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!