Troubleshooting and Understanding MMS

[pikurasa]

It has been a couple weeks, anyone had any luck/progress on MMS on verizon lately?

No luck in solving the actual problem.

However, I think the following would be useful to anyone using Verizon and thinking of switching to PinePhone:

Verizon has a Web portal where you can view your SMS and MMS messages. The URL is https://web.vma.verizon.com. Obviously, this is not a "solution", but it does help us, as a community, have a tool to help us crack the nut that is Verizon in a few important ways. Via this Web portal, you can view all SMS/MMS messages from the time you begin the service. You cannot see messages from before you start using this Web portal service.

Therefore, what I suggest to anyone who is debugging/tinkering/trying-to-use-for-daily-phone the PinePhone with Verizon services:

• Before you switch over, consider starting services with https://web.vma.verizon.com. That way, you can see what messages, if any, you are missing, and, if this is your main phone, you won't miss any important messages. I believe you can also see the message IDs for MMS messages, so that can be helpful for debugging purposes (i.e. wget or curl to download the message). This works ok on mobile, but it is an overall clunky solution. The only reason I would advise it at all is because I do think it will help people get a step closer to getting the PinePhone working for themselves and the community-at-large.
  
• For the most part, I keep the Network Settings APN set to "vzwinternet". This way, I don't have to switch to check MMS (as I just check MMS via the Web portal.
  
• For the most part, I keep the settings in Chatty set to APN=vzwapp and MMSC=http://mms.vtext.com/servlets/mms. This way, if I ever need to switch over, I can do so just in Network Settings. I receive SMS just fine via this combination.
  

Other stuff:

• http://interpage.net/insi-test-services/...index.html describes a service that will send an MMS to your phone if you call it. They swear they do not sell your data, and so far no such issues for me. FWIW, I do receive these MMS with the same setup up as I receive SMS (i.e. network setting apn=vzwinternet). I think it is because they are text-only, non-group MMS messages, and the ones I cannot download are the ones with media and/or group messages. At any rate, it is handy for testing simple MMS on your phone (without bothering friends and family to send coordinated messages to you.)
  
• If you sign up for the aforementioned Web portal SMS/MMS service, you can also test your SMS/MMS my sending messages to yourself, either by text or by email.
  

While I was at it, I put in some complaints with Verizon representatives, but it usually takes about an hour until you actually get a real person, FYI, so plan to set aside a good amount of time if you want to "troubleshoot" anything with them.

I hope this helps others!