Ringtones on the SCH-U410 with BitPim
A cheap cable and the open-source software BitPim can be extremely helpful for anybody that’s unwilling to pay for ringtones, through a service such as Verizon’s Get it Now, or spending money picture messaging MIDI files to yourself, or for any other reason.
Materials you’ll need:
- A USB to Samsung phone cable. OEM or an aftermarket cable is fine. Mine was from eBay, 99 cents with $7 shipping. Just bid with caution. Or, I guess, you could buy one on Amazon too.
- The latest version of BitPim that will be used to manipulate the filesystem.
- A computer (I am very, very sorry for anyone that didn’t know that).
Step 0
- A disclaimer, before anything else. By reading the rest of this article, you assume all responsibility in modifying your phone. This is by no means an official guide (but hopefully a decent one) and it’s honestly not my problem if this article leaves you with a hundred buck paperweight aka brick. If you don’t feel up to moving around the filesystem, try Bruce’s method in the comments (thanks!).
- Install BitPim by downloading and simply running the installer.
Step 1
- Connect the USB end of the cable to the USB port in your computer, and the proprietary Samsung end to your phone’s port. In electronics, NEVER EVER force anything if it won’t fit. Around 98% of the time, doing so will result in a broken device.
Step 2
- Add your file to the phone’s filesystem. In BitPim, to see the filesystem, you may have to enable viewing it first. View -> View Filesystem should do it. Your file should be either a MIDI or MP3, although MP3s are larger in size and therefore you can fit less on your phone, and they’ll take longer to upload. Click your way down the filesystem to “/brew/mod/” and click on “mr.” Some files might show up in the right hand box, but maybe not. Either way, right click on the box and Offline Phone to protect it from messing up the operation and damaging your phone. Even further, right click on anything in the tree and select Backup entire tree … saving the zip somewhere you’ll remember in case you need to restore your phone. Then, right click again and select New File… then navigate to your ringtone. Don’t have one? On Windows machines, try looking in C:\Windows\Media\ for .mid files. Press OK, and give it some time. Once it says the status is “Ready”, right click and Reboot Phone.
Step 3
- The real trick is getting the phone to RECOGNIZE the ringtone. Once you get back to the same screen of the /ff/brew/mod/mr directory, right click -> Save the file MrInfo.db somewhere easily accessible, like your desktop. Open it up with notepad or your favorite plain text editor, and it will probably look something like this:
/brew/mod/mr/town.mp3|0|0that is, if your ringtone was named “town.mp3″. After each filename is a pipe character (|), a number, another pipe, and another number. For the new files, it will be 0 and 0. For a ringtone, the first number should be 0 and the second should be 3. So select just the second 0 and type “3″. Save your file, and back in BitPim, right click -> Overwrite on MrInfo.db, then select where you saved your edited version of it. Right click -> Reboot Phone/power cycle, and don’t worry if Windows machines exclaim that “A USB device has malfunctioned!” It’s just some cheap cables and their sneaky USB tricks. Just hope the cable doesn’t short into a cloud of smoke (I’ve known a few devices to do that…), and you’re good!
August 29th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Really helpful. I wish I had known this when my son was trying to set up his phone.
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:42 pm
There is a much easier way to work with the Samsung u410 using Bitpim. While Bitpim does not officially support the SCH-u410, the SCH-u470 is supported and is very similar. Manually tell Bitpim that you have the u470 and it can import and export your phonebook, pictures, sound, ringtones, call history, etc. The juke box features of the u470 are not present on the u410 so they won’t work.
Windows XP directions:
1. Find, download and install Samsung drivers before connecting the phone (I used those installed by Samsung PC Studio 3, updating not necessary). (For Vista no drivers are needed, it automatically installs them when you connect the phone.)
2. Use a compatible straight USB cable, available on EBay for $3.33 + $4.95 shipping.
3. Install BitPim version: 1.0.6-official, manually select SCH-u470 as your phone (it’s a lie, but it works).
4. Most all the BitPim tabs (phonebook, images, sounds, ringers, etc) seem to work fine.
You don’t need to monkey with the file system or edit MrInfo.db, Bitpim does that for you.
Minor Glitches:
1. Every time you upload anything to the phone, Bitpim reboots the phone when done. BitPim then automatically tries to re-detect the phone, but as it is not a u470 it fails and you get error messages in both BitPim and Windows. Tell BitPim to continue anyway and manually reselect the u470 and everything is OK.
2. The screens on the u410 are a different size and shape than on the u470. You can size your images yourself before trying to add them to the phone and then manually override BitPim’s attempts to resize for the
u470 (see Bitpim instructions- use shift key). Main screen is 160×128 on the u410, but 640×480 jpg work fine.
3. Ringtones received over the air don’t show up in the BitPim ringtones tab (stored in separate locked directory, not seen by BitPim as ringtones, but readable through the file system)- no problem, BitPim can freely load your own ringtones. Works great, see formats below.
4. BitPim doesn’t understand multimedia messages (but you can see them in the file directory).
SCH-u410 info from Samsung:
Samsung say that the u410 has 22MB of memory shared among pictures, ringtones, sounds, applications and picture messages, with a separate 1MB memory for SMS messages. Samsung supported filetypes: BMP, PNG,
BCI, JPG, GIF & PMD for images, CMX4, 72Poly MIDI, EVRC, QCELP, I-Melody, MP3, AAC & AAC+ for sound.
A big thanks to the BitPim developers!
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Thanks for the addition, Bruce! I guess (haven’t tried, so can’t say) your method would be a lot easier (and safer for your phone!) Just sharing how I got my ringtones on.
March 8th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Thanks! This was a real help.
April 30th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
im on vista when i connect my phone for the 1st time window refered me to a site where i downloaded Samsung PC Studio 3, becuz if not window was not able to update it after i installed the driver i restart my computer and reconect my phone its gose all good but its say my phone is a modem devise ? is it normal and in BitPim when i chose SCH-u470 (i got a u410) i need to select a a port ? only 2 choise i got put auto (dont work) or the com3 after i do get data from phone it say phone is not answering when manipulating filssystem so i cant see my phone info on the computer =( sum1 help me
August 26th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
what about for a mac?