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Asked: 2026-06-13T05:25:33+00:00

So I have come across three categories of MMS message types: Plain Text –

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So I have come across three categories of MMS message types:

Plain Text - "text/plain"

Image - "image/jpeg", "image/bmp", "image/gif", "image/jpg", "image/png"

SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language) - "application/smil"

So I don’t have an issue grabbing the data in an MMS that falls into the first two categories. However I am having trouble grabbing the data from MMS of message type application/smil

Below I have included 5 different examples of application/smil MMS messages that I have pulled from my phone. 

[31, 22, -1, application/smil, 123_1.smil, 106, null, null, <0000>, 0.smil, null, null, null, <smil>
  <head>
    <layout>
      <root-layout height="160" width="240"/>
      <region fit="meet" height="67%" id="Image" left="0%" top="0%" width="100%"/>
      <region fit="meet" height="33%" id="Text" left="0%" top="67%" width="100%"/>
    </layout>
  </head>
  <body>
    <par dur="8000ms">
      <img region="Image" src="cid:992"/>
    </par>
    <par dur="8000ms">
      <img region="Image" src="cid:993"/>
    </par>
  </body>
</smil>]

.

[22, 14, -1, application/smil, null, null, null, null, <smil>, smil.xml, null, null, null, <smil>
  <head>
    <layout>
      <root-layout width="320px" height="480px"/>
      <region id="Image" left="0" top="0" width="320px" height="320px" fit="meet"/>
      <region id="Text" left="0" top="320" width="320px" height="160px" fit="meet"/>
    </layout>
  </head>
  <body>
    <par dur="5000ms">
      <img src="8555" region="Image"/>
      <text src="text_0.txt" region="Text"/>
    </par>
  </body>
</smil>]

.

[13, 11, -1, application/smil, 123_1.smil, null, null, null, <0000>, null, null, null, null, <smil> 
  <head> 
    <layout> 
      <root-layout/>  
      <region fit="scroll" height="30%" id="Text" left="0%" top="70%" width="100%"/>  
      <region fit="meet" height="70%" id="Image" left="0%" top="0%" width="100%"/> 
    </layout> 
  </head>  
  <body> 
    <par dur="10000ms"> 
      <text region="Text" src="cid:928"/> 
    </par> 
  </body> 
</smil>]

.

[16, 13, -1, application/smil, mms.smil, null, null, null, <AAAA>, AAAA, null, null, null, <smil>
    <head>
        <layout>
            <root-layout width="240" height="160"/>
            <region id="Image" width="100%" height="67%" left="0%" top="0%" fit="meet"/>
            <region id="Text" width="100%" height="33%" left="0%" top="67%" fit="meet"/>
        </layout>
    </head>
    <body>
    <par dur="8000ms"><text src="text__01.txt" region="Text"/></par></body>
</smil>]

.

[5, 5, -1, application/smil, smil.smil, 106, null, null, <0000>, smil, null, null, null, <smil>
  <head>
    <layout>
      <root-layout height="160" width="240"/>
      <region fit="meet" height="67%" id="Image" left="0%" top="0%" width="100%"/>
      <region fit="meet" height="33%" id="Text" left="0%" top="67%" width="100%"/>
    </layout>
  </head>
  <body>
    <par dur="8000ms">
      <img region="Image" src="cid:351"/>
      <text region="Text" src="cid:352"/>
    </par>
  </body>
</smil>]

How exactly do you go about parsing this type of MMS? How do other texting apps deal with different kinds of MMS’s? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    So the issue was that I was creating a Cursor like this

    Uri uri = Uri.parse("content://mms/part");
String[] projection = new String[] { "*" };
String selection = "_id = " + messageId;
Cursor cursor = mContentResolver.query(uri, projection, selection,null, null);

    The problem is the selection arg should really be

    String selection = "mid = " + messageId;

    Now my cursor contains multiple entries:

    1. One entry will correspond to the SMIL file. SMIL is a file format containing xml that helps an MMS viewer to know how to display the MMS. The MIME type for this entry is application/smil if you look at the column called ct (acronym for content type)

    2. Another entry will correspond to the text file that contains any text within that MMS besides the attachment. The MIME type of this will be text/plain

    3. Lastly, you will find another entry that actually has the attachment. This attachment can have a variety of different MIME types depending on what the file is. If it happens to be a jpeg it will be image/jpeg, if png it will be image/png etc…

    I want to thank @wnafee for pointing this out in this post Android: what to do with application/smil MIME type .

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