[Wellspotted]

Anyone with a camera phone, please help!

A friend of mine asked me to take some pictures of her and her horse because I have a camera phone. My friend does not have a camera phone.

I took the pics, and they turned out pretty good for cell phone pics, and she asked me to send them to her phone.

I didn't think you could open pictures on a non-camera phone, but I sent the pics anyway.

Sure enough, she could not access them.

I offered to e-mail them--I have e-mailed pics from my phone before and it works, but I could tell she was really really not happy that she could not access the pics on her phone. She wanted to forward them on to other people. Of course I can send them from my phone to those other people, but if they don't have camera phones will they be able to access them?

Maybe it's something I did wrong? Maybe it's just her particular phone?

Any ideas, please? I would much rather just take my 35mm to the barn and take old-fashioned pics with it, but that won't help with this particular situation.

[Frank B]

Even if she did have a camera phone, she'd have to have her account activated for pictures.

I just got my wife a bare-basics phone and we were surprised to find out later it does have a camera. We can take pictures and store them, but without that part of her account activated, that's where they stay -- in the phone.

[LexInVA]

To clarify what Frank said, you need an MMS compatible (Multimedia Message Service) phone and an account with MMS service as does everyone you want to send it to. Basic plans, the most basic ones at any rate, usually don't have that feature because it falls under the category of a streaming data service (Internet) while SMS (Text messages) does not.

[furlong47]

E-mail them to her from your phone, and from there she should then be able to open them on her computer and forward the e-mails to others or post to facebook, etc if she wants to share. Just as you would do with any other photo attachment.

I also have a fairly basic phone which does have a camera. It has a mini-SD slot and I bought the mini-SD card for about $20 at Wal-mart. It came with an adapter that allows it to be used in the big SD card reader on my printer or in the SD slot in my regular camera. This is an affordable solution for those who want to get photos off of their phone and onto their computer without paying for a monthly data plan.

[FalseImpression]

Maybe the system is different in Canada but my phone co. has a special website for people to send their phone pictures to by accessing the web from their phone. Once they are uploaded to the website, you can upload them to your computer. I have never been able to send pictures by phone nor to receive them. But the uploads worked!

[shortbusgeek]

Sorry, but that's just the way it works. I just left my job with one of the major wireless carriers here in the US to take a position with another non-telephony related company. Camera phones can only send MMS (MultiMedia Service) messages to other MMS capable phones. If she'd like to receive the pictures on her phone then she'll need to upgrade to a different phone. Otherwise, e-mail is your best option. As someone else mentioned, several wireless carriers have websites that you can upload the picture to and then send it from there... but that's really not much different than sending the picture in an e-mail to her / yourself anyways.

As for having to enable it, the default at the carrier I worked for was to enable MMS for any camera phone and charge per message on a pay per message basis. You could purchase packages to give you a certain number of MMS messages or unlimited MMS. Alternatively, you could also add a "Block MMS" feature. Parents typically would do this so that their kids can't rack up several hundred dollars in picture messaging charges.

[Wellspotted]

Thanks everyone for the help! It is really appreciated.

Here's what we did:

I took the pictures with my camera phone and then e-mailed them to her.

On her non-camera phone, we opened her e-mail, opened each picture, and downloaded it. We were then able to open the pictures on her phone and use them for "wallpaper" on the front screen and the inside main screen. Since that is one of the main things she wanted to be able to do, we are both happy with that much success.

As for sending the pics to other people, I sent them to the people who have camera phones and she is going to e-mail them to everyone else.

One of the recipients is "certain" his phone is not a camera phone, but he was still able to receive and open the picture on his phone. None of us know how this is possible, we're just glad.

Thanks!