How to Enable Picture Messaging on the iPhone 5

You may have read articles about how to send picture messages on the iPhone 5, but found that you were unable to send a message to one of your contacts.

The reason that this is working for some of your contacts is because those contacts have an iOS device and, thus, iMessaging. You can tell when you are using iMessage instead of standard text messaging because the color of the text bubble is blue instead of green.

But you can send a picture message to someone that is not using iMessage by enabling MMS on your iPhone 5. Many people have this setting disabled on their iPhone 5, but you can enable picture messaging if you want to be able to send a picture to someone that does not have iMessage.

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Turn on MMS on the iPhone 5

If you have been a cell phone user for several years, then you may remember when picture messaging was first becoming popular and many people were unable to use it because their device was incompatible.

Now that smartphones are more common, however, picture messaging is much more common. It also works between different kinds of devices, so you can feel free to send a picture message from your iPhone 5 to an Android phone or Windows phone.

So follow the steps below to learn how to enable MMS picture messaging on your iPhone 5.

Step 1: Tap the Settings icon.

tap the settings icon

Step 2: Scroll down to the Messages option and select it.

open the messages menu

Step 3: Scroll down to the MMS Messaging option and move the slider to the On position.

enable mms messaging on the iphone 5

Now that you know how to enable picture messaging on the iPhone 5, you will be able to easily share pictures from your device with your contacts.

Sending MMS messages can use data, which could be problematic if you are traveling in a foreign country, or if you have a limited amount of data and often share images and videos with your contacts.

You can adjust the data settings for your phone by going to Settings > Cellular > and toggling the setting for Cellular Data or choosing the Cellular Data Options button and adjusting the options found on that menu.

If you have a Dropbox account and have installed the app on your iPhone 5, you can save a picture message that you have received to your Dropbox account.

One of the best parts of iMessage is the fact that it syncs across all of your devices that are using the same iOS account. So you can receive iMessages on your iPad Mini or MacBook Air, for example.

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