may have to call Sprint to get your username and password if you don’t already know it (their customer service number is 888-788-4727). You should see a login screen that looks something like this:

Click on “Send Picture Mail” on the right and compose a message, with a picture attached, to mobile@facebook.com. Send the message and then check your Facebook account to see if it uploaded. If it did, congratulations – you’ve just tricked Facebook into thinking you uploaded a photo from your mobile phone.

Now the fun part, tricking your Sprint Windows Mobile phone into thinking it can send picture mail too. The application you need, as of December of 2008, is sMMS and it is available at PPCGeeks.com. In this order, do the following:

1. Register for an account at PPCGeeks. Unfortuantely this is the only way to get access to the download links.

2. Visit the sMMS forum page at http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=22509.

3. Download the CAB file for the current version of .NET; this is required to run sMMS.

4. Download the CAB file (not the EXE file) for the current version of sMMS.

5. If you have ActiveSync setup and like to use it, follow the instructions on the site and you’re done! If not, email both CAB files to an email address that you can access from your Sprint phone.

6. Download the CAB files to your Sprint phone into the phone’s main memory (not to a storage card). Using the Windows Mobile file browser, locate the .NET CAB file and open it to install the .NET framework.

7. Restart your phone when prompted.

8. Using the Windows Mobile file browser, locate the SMMS CAB file and open it to install sMMS.

9. If you’re using a Treo 700w you might get a wacky error when you first open sMMS. Ignore it and restart sMMS; it should work fine now.

Like any software install on a Windows Mobile phone, there are plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong, but I’ve had really good luck with this program so far. My only complaint is that I never got a confirmation code after I made a donation, so I am stuck with annoying “Please Donate” messages even though I already donated, but I am holding out hope that it will show up eventually. At any rate, a one-time $5 donation is well worth the benefit of having PictureMail.