3GP (3GPP Multimedia)
3GP is a multimedia container designed for 3G mobile phones with limited storage and bandwidth. It encodes video at low resolutions using H.263 or H.264 with AMR or AAC audio. While common on early smartphones, 3GP has been largely replaced by MP4 on modern devices.
MIME Type
video/3gpp
Type
Binary
Compression
Lossy
Advantages
- + Very small file sizes suitable for MMS and limited storage
- + Compatible with older feature phones and 3G networks
- + Based on the standard MPEG-4 container structure
Disadvantages
- − Very low resolution and quality by modern standards
- − Obsolete for smartphones — MP4 is universally supported
- − Limited codec options compared to full MP4
When to Use .3GP
Use 3GP only for legacy mobile phone compatibility; use MP4 for all modern mobile video.
Technical Details
3GP uses a subset of the ISOBMFF container, supporting H.263/H.264 video and AMR-NB/AAC audio. Maximum resolution was typically 176x144 (QCIF) to 352x288 (CIF) to fit early mobile bandwidth constraints.
History
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) defined the 3GP format in 2001 as part of the 3G multimedia messaging (MMS) and streaming standards for UMTS networks.