Dialog Axiata – MMS and HSPA Settings for Android

I’m not shy to say this but, when I got my first Android phone (Smasung Galaxy S), it changed my life. I was never a “phone person”. I’ve always gone for phones that gave me the bare minimum and never saw the value in dishing out big cash to the high end Nokias and Blackberrys of the day. All I looked for was a high res display, decent reception, sound quality and of course smilies on text messages 😀 

But the world of smart phones is much different. And mine, is increasingly becoming indispensable. From bringing me my email, keeping my schedules, managing my expenses to even writing this blog, it is one incredibly useful tool. Most of that usefulness comes from it’s ability to connect me to the web, where ever I may be. Because of this effect, my “unlimited” data package from Dialog is one of the first things I would configure when setting up any new phone.

Recently, I was asked to configure a hTC Wildfire by a friend. I had swapped my SIM card on to this phone as I was holding on to it till I completed setting it up. That meant that I couldn’t go to my phone’s settings and look them up. And unlike with feature phones, Dialog support reps cannot send you the MMS/3G auto config settings for most of these Android phones. You’d have to key them in as they guided you over phone. So, I’m gonna post these settings here for future reference and hope that it’ll be any use for anybody out there who’s looking for the same information.

Go to the APN (Access Point Name) Setup page.

On the Wildfire, this is Settings > Wireless & networks > Mobile networks > Access Point Names

Tap the menu button and select New APN.

For the 3G connection set the following values:

APN: dialogbb
APN Type: default,supl,mms
MMSC: http://mms.dialog.lk:3130/mmsc
Give anything you like for the Name field. Leave everything else in their default values. Tap menu button and then Save

Tap the back key to get back to the Mobile network settings page. Make sure Enable always-on mobile is turned off. Set Network Mode to WCDMA only (otherwise the phone will switch between WCDMA and GSM depending on signal strength. The back and forth switching will kill your battery).

Tap back one more time and make sure Mobile Network is turned On.

Great! Now your phone is configured for both surfing and MMS.

One quirk that I’ve noticed on the Wildfire is that the instruction to keep Mobile Data off (Tasker/Widgetsoid) doesn’t seem to apply. Looks like the only best way to prevent applications from turning on mobile data is to use the APN Rename technique used by APNDroid and Widgetsoid.

UPDATE: Note that you should no longer use the Proxy/Port settings on Broadband APN. You should continue to use it on the MMS settings. More info on Dialog website.