MMS without data plan

[Kablooey_Louie]

Hi all. My buddy has a T-Mobile non data plan he shares with his parents and his phone just died. His only want and need in a mobile phone right now is texting, no data. He went to the store to try and find a simple dumb texting phone to get him through the end of the current contract period, only to be told all they sell now are smart phones. While a data plan may be on the horizon for the next contract, he is forced to deal with the here and now. Anyway, he ended up having an Android given to him and with a swap of the sim, he's up and running -mostly. He can't send or receive mms, and a little google work shows this as a problem among users without data plans. Now someone I work with had told me he heard changing the apn settings can fix the problem. I have yet to successfully find the information myself, though. So i come here to the good folks at hofo hoping for a little enlightenment. I'm grossly unfamiliar with T-Mobile, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks!

[bachviet]

He needs to turn on data sync before he can send and received MMS. He doesn't need a data plan to do that. My wife also has an Android phone (Google Nexus One) without data plan and MMS works just fine (with data sync turns on/enable).

[Androided]

MMS never needs data plan, but you need setup APN correctly to be able use it

[Kablooey_Louie]

Background data and auto sync are both checked in the accounts and sync menu, but i have 'use packet data' and 'data roaming' disabled as to avoid it trying to pull data from them (i was told elsewhere that if t-mobile senses you trying to use data, that they'll just add it to your account). Is this where I'm going wrong?

[jet1000]

You can specifically put a data block on the account. Otherwise T-Mobile might try to charge per MB data. They won't add a specific data plan however. If you can log into the account online, there should be a selection under data plans for No Data.

[Kablooey_Louie]

well, there is a no data option, which is selected, but it says pay per megabyte (required) as a default under the account shared services. :/

[Kablooey_Louie]

to anyone else having this problem, getting a data block on the account and then enabling mobile data on the phone was the fix. i was unable to block it myself from the website, so i spoke with someone via live chat and they took care of it for me. thanks for the help guys!