New LG VX5500
Software. I know I needed to get some sort of software to interface the phone to the computer, and after some googling, I found Bitpim (www.bitpim.org). Bitpim is a FREE and open source software (free was the magic word!) software that does the same thing (although less elegantly) that other products that cost about $30 do. It supports many phones(*1), and is continually upgraded. Did I also mention its FREE? After one downloads and installs Bitpim, all one needs is the interface to communicate with the phone and in my case, this was either a USB cable or bluetooth adapter.
The teeny tiny bluetooth adapter from Ebay
Hardware. I realized that my laptop did not come equipped with a Bluetooth adapter and buying a USB cable specifically for this phone didnt make much sense as I wouldnt want to have to purchase another cable in the future for any new phone I upgraded to later. I quickly found a good option from ebay. Its a super tiny bluetooth module supported by Windows Vista. It cost less than $5 with free shipping, and arrived in ten days (from Hong Kong). Windows picked it right up and I was now bluetooth enabled. So next thing I needed to do was to get Bitpim to work with the LG Vx5500…heres what I did:
1. Pair your phone with the computer using bluetooth (you will have to put your phone in discovery mode, and follow the prompts given to you by windows after clicking ‘add’ in the bluetooth properties window). After this is done, click on the COM ports tab and view the com port your phone is set to.
My phone is the VX5500, and is connected to COM16
2. Install, download, and run Bitpim (Bitpim does not currently support the VX5500 natively, but by choosing a phone that has been supported some of the features like browsing the filesystem work).
3. Click on the icon with the screwdriver and wrench (settings button).
Bitpims settings window
- Select LG-VX8560 (chocolate 3) <—important.
- Then click on the browse button located next to the COM Port section (in my example, im using COM16, the port my phone is connected to).
- After the window refreshes, select the COM port which was associated to your phone in the previous bluetooth settings window. Click ok and ok to exit out of the settings window.
**NOTE: Bitpim will not autodetect your phone. But by manually specifying the settings listed above, Bitpim will connect and communicate with your phone.**
4. Now you must use the filesystem view/pane to reliably transfer your photos and ringtones. To enable this view, click on the View menu at the top of the window, and put a checkmark next to the View Filesystem option. You should now be able to see the Filesystem Pane/Window.
After enabling filesystem view, and expanding the directory tree
5. It takes a few seconds to get the directory listing after expanding the / folder. Your ringtones will be placed in the 10889/Ringtones folder shown above, and your pictures/wallpapers will be placed in the 10888 folder listed below.
wallpaper/photo directory
6. Now that you have the locations for your ringtones and wallpapers, here are the guidelines to put them onto the phone.
- Ringtones can be in .mp3 format, but NEED to be renamed to xxx.aac (song.mp3 –> song.aac), then added by right clicking on the pane to the right of the filesystem tree, and clicking on New File… Select your .aac file and upload it. After uploading your files, you must reboot the phone for the file to be seen by the phone. Either power cycle the phone, or right click on the viewing pane and click ‘reboot phone.’
*NOTE* To make the ringtones, I didnt bother with any sound editing software, and just went to http://makeownringtone.com/ and uploaded an mp3. I then used its tools to shorten the song length, and encode it into a lower bitrate, and have it saved as an .aac file. Easy as pie. highly recommend it! Oh yes, try to keep the ringtone to less than 30 seconds…
- Main wallpapers for the LG VX5500 use a pixel dimension of 176 x 220, and front lcd image dimensions are 96 x 64 pixels. Upload these images in the same manner as uploading ringtones to your phone, but using the 10888 directory (you might even see other photos you have taken listed in that directory). Reboot the phone to have the changes take place on the phone itself.
*NOTE* To make the wallpaper, I didnt fuss with any image software. I just took a picture and uploaded it to http://mobopic.com/upload/eng. It allows you to zoom, crop, and just enter in the size of the wallpaper and it does it all for you. Fast, easy, and FREE!
So far, the only thing I want to be able to do now, is to save my phone contact list to my computer. I wasnt able to figure out how to do that, but im sure bitpim will support it in the future. Until then, im not too worried about that as im doing everything that I wanted to do, without the Verizon wireless charge. Once again, I showed my wife, and she made me put ringtones on her phone! Im a hero!
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*1 Phones bitpim currently supports: LG-AX8600, LG-C2000, LG-G4015, LG-LX570 (Musiq), LG-PM225, LG-VX10000 (Voyager), LG-VX3200, LG-VX4400, LG-VX4500, LG-VX4650, LG-VX5200, LG-VX5300, LG-VX6000, LG-VX6100, LG-VX7000, LG-VX8000, LG-VX8100, LG-VX8300, LG-VX8500 (Chocolate), LG-VX8560 (Chocolate 3), LG-VX8600, LG-VX8610 (Decoy), LG-VX8700, LG-VX8800 (Venus), LG-VX9100 (enV 2), LG-VX9700 (Dare), LG-VX9800, LG-VX9900 (enV), E815, E815m, K1m, V325, V325M, V3c, V3cm, V3m, V3mM, V710, V710m, SCH-A870, SCH-A930, SCH-A950, SCH-U470, SCH-U740, SPH-M300MEDIA, SPH-M300PIM, VM4050, LG-UX5000, SPH-A460, SPH-A620 (VGA1000), SPH-A660 (VI660), SPH-A680, SPH-A740, SPH-A840 (Telus), SPH-A840, SPH-A900, SPH-N400, SCP-6600 (Katana), SCP-6650 (Katana-II), SCP-7050, SCP-8400, MM-5600, MM-7400, MM-7500, MM-8300, PM-8200, RL-4920, RL-4930, SCP-200, SCP-2400, SCP-3100, SCP-3200, SCP-4900, SCP-5300, SCP-5400, SCP-5500, SCP-7200, SCP-7300, SCP-8100 (Bell), SCP-8100, VI-2300, LG-LG6190, LG-LG6200, LG-LG8100, LG-LX5450, LG-LX5550, LG-PM325, LG-TM520, LG-VI125, LG-VI5225, LG-V 10, LG-VX4600, LG-VX5400, LG-VX8350, LG-VX8550 (Chocolate 2), LG-VX9400, SCH-A310, SCH-A650, SCH-A670, SK6100, SPH-N200.
I learned much of this information from searching through forums located at www.howardforums.com/. Unfortunately, its scattered and sometimes difficult to understand for a newbie. Hence the blog post.
Correction: Bitpim is available at http://www.bitpim.org (not .com!)
Versions are also available for Mac OS X and Linux.
So, you had no issues with your phone when you selected LG VX-8560? I’m a bit confused with this step:” Then click on the browse button located next to the COM Port section (in my example, im using COM16, the port my phone is connected to).
After the window refreshes, select the COM port which was associated to your phone in the previous bluetooth settings window. Click ok and ok to exit out of the settings window.” In your example you chose COM 16… what is the next step for? Thanks for your help
Thanks so much! I was ready to give up but this worked perfectly after I followed your instructions carefully.
Jason, you are just using the windows bluetooth app to show you which com port your phone is connected to. This com port setting will then be specified within the bitpim program telling it to use that com port for bluetooth communications. in this example, windows setup my phone to serial com port 16. I then put com16 in the bitpim settings. This way it knows what communication port to use.
I am not sure how to do this with a Mac, although there is Bitpim for mac, there is no com port that I can find. Any suggestions? Also, do I need the bluetooth adapter if the mac has bluetooth capability? Thanks!
I am not sure about the MAC OS and com port issue, but you shouldnt need another bluetooth adapter if you have one already built in the laptop.
Thanks for posting this information. It was exactly what I needed.
Keith, I have a Mac and this is how I got it to work:
Once you have paired your phone (step 1 above) go to bluetooth under system preferences. Select your phone from the options on the left (the default name is LG VX5500). After you have selected your phone, click on the gear icon on the bottom left corner next to the plus and minus, scroll down to Edit Serial Ports. When that comes up you should have two options at the top: LGVX5500-SerialPort-1 (or something close to that) and LGVX5500-DialupNetworki-2 (or something close to that). You want the first one, the one that says SerialPort. Make sure the check box next to the one that says SerialPort is checked. Then you need to select the one that says SerialPort. Once you do, near the bottom of the window there will be a field that says path: /dev/tty.LGVX5500-SerialPort-1 (or something close to that). Copy that text. That text (/dev/tty.LGVX5500-SerialPort-1 for example) is what you need to paste in the field labeled Com Port in BitPim in step 3 above. Then you should just be able to follow the steps as listed above. I hope this helps.
One other thing that I found helpful in BitPim was to go to the View menu and select View Protocol Logging. It was nice to use to see what BitPim was doing while it was accessing the file directory. I’m not sure why, but the first few times I tried to access the file directory, it kept timing out. I’m not sure why. But eventually it did work, and I am not sure what I changed, but it worked.
I followed the instructions above to the letter and I still cannot get this program to work with my Chocolate 3. Is there an issue with Verizon? The only difference that I note is in 1. In the Bluetooth properties window, under the COM port tab, I only show an outgoing port connected to my phone and no incoming port. Could this be the problem? Any suggestions? Thank you!
Awesome! I have a mac and it worked also! Note that I had to follow Stephen’s suggestion of copy/paste because BITPIM doesn’t find “/dev/tty…” it finds “/dev/cu…”, which is probably why it wasn’t working the first several times I tried.
Thanks for this suggestion, it’s great! I can upload pics and ringtones. Very happy!
I have an LG VX5500 cell phone. How soon will the software be before it works on my Macintosh with Leopard. It seems that it is needing a driver or something to recognize the USB port.
Thanks for this guide, especially the directory locations. Just a heads-up though. As of bitpim 1.0.7 (24 jan 2010), vx5500 is officially supported and I had no problems getting ringtones on and photos off my phone.
Thank you for the guide pal. I was getting desaperated to not be able to put my own ringrones on my LG 5500.
It works like a charm with a bluethoot key 🙂
Thanks very much, this is exactly what I was looking for. Was able to use Bitpim to get the pictures off of my wife’s LG VX500 before upgrading to her new Droid.
A couple things I’d like to point out that may help others:
– Bitpim now autodetects the VX5500, so you don’t have to tell the software it’s a different phone
– You can connect this phone to your computer with a standard micro USB cable (like the one that comes with a Droid), so there’s no need to get a cable specifically for this phone or use Bluetooth
I simply connected the phone to my laptop, Bitpim detected it, and I used the Filesystem to Save the pictures to the laptop (one by one, unfortunately — you can’t multi-select the photo files, but it works!).
You can’t select all the photos but you can do a folder backup on the directory which will save the files as a zip file. Much quicker than one by one!
Hi! This is almost perfect for me – everything seems to be connecting, and all I’m trying to upload are texts (SMS!), but I keep getting An unexpected exception has occurred, usually after long bouts of apparent uploads! Help?? Thanks! 🙂
IF YOU ARE USING VERIZON:
SIMPLE WAY To ADD new ringtones to the LG VX5500 phone:
Download the ringtone you want in mp3 format— keep it short, not over 350-400 kb total.
Change the “mp3” suffix on the ringtone file to “med”, so your “ringtone.mp3” file will look like this: “ringtone.med”
Email the ringtone.med file to your phone using this email address:
my10digitcellnumber@vzwpix.com
Open the text msg when it arrives on your phone.
The ringtone will play automatically.
The phone will ask you if you want to save the ringtone and if you want to set the file as your ringtone, respond yes to each and it’s done.