Originally Posted by pcbguy
Before you say it, I did search!!
I found so many questions and different answers with different dates that I still don't know what the answer is.
I just got my first Blackberry.
How do I send a text message? I don't care if it is SMS or MMS. I just want to be able to send a text.
Thanks for any help.
Not sure if you got your answer already but I'll put in my 2 cents worth. Text messaging for BB's is a little different than from a regular cell phone. Most text messaging done between regular cell phones is called SMS Messaging (or Short Messaging Service).
The Blackberries are PDA's first and foremost so they don't quite act like cell phones even though they have cell phone capability. Blackberries send and receive text messaging via SMS and MMS (or Multimedia Messaging Services).
The main difference between SMS and MMS on a blackberry is that SMS messaging sent to or received from a blackberries is 1 way messaging. What that means is that unless the person sending you the SMS message puts in the message who it's from, you will not be able to know that nor will you be able to reply. The way you can send SMS messages is by a form of email involving the person's 10 digit phone # and usually the carrier address. SMS message sent out by blackberries are done via SMTP (or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). There is a site you can go to to find the SMS addresses for most carriers. It's at notepage.net]SMS Messaging Software from NotePage. You click "Support" and "SMTP" and the list will appear. If you don't know the person's carrier you can look for 3rd party vendors such as teleflip.com]TeleFlip[/url] to use this --> "email@example.com" essentially sending this out as an email and it will send it to the person without you having to know their carrier. Hope that clears some stuff up on SMS.
Now, the only real difference with MMS (or Multimedia Messaging Services) is that MMS is two way text messaging, meaning that you can reply to the person sending you a text message in this fashion. You can also include attachments such as audio/pictures to the messages as well, hence the name "Multimedia". Depending upon your carrier and the data or text plan you are on, text messaging in general could be a simple "pay as you go" service if you don't use text messaging a lot. Or you could be on some form of text plan that allows for so many text messages to be sent/receive without a charge. If you start out as "pay as you go", then for sending/receiving plain MMS text, it could be, say 10 cents a text sent/received. If you include audio/picture attachments with each MMS text sent/received then it could be , say 25 cents a text sent/received. Most people I've worked with are on some "unlimited text plan" to cover for that so that would be something you can look into.
SMS messages sent out are free because they are sent out as email addresses and if you have an unlimited blackberry web/email plan, you are covered for those. It's when you receive SMS messages that you can be charged 10 cents or more depending upon the carrier you have. You can get SMS restriction put in place if, say you get spammed with text and don't want to be charged.
For the 7500 series, I know that the 7520's at first, did not support MMS text until the HHSW 4.1 version came out. If you simply upgrade your HHSW to 4.1 you will now notice an option to "Compose MMS" from your Messages icon. Just go into your Messages icon, click the trackwheel and select "Compose MMS" once you've upgraded your HHSW to 4.1. 7100 series already came with MMS support when they came out.
Hope this was informative and not long winded.
BB Tech Rep