Howto drop a ringtone onto the LG VX9200 ENV3?

[dholzman]

I am sure this must have been asked before but after searching I did not find an answer so maybe someone can enlighten me.
My wife just got an Env2 (LG VX9200) and I conencted it to my PC using the USB cable I had. I dropped an mp3 ringtone onto the INTERNAL MEMORY. The phone sees the file as MUSIC (in MY MUSIC) but wont let me set it as a ringtone. Is there a way to make it treat it as a ringtone without an SD card?
I tried creating folders my_sounds, didnt work, tried my_ringtones, that didnt work either.
I am sure there myust be a easy way to do this but so far it is eluding me.
Any help appreciated.

[Balok]

I can tell you what worked for me. I can't make any promises it will work for you:

First you need the modem driver. Get that here. (Note: This is Windows software. I haven't got a Mac, so if you're using one of them you will need to find a version of the drivers for it. I wouldn't know where to look.) Install that driver. Without it, you cannot communicate with the phone.

Then get the latest BITPIM. As of this writing, that's 1.0.6. You can find it at the Bitpim site. Install that.

Connect your phone to your computer using the USB charging cable that came with it.

The current version of Bitpim does not support this phone directly, so you have to play a game. That game is called "modify the filesystem directly." This is a dangerous game. A misstep here could brick your phone. BE CAREFUL.

If the phone goes into Music Sync mode, cancel out of that. Set the phone's USB mode to modem: Menu, then Settings and Tools, then USB Mode. Set it to Modem Mode.

Bitpim should detect your phone at this point, calling it 'Other CDMA Phone on COMx' where the 'x' is some number.

In Bitpim, click 'View' and then 'View Filesystem'. A filing cabinet icon should appear in the left hand tree. Click on that and a closed folder should appear just to the right of this tree. Click on the '+' character to the left of this folder. This is called 'expanding' the folder. You should see a 'brew' folder; expand that. Under it, look for the 'mod' folder and expand it. Under it, look for the '10889' folder and expand it. Now you should see a 'ringtones' folder.

You can drag .mp3 files to this folder from other folders on your machine. Notoe that it takes several second to transfer a file, so if you have a lot of them to transfer, expect to wait.

When your files are transfered, exit Bitpim, shut the phone off, and restart it. The ringtones should appear.

I'm going to say this again: IF YOU ALTER THE WRONG FILE IN THE FILESYSTEM VIEW YOU CAN DAMAGE YOUR PHONE, PERHAPS EVEN RENDER IT UNABLE TO BOOT. EVEN IF YOU HAVE INSURANCE A CARRIER CAN SOMETIMES DETECT SUCH 'UNAUTHORIZED' ACTIVITIES AND MAY REFUSE TO HONOR THE POLICY. I recommend you go slowly and carefully, and if something happens that doesn't match these instructions precisely, search around for someone who knows more about these phones than I do. I took a certain amount of risk doing this, it worked for me, but not everyone is that risk tolerant.

Good luck!

[dholzman]

thanks for the reply.
I have used bitpim in the past - quite a while ago but I will give that a try. I was hoping maybe there was an easier way.
Without Bitpim, Do you know if it is possible to simply drop them onto an SD card and then use them with that phone? It is my wifes phone so for now she has no SD card but if I have to get her an SD card I will.

[Balok]

Since posting this, I discovered that this IS possible.

After you install the microSD card (I power down for this, but I don't know that it's required), and connect the phone to the PC, click Menu, Settings and Tools, and Tools (on mine, Tools is option 2), and then USB Mass Storage (my option 9). [Note: The theme you use changes the menu layout and the options list numbering, so yours may vary].

A removable disk should appear in the Explorer view. This represents the contents of the microSD card. Mine had a 'my_sounds' directory already on it. You can move files to this directory using any standard Explorer technique. When you're done, click OK on the phone to exit from this mode (the disk disappears from Explorer when you do this).

Then go to Media Center, click Music & Tones (my option 1), then My Sounds (my option 5). Your newly added sound should appear, with a little icon next to it indicating that it's on the card. Click 'Set As' and you can then make it your main ringtone, a Caller ID (ringtone for an individual) or Alert Sound.

This isn't quite the same as making it an actual ringtone, but it's pretty close. The only thing you have to watch out for is removing the microSD card. If you do that, I've no idea what happens if the phone needs the ringtone. But on my old VX-8600 (which died the real death recently, and too bad - it was a great phone), it defaulted to an internal ringtone. You can also move the sound to the phone (Options menu, Move) and that will protect you from card removal. Of course, the phone has a lot less memory than the card (mine has about 100Mb on the phone, and 1GB on the card, and the card socket will take cards up to 16GB). For that reason, I generally keep ringtones on the phone, and pictures, video, sounds, etc. on the card.

Note: I don't know whether you need the USB CDMA drivers for this to work or not, since I had already installed them by this point and did not remove them when conducting these experiments. If you do, my previous post explains where to get them on the LG site.

Good luck.