New messaging service makes cell phones more useful

By now, we’re all pretty much aware of SMS and MMS messages. We’re also probably aware of the drawbacks, such as the fact that you can never be sure that the person is going to actually respond to the text message. A new system is on its way that will solve the eternal question of “will they ever return my text, or are they too busy playing WoW to care?” as well as a few others.

The new system is called Mobile Enhanced Messaging is the next logical step in phone messaging from the text/picture/video messaging side. The most important feature is that you can have a conversation with more than two people, so there’s no more asking a bunch of people what they want in a single message, and relating each person’s response. The conversations can be through text, images, video, audio, and “other future content” which I assume must mean holograms.

MEM also in a way emulates instant messaging services by allowing users to keep buddy lists and have display name rather than just a display ID like the cell phone number. Users can also set their status, which can let others know if you’re too busy to respond.

US carriers are currently making progress on updating their networks to work with MEM. It should be ready for mass use by summer of 2009. I, for one, can’t wait for the service. It sounds like it’ll be much more useful than current SMS and MMS messages. However, it’s not clear on what handsets can use MEM, and it would suck if the service is available, but would take two years for everyone’s contracts with old phones to expire so they can get MEM capable phones. Hopefully, that isn’t the case.

Read [Electronista]