How to put things on or copy them off of your phone.

By Lee Brannon

 Posted 2/3/09

One of the biggest problems people face with that new Cell phone is how to get stuff on and off of it.  Regardless of the service provider you have probably found yourself facing a dilemma with pictures, video or music that you wanted to get on or off the phone.

Also many people, including myself, find it extremely frustrating to have to pay a service fee or repurchase music that they already own because they want to use a small segment of it as a ringtone.

There are basically five different ways to get these things transferred to or from your cell phone.

One: Buy everything from your service provider and pay fees for sending your own individual pictures or music from the computer to the phone or visa versa.

Two:  Send emails.   Sign up for your carriers web service and email the stuff to your own phone. This is how I got ringtones on my wife’s RAZR phone. First I created them from my music files and saved them as MIDI files using the BITPIM program. Then I sent an email to my wife’s phone account at the carrier's website and I attached the midi files to it. 

Some Service providers allow you to email images and music to your phone.  Be aware that even then, the service provider may have software that won’t allow you to transfer certain file types.  Keep in mind that most service providers charge the recipient of the message and there may be charges involved with using the email service.  Always check with your provider. If you are going to do this you might consider buying a large or unlimited transfer or text and picture message package as part of your monthly service.  Unlimited text and pictures would in theory allow you to send and receive pictures and music at no additional cost. In some cases the recipient (you) must sign up on the email site before they (you) can receive messages in this manner.

Text messages are referred to as SMS or Short Messaging Service and messages that contain pictures or music are referred to as MMS or Multimedia Messaging Service.

If you want to receive email messages directed at your phone check with your service provider or their website.

I have not tested all of these but this is a list of the “picture”  MMS email addresses for many of the carriers:

WARNING: Always check with your provider about charges involved with using this service. You may be charged for sending and receiving.  Some provider websites I looked at also mention fees for international roaming.

Alltel:(Your 10-digit phone number)@message.alltel.com

AT&T - (Your 10-digit phone number)@mms.att.net

Boost Mobile: (Your 10-digit phone number)@myboostmobile.com

Cingular: (Your 10-digit phone number)@pics.cingularme.com (This is apparently still available)

Nextel: (Your 10-digit phone number)@messaging.nextel.com

Sprint: (Your 10-digit phone number)@messaging.sprintpcs.com

T-Moble: (Your 10-digit phone number)@tmomail.net

Verizon Picture messages: (Your 10-digit phone number)@vzwpix.com
Verizon Text messages: (Your 10-digit phone number)@vtext.com

Virgin Mobile USA: [10-digit phone number]@vmobl.com

(This may actually be vmobile.ca and not vmobl.com)

If any of the above are incorrect please let me know.

Three: Buy SD MEMORY CARDS or Trans Flash . This is another way to get around the problem. You can install a mini or micro SD memory card (also referred to as a TF Trans Flash) into the phone then use a "full sized" adapter to connect it to an SD reader on a computer. ($29 - $49.00 roughly, but look for bargains online or at discount stores. Your Cellular service provider will gladly sell you the same thing for between $50 and $80).

Four: Use USB cables to transfer things from the computer to your phone.  Your Phone provider and some third party companies will sell you a transfer package.  Be aware that a music transfer package won’t let you transfer video and graphics.

Five: Bluetooth Transfer.  If your computer has Bluetooth or you have a blootooth adapter your Bluetooth ready phone can transfer the data.  One problem is that many phones have been handicapped by the manufacture  at the request of the service provider.  For example your Fully Bluetooth ready phone was modified so that only the Bluetooth headset will work.  File transfers or connecting to other bluetooth devices was disabled to prevent you from sharing with other Bluetooth ready phone users.

Bluetooth:

The preferred method would be bluetooth.  Generally you can setup software on the computer to automatically sync with data on the phone.  I don’t currently have that capability on my phone (Bluetooth headset only) so I can only comment based on what I have seen others do.

Bluetooth transfer may require you to turn on the bluetooth feature of your phone through the phones menu.  You will then need to get your phone talking to the computer.  This is generally refered to as “pairing”.  Your phone will have a feature that allows you to search for other bluetooth devices through it’s menu.  Once the computer and phone have paired you can manually send and receive files.  If you want the phone and the computer to “synch” you may also need some special software on the computer in order to transfer the data back and fourth. 

If you don’t have Bluetooth:

Let’s presume you are not rich, you do not want to buy everything and you want to get music and pictures to and from your phone. Let’s further assume that your phone is not fully Bluetooth capable.  Unless your phone has full Bluetooth capabilities and you have this installed on your computer you are really only left with the USB cable transfer or the Memory card.

Memory card:

Of the two the remaining methods using an Memory card is preferred.  If you want to change your music often or you use your phones camera often you are going to want an easy way to move your data.  Taking the card out of the phone and connecting it to your computer allows you to treat the card folders just like folders on a computer drive.  However, if you choose to go with the memory card option there are some things you need to know.  For one thing your phone must support this option.  Not all phones have a card slot and many phones these days Even then you need to make sure it’s convenient.  Remember my wife’s Razr? Well the Micro SD slot for the phone is inside the phone under the battery!  It also had the tendency to get stuck.  I ruined a card trying to take it back out.

You are also going to need an SD card reader. These are relatively inexpensive, but unless your computer has a built-in SD card reader you are going to need to purchase one.  You should also know that most readers only work with the standard card size and not the mini or micro that most phones use.  This means you also need an adapter.  The adapter is simply a full sized memory card that allows you to insert a mini card into it.

Shown here are some of the memory cards and tools I have mentioned.

 The first row shows a USB based SD card reader, two Toshiba adapters for micro cards and another style of USB based SD card reader.  The second row shows a San Disk adapter for micro cards and two micro SD cards like the ones most commonly used in phones.

Another thing you need to know is that the SD card needs to be formatted on the phone in order to work with it properly. SD card into the phone will cause it to format the card correctly, but even here you may run into a problem. My phone was setup so that when the phone formatted the miniSD card there was no music folder for transferring music from the computer. To fix the problem I had to manually create the folder on the computer side.  

Again, not all phones have a memory card option and some have the card slot in a pretty inconvenient location.  Fortunately for me the Samsung a930 has a slot on the side where a Micro SD memory card can be inserted.  The picture below shows the open slot with a card partially inserted.

USB Cable:

If you choose to use the USB cable method be aware that there are many types of USB cables.  You are going to need the one that has a connector that&You are going to need the one that has a connector that’s right for your phone.

You should also know that even phones that will charge (the power) through a USB connection will not charge without the proper cable.age specifically for the a930, but my phone does not charge through this cable.

Once you have the right cable you are going to need the USB driver for your phone.hone manufacturers will have the USB drivers for their phones posted online.  A quick search on the internet using you phones model and manufacturer’s name along with the word “driver” should help you locate a driver you can download and install.  In my case a search for Samsung a930 driver  turned up several locations where I could download it from.  To be on the safe side, try going to your manufacturer’s website first.

Once the driver is installed you are going to need some transfer software.  Of course most manufacturers and service providers will be happy to sell you something and there are several commercially available packages out there, but we want to do this on the cheap.  The most used program out there is BITPIM.

Using BITPIM:

BITPIM is a free application that runs on windows, Linux and Macintosh computers.  It allows you to transfer music, pictures, calendar data and more. It even has a way for you to take your music files and convert them to ringtones.

It works with a USB cable connection or with Bluetooth.  It does not work with every model of phone and is sometimes behind the curve with new models, but it works with a large majority of them.

The program works fairly simply.  When you launch it will look for a connected phone.  Once found you can select options on the left of the screen and then click on the icons at the top to get or transfer data for that item.

Shown here is a screenshot of Bitpim after it located my phone.

BITPIM does take some getting use to.seem clumsy. One problem that was annoying for me was the fact that it treats all graphics as wallpaper.  In the case of the Razr phone each time I read in the wallpaper it read all of the built-in pictures that came with the phone.

Anyway, with a little experience you will get the hang of it and it’s free. 

You can obtain BITPIM from http://www.bitpim.org/

Warning:  I had a friend who had the exact same model of phone that I had and his phone apparently locked up beyond being able to reset supposedly due to transferring too much material to it using this program.  I can say from my own experience of using the program many times that I have never had an issue.  I will advise you that you need to be careful when transferring data to the phone.  Many options default to the REPLACE ALL setting and you could wipe out your pictures or music.  The main two icons for transferring to or from the phone look a lot alike, so be careful until you are use to using the program.

Important Note:  Regardless of what method of software and connection type you use certain phones only work with certain file types.  For example, some phones only allow video in 3g2 format and won’t work with mpeg or other common computer formats.  The same is true with pictures and audio files.  Some phones use a different format for each feature.  Ringtones might need to be Midi files while music files must be MWA etc.  File types for audio, video and graphics will be covered in another article.