Are you wondering why your Android videos are so blurry in text messages? It’s a common problem, and it’s notably worse on Android since iPhone users don’t seem to have the same issue (at least not all the time). If you’ve ever wondered why videos sent over text to/from an Android device don’t look as good as videos sent over iMessage, you’ve come to the right place. Here’s why all those memes and cute videos of pets look terrible on SMS, and how you can fix the problem.
Text messaging is a lot more complicated than it used to be, especially when iPhones and Android devices are mixed together. Due to a few different factors, media attachments like photos and videos can end up degraded in quality when sent over text messages, depending on the recipient and their phone
Why videos sent via text message look awful
Multimedia Messaging Service, or MMS for short, is how phones send media content to other phones over text messages. It’s a standard that was created in the early 2000s — a time when the photo quality of most cell phones was only a few megapixels — so perhaps it’s not too surprising that smartphones have outgrown the technology.
MMS has a strict file size limit.
The main problem with MMS is that most carriers have an incredibly strict limit on the size of files that can be sent. For example, Verizon only allows images up to 1.2MB to be sent over text messages, and videos up to 3.5MB. AT&T is even stricter, only allowing videos up to 1MB in size. If an image or video is too large, it is compressed automatically.
What does compressed video look like?
Wondering how different a video sent via text looks versus one posted on YouTube? Take a look at the two videos below; the first video is the original 54MB recording (only affected by YouTube’s own compression), while the second is an AT&T text message video downgraded to 348KB.
By comparison, Apple’s Message platform has a far less-restrictive file size limit — somewhere around 100MB. Since messages sent between iPhones never leave Apple’s servers, the quality is far superior to Android. Media sent from an iPhone to an Android device, or anything sent between Android devices will be compressed.
How to work around the problem
There’s no fix that can improve videos sent over MMS, because the file size limits are enforced by carriers. However, there are workarounds that involve using different messaging protocols.
The easiest solution, in most cases, is to use a third-party messaging service that you and your recipients can agree on. Here’s some of the more popular messaging apps:
WhatsApp, the de-facto messaging standard in many parts of the world, will allow you to send videos up to 16MB, but if you select to send videos as documents (by selecting “Document” instead of “Gallery” in the paper clip menu), you can go up to 100MB without further compression.
Telegram is another popular option for sending messages between phones, and it has an even higher limit of 1.5GB.
Skype is available on Android and iOS (as well as PCs), and allows files up to 300MB in size.
You can also share messages via Google Photos if both parties have the app installed. Just pick the desired video or photo from the Photos app, press the share button, and select one of your contacts (or create a link, then send that to the recipient).
RCS on Google Messages may be the answer (someday)
One more option is to use Rich Communication Services, or RCS for short. It’s the intended replacement for MMS, with support for greater file sizes, and carriers are slowly all caving in to use Google’s implementation as the one unifying standard. Google Messages offers RCS functionality and and all three major US carriers are adopiting the RCS standard.
Google’s Messages app is currently also experimenting with a new way to send images and videos via SMS/MMS by sidestepping these protocols and instead automatically creating a Google Photos link that the recipient can open, with the full media quality intact. Neat, but not ready for prime time just yet — just something to look forward to.
With big parts of the US still relying on text messages and MMS for communication, it’s a bummer that carriers have been slow to embrace RCS. If you’re looking for a secure alternative to send messsages to your friends and loved ones, you may want to explore end-to-end encrypted messaging apps.
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