Smart Cellular

A simple procedure for editing and uploading free MP3’s and MP3 ring tones to your blue tooth enabled cell phone. Total cost is about ten dollars for software and equipment.

Background

I am a do it yourself kind of person and a cheapskate. When I purchased my phone a Motorola V550 I was assured that I could upload songs to the phone and download photos from my phone to my PC.The person at the store couldn’t tell me how to do it but “the tech service people would know how”. I spent hours on the phone with Cingular and Motorola and finally was able to send photos from the phone to my PC via emails. Everybody I spoke to kept trying to sell me an Internet browsing deal. Incidentally when you pick up your phone this function is not enabled.You do not have to sign up for a monthly plan but the phone has to be enabled. I suspect that Cingular does this on purpose so they can sell you extra services. The only way to get ringtones was to buy them. I paid three or four bucks each for a couple of ringtones that I didn’t particularly like. I went along this way for about a year. I bought a USB wire hookup Dongle? thingy or what ever from the Cingular store and still had no luck.

I was at a 4th of July get together and several people had different mp3’s as ringtones on their phones. We were able to load a couple on my phone via Blue tooth surprisingly easy. I asked everyone how they got the originals on their phones and all I could learn was that “some dude with blue tooth” had loaded some and the songs had propagated out from there.

From there I was on a mission. I Googled and asked questions on newsgroups to no avail. I was a little surprised that the Blue tooth site had nothing on this. Ditto with Motorola and Cingular. Since I originally wrote this guide I switched to an LG, same deal.I guess it’s a secret

So I bought a Blue tooth Dongle and figured it out myself. The good news is that it is really easy.

This is how I did it with my Motorola phone:

Buy a blue tooth USB Dongle. I paid just under ten bucks. Note: Shop around, as far as I know a ten dollar dongle works as good as a thirty dollar one. Prices really vary.

My phone doesn’t have a ton of memory and I don’t need a three minute ringtone so I Edit my MP3s to make them shorter. MP3 Direct cut is a freebie and seems to work OK, Get it at:zdnet dot com

Install it

Choose File Open choose your file

Hit Play

Hit set begin were you want your music to begin

Hit set end where you want your music to end

Save the file

Install the copy of Blue Soleil that comes with the Dongle. the only problem I ran into was that it asked for a driver from my Win XP disk that I didn’t have. So I used the search function and found it at: C:windowI386 drivers.cab

Plug in your Dongle.

Choose the mp3 you want to load. Set the properties of the file to allow sharing.

In Blue Soleil choose my servicespropertiesfile transfer and choose the file containing your MP3

Enable Blue tooth on your phone.

Select find me on your phone.

Select object push in Blue Soleil

Accept the file on your phone

The file will now load

Note: I have been told that Blue tooth drains your batteries pretty fast so I set the power to blue tooth off when I’m through.

NOW YOU GET ALL YOUR FAVORITE TUNES ON YOUR CELL PHONE FOR FREE. YOU ARE NOW OFFICIALLY A D.W.D.

My ringtone at present is The Star Spangled Banner by Jimmy Hendrix I couldn’t find this ringtone anywhere so I made my own.

Bonus: You can easily down load your contact lists, photos and other files and back them up on your computer. This way if you lose your phone, change providers or up date your phone you can reload them via Blue tooth. Don’t pay extra for your provider or a third party to store your phone list!

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.