Free Verizon Ringtones (Kinda).
It’s a cool hack anyway.
So, it’s pretty well known that Verizon doesn’t allow OBEX transfer or OBEX Push on any of their Bluetooth units. It sucks for anyone who wants to make their own ringtones.
I talked to a Verizon representative when I was getting my new phone, a Verizon RAZR V3m, and she said that I would be able to purchase a cable for about $30 from Verizon that would let me transfer songs back and forth. I also had the option of purchasing a miniSD card and USB adapter to transfer the files over. I’m still not too keen on spending $50 to transfer over some files.
So, I opted to take another route. I created a 28 second ringtone in GarageBand (insert your audio editor of choice here) and exported out the .mp4 file to my desktop. I then converted the file to a 112 kbps mp3 file in iTunes. Now, if you had OBEX enabled this next step would be very, very easy. You just turn it on, browse your device and push it over. But you don’t have this choice with Verizon.
If you have a VCast phone, like the RAZR V3m, you can create your own ringtones and send them to yourself via a PIX message. I tried this with two Verizon phones; Motorola RAZR V3m and a LG 5300. With the Moto RAZR I emailed my phone (yourphonenumber@vzwpix.com) an empty email with the 112kbps mp3 file. After about a 15 second wait, the message arrived on my phone.
So, why do you need to send it as a PIX message? Verizon’s PIX messages are the default medium for delivering multimedia files on Verizon’s network. I believe that both the PIX and FLIX messages are sent via the vzwpix.com SMS gateway. Verizon’s text messages appear to come from vtext.com. So, if you just wanna get the photos off your phone and not buy the cable, you can do the same thing here. But, we’re focusing on ringtones.
After you’ve recieved the message, let the song play. Then go to the “options” menu on your Verizon phone and save the file. You will need to save it as a .qcp file. I believe .qcp is the same file format that you can leave voice notes on your phone in. It must be .qcp or the phone will not be able to play it after you had sent it to yourself. I’m pretty sure that you can use a cable or the miniSD card and adapter to import the .mp3 file over (since Verizon has ringtones that are in .mp3 format) if you decide to give that a try.
Now that you’ve saved your file as a .qcp file, you can play it as your ringtone on a VCast enabled phone. I’m going to assume that this will work on any VCast phone, but I’ve only tested it on a Verizon Motorola RAZR V3m. If it works on any other VCast enabled phone, feel free to let me know.
Just remember, every time you send yourself a PIX message it goes against your monthly message allowance. You’ll need to keep the ringtone under 112 kbps for it to work, otherwise the phone won’t be able to save it and replay it. The phones just don’t like the higher sampling rates.
I’m experimenting on a Cingular phone that doesn’t have Bluetooth enabled. If that works out, I’ll post about it here later. I was also able to successfully push the same .mp3 file over to a Cingular Motorola L2 with Bluetooth.
November 16th, 2006 23:21
I just did this with my Razr V3c — It worked smashingly. Thank you.
November 19th, 2006 22:01
Awesome!
:)
Glad it worked for ya!
November 29th, 2006 20:49
FWIW this also works with the LG vx5300 which also has crippled bluetooth (thank you VZW).
Also of interest to all: If you do not have a messaging plan, the VZWPIX messages cost you $0.25 per. Still a much better deal than Verizons $2.99 ringtones.
November 29th, 2006 23:46
Thanks for sharing that, Kevbo.
I have a feeling this may work with *most* Verizon phones that have VZWPIX messaging capabilities.
Notice I say most and not all. We’re still having a bit of trouble getting my sister’s phone (I believe it’s a LG 5200) to do this the same way.
February 13th, 2007 22:36
DO you notice a quality difference with the files sent? I notice once it is save don the phone the quality is much lower than the ones I sent PRIOR to VZW blocking you sending files, or the ones already on the phone. Is QCP the culprit, perhaps?
February 14th, 2007 11:18
Great Tips!
After attempting this, I find that even encoding at 112kbps (mono OR stereo) the quality when reaching the phone is horrible. It sounds great on the computer, but not when it hits the phone. I’ve tried various bitrates with no success. I even tried encoding at QCP by myself, but it sounds just as bad.
The old renaming to *.mid trick no longer works like it did when the verizon RAZR came out, so I;m frustrated that the phone (or the vzwpix server?) is converting the file to low quality.
Any thoughts? Thanks…love the blog!
February 16th, 2007 22:19
Yeah, I’m convinced that Verizon’s compression to QCP destroying the audio quality.
I’m not certain of the file size limit, but I think that maybe the vzwpix/multimedia server is compressing the file before it gets to the phone. I do know there’s a max limit, I can’t remember it off the top of my head though.
Oddly, though, the best quality tone I got while sending an audio file to myself through the vzwpix server was sending myself a *.mid file. It seemed to keep the original quality.
If only Verizon would enable OBEX. Problem solved! ;)
March 16th, 2007 02:23
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!
I’ve had the greatest (IMHO) ringtone that I made and have tried for days and days to find the best way, any way really, to get it to work on my Razr V3m without paying ridiculous extra hard earned $$ to Verizon for their “essentials” kit.
Your technique worked perfectly on the first try and it took only a couple of minutes!
I should add that I first converted my mp3 file to a .qcp file with a little application called qcpc60 I downloaded that at http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/QCP-Converter-Download-34788.html
It’s trial-ware for $14.95 that you’re supposed to pay if you decide to keep and use it. I’m a Mac user but also have an old Windows machine and this little app installed quickly, was a cinch to use, and performed perfectly. You may find that you don’t need to convert to qcp first but this is how I did it and it worked like a charm.
Now when my phone rings I’m all smiles. I used to cringe about those yucky stock ringtones Verizon had limited me to using.
THANKS AGAIN!!
March 25th, 2007 08:07
Im having nothing but problems… I have a verizon gzone phone with vcast ect.. I’ve tried emailing the attached sound file from my computer to my cell. I receive the file but it does not give me a choice under the “options” to save the file as a ringtone. The only button I see is “save”. THis saves it to a regular sound file. Ive tried sending a mp3, mid, and QCP file. No luck. The file is about 56k and plays perfectly as a sound file but I can not get it to work as a ring tone…Any ideas???
March 25th, 2007 22:12
Well, it doesn’t let you “save as ringtone”. It should let you save the sound onto your phone. And then you go into “Tunes and Tones”.
From there, you can set it as a ringer.
I just tried it again and it worked perfectly.
It will save it as a .qcp on your phone. There is no getting around that if you send it as a pix message.
But, I repeat. You cannot save the file directly as a ringtone from your message. You MUST save it to your phone first, and then set it as teh ringtone in “Tones and Tunes”
Hope that helps.
March 25th, 2007 23:45
Nic,
Thanks for trying to give me a hand with this… It’s driving me crazy. I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong.. Maybe its new software or something..THis is what’s happening..
I email the sound file to my phone from my computer using MS Outlook. I send the sound file as an attachement. My cell receives the message and it appears the phone “Thinks” its a picture attachement. When the file arriives it says, “1 New Pix Msg”. I have a choice to select “view now” or “view later”. When I select “view now”, the message opens up and I can actually hear the sound file play. At the bottom of the screen I have (3) buttons. One says “mute”, the middle one says “Reply” and the third one says “Options”. When I select the “options” button I see the following menu. The choices are: “Play again”, “Forward”, “Erase”, “Save Sound”, “Lock”, “Save Quick Text”, “Add to Contacts” and “Message Info”. Now….
If I select the “Save Sound” option, I get a form field that says, “Enter new name”. I then rename the sound file (or leave the same name) and press the “OK” button.
I then navigate to the “get it now” menu on the phone and select “Get Tunes and Tones”. I then see three choices: Choice #1 “Get New Ringtones”, Choice #2 “My Ringtones” and Choice #3 “My Sounds”. The file I downloaded is in the “My Sounds” Folder. I then enter the “My Sounds” folder and see a list of misc sound files including the sound I downloaded. The three buttons at the buttom of this screen say, “play” “send” and “options”. If I Highlight my sound file and selct “options” I see the following choices: “to pix place” “rename” “lock” “erase” “erase all” and “sound info”. I would think this is the place where I should be able to assign the sound file as a ringtone but it does not have this option.
The sound file works perfectly as a sound. It does not show up in the “My Ringtones” folder. This is my dilemma..I cant get the sound file to the “My Ringtone” list.
What type of sound file should I be sending? Do I need to change the extension on the file or something?
I really want to figure this out… If you can offer me any more info please do so. I hate the ringtones on this phone…
Thanks
Jim
April 2nd, 2007 22:29
Disregard the last post. I know why it’s not working. The software in my phone is different. Not all Verizon phones are the same. Some work, others will not. The “G’zOne” is one of those phones that separates sound files from ringtones. You cannont set a sound file that you receive to a ringtone. My old LG phone works and has different options than the new “G’zOne”. Oh well…
April 15th, 2007 17:42
I had the same problem… “would save as a sound but not a ringtone. I have a KRZR that was set yo vibrate and ring. After settiing “call sounds” “call vibrate” to off the emailed *.mid files now went directly into “my ringtones”
April 30th, 2007 15:26
I am having major problems. I have been trying all day to get my songs as ringtones and it’s not working. I go into my email and i attach my song to the email and I send it to my phone. But I never receive the text. What is going on?
May 16th, 2007 22:15
I used to always use mobile17.com, and up until recently, they always sent me tones in the .mid format. However, now they too are using .qcp, and I have yet to hear a .qcp file that sounds in any way decent. My point is this, that if one could send it to his or her phone as a .mid file, it would still sound good. So my question is, how can one convert an mp3 or an m4a to a .mid and keep it sounding relatively good? I think the answer to this question would help one of everyone’s foundataional problems with the ringtones.
May 16th, 2007 22:15
BTW, I forgot to mention that the .mid files from mobile17.com always sounded pretty darn good.
May 21st, 2007 09:58
Yes!!!
I have been trying for 6 months (lackadaisically, I admit) to get the famous 24 CTU ringtone on my Razr without success, and I cannot believe that it was this simple.
Worked the first time!
Genius!
Thank you
Forrest
May 29th, 2007 03:32
Man… same thing happened to me with Mobile17! I used to get tones in .midi format, and now they are all in .qcp! What gives? Cutting cost by sending smaller files? .qcp sounds like crap!
May 30th, 2007 12:16
Well, I had a krzr k1m from Verizon and setting the music as ringtones was easy. I had to get another krzr k1m from Verizon and now it will only save it as “my sounds”. Any suggestions?
June 8th, 2007 00:59
Mobile17 is not the culprit. Verizon no down-converts their files before they get to your phone :(
July 7th, 2007 10:39
You can make mp3 or wav or m4a into mid files like this:
for pc users, go into your control panel. click “folder options”. click the “view” tab. find the box that says “hide extensions for known file types” and uncheck the box in front of it. Then you find the file you want to rename and just right click it and hit “rename”. The extension on the song you want to change will be m4a or mp3 or something like that. so when you rename, all you need to do is delete the m4a or whatever and type mid. the file is then changed.
this simply shows how to change the file type. i have encountered a problem tho. when i send the mid file to my phone as a pix message thru gmail, the sound does not work. i.e. no sound plays or is saved on my phone. i have a verizon V325. any ideas on why the mid files wont play on my phone?
November 22nd, 2007 13:35
It’s driving me crazy. I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong.. Maybe its the new software or something…VW updated the phone saying the bluetooth wasn’t working b/c of it. And now I can’t save any sounds as ringtones!!!
I have a choice to select “view now” or “view later”. When I select “view now”, the message opens up and I can actually hear the sound file play. At the bottom of the screen I have (3) buttons. One says “mute”, the middle one says “Reply” and the third one says “Options”. When I select the “options” button I see the following menu. The choices are: “Play again”, “Forward”, “Erase”, “Save Sound”, “Lock”, “Add to Contacts” and “Message Info”. Now….
If I select the “Save Sound” option, I get a form field that says, “Enter new name”. I then rename the sound file (or leave the same name) and press the “OK” button.
I then navigate to the “get it now” menu on the phone. I have “Music & Tones”, “Picture & Video”, “Games”, “News & Info”, “Tools on the Go”, and “Extras”. I then have these choices: “V CAST Music”, “Get New Ringtones”, “My Ringtones”, “My Music”, “My Sounds” and “Sync Music”. The file I downloaded is in the “My Sounds” Folder. I then enter the “My Sounds” folder and see the sound I downloaded. The three buttons at the buttom of this screen say, “play” “send” and “options”. If I Highlight my sound file and selct “options” I see the following choices: “to pix place” “rename” “lock” “erase” “erase all” and “sound info”. Is this where I assign the sound file as a ringtone? It does not have this option.
The sound file works perfectly as a sound. It does not show up in the “My Ringtones” folder. This is my dilemma..I can’t get the sound file to the “My Ringtone” list.
PLEASE!!! I really want to figure this out… If you can offer me any more info please do so.
Thanks
Erin
December 9th, 2007 18:28
I spent all day trying to create my own ringtone–anchors away of all things but in the public domain-on my verizon razr v3m. Tried Mobile17 but no attachment to the pix message would appear. Then I sent my pixmessage and the song played but I could not save it as ringtone anywhere. It saved as a .qcp file but I could not find it after that or save it as a ringtone. Any thoughts? I then used the suggestion of making a recording, saving it to the sd card and renaming the ringtone with the same name as the message. This worked although, as other people noted, with degraded sound. I have a couple of other songs on the sd card but I cannot find them on the phone or get them to play. Anybody know what I am doing wrong? How can I play songs that are on the card? Thanks.
December 16th, 2007 08:56
Sending a pix message with mp3 didn’t work for me with a Razr v3m. I resorted to a WAV file at a relatively low kbps. Use the Verizon pix website (www.vzwpix.com) to be sure that your sound file will be sent, it seems the specs for attaching sound to a text message are stricter than described above. Otherwise, this worked like a charm, although I’m not fussy about sound quality.
December 16th, 2007 15:02
Thank You This has saved me a great deal of problems.
Have you ever tried to get a Japanese ring tone when all you can read or speak is english?
Now I can edit myown from one of my CD’s and send it to myself.
Thanks
December 19th, 2007 04:08
I have a Krazr and the advice from Glen on April 15th is the way to go. Go to sound setting – call sounds – call vibrate – turn it OFF. Then resend the ringtone and when it comes in your text inbox save the file under any name. Then go back to sound settings- call sounds- call ringtone…and your new ringtone name will have saved under the correct ringtone format and is an option for a ringtone.
December 24th, 2007 12:24
Your software worked great and I was able to save the audio file to my sounds as a .qcp of 52kb but I can’t figure how to move it to my ringtones. Any idea how to do that? Verizon says I can’t use anything but their ringtones or 3rd parties available on “get it now”.
February 11th, 2008 12:51
thank you for these instructions; i tried it many times and finally got it to work (for my new pink verizon v3m). Each time that it didn’t work was probably due to the file size of the song i was trying to use, and i didn’t have it set to 112kbps (it was set to 128). I figured out how to use Audacity enough so that i could clip out the 15 second part of the mp3 that i wanted. I also had trouble with wma; i changed my rip settings in media player so i could just rip the song into mp3 instead of wma format (go to tools and options). Audacity uses mp3 but not wma. I clipped the first 15 seconds of bjork’s possibly maybe– my phone is now complete. sweet. thanks so much :)
February 18th, 2008 23:25
NEED HELP!!!!!!!! i have the verizon razr V3m and i first recored the song (27 seconds worth), sent it to myself by pix messaging, recieved the message, opened it and pressed option, then save sound. then i went to music and tones, and its under my sounds. i cant figure out what to do now, its not under the my ringtones section. need help on what to do.
March 31st, 2008 08:31
Mikey,
I am having the same problem with my verizon v3m. I can get it to my sounds but there is not option to goto to set it as a ringtone. Somebody help us new V3M users!!!
March 31st, 2008 21:52
This post was great, I had some issues with file size myself. I continue to receive a bounce back email when I try sending .mp3’s larger than 72KB.
Anyways, thanks for the great post. I came across your article tonight while writing my own:
http://www.kevinleary.net/blog/2008/03/31/create-your-own-ring-tones/
Kudos
April 10th, 2008 14:30
I just bought a 2GB microSD memory card for my Verizon LG phone, and then bought the reader…. I told them I wanted to be able to record phone conversations.
Well, what they didn’t tell me is that I could record the phone conversations, but I would never be able to convert the audio file .qcp to something I can play somewhere else!
I’m furious, then found that the once FREE .qcp converter PureVoice SDK used to be available on the Qualcom website and has since been removed. I’m scouring the internet searching for someone who can help me with either a copy of this program or something similar.
All I want to do is convert PURE VOICE to a standard media file.
June 23rd, 2008 21:16
Please help Verizon Razr V3 people. Ive tried everything. I had a Verizon LG and was able to save the pix message ringtone as a ringtone directly from the message, but now in the RAZR I can only save it as a sound. I’ve tried all the advice here. No luck! Is there any hope???