Getting files to the Android

Unfor­tu­nately it’s been a while since my last entry — I have been dis­tracted a bit with orga­niz­ing what I would like to accom­plish in 2010 (some of which you will be hear­ing about shortly). In the mean­time, I will resume shar­ing my expe­ri­ences with my Android (all pos­i­tive!) over the past few weeks. Also, for full dis­clo­sure, I am a Win­dows user so the instruc­tions below are Win­dows centric.

This entry started off with a sim­ple ques­tion — How do I load a cus­tomized ring­tone onto my Android? While I know there are some Android based appli­ca­tions that either pro­vide ring­tones or let you cut pieces of exist­ing files to be used as ring­tones, I had spe­cific ring­tones on my PC I wanted to use.

Motorola Media Link

The key to mak­ing all of this work is the “Motorola Media Link”. As the Android doesn’t come with an instal­la­tion disk, you need to get the instal­la­tion files directly from Motorola. These can be found below:

http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Mobile+Phone+Accessories/Software/ci.Motorola-Media-Link-US-EN.productCompatibility

Just down­load the file and run it before pro­ceed­ing with the fol­low­ing steps.

Trans­fer­ring Files

Once you have run the instal­la­tion pro­gram, you can move on to the next steps:

1. Con­nect your Android to your PC/Laptop with the USB Cable that came with your Android. Plug­ging the unit in will acti­vate the Media Link software. (While it is con­nected, you will see a Motorola logo in a blue cir­cle in the lower right hand corner.)
2. Now here is the KEY STEP — because if you don’t do this, you can’t trans­fer files. It took me a few min­utes to fig­ure this out, but now you need to go to your Android and slide down the top menu. In that list, you will see an entry that says USB con­nected. Press that selec­tion and then select MOUNT. Not sure why the soft­ware can’t do this for you auto­mat­i­cally, but if you don’t do this it won’t work.
3. At this point, you are now ready to trans­fer files. You can return to the Motorola Media Link appli­ca­tion and select the Music Tab. This is where you can import files from your PC (and while I haven’t done this yet, there are options that allow you to con­nect to exist­ing music libraries). You get to this sec­tion via  Options | Settings.
4. Once you have uploaded the MP3 file, Set­tings | Sounds & Dis­play — Phone Ring­tone will show you all the files allow­ing you to select one.

Some­thing Fun You Can Try For Per­son­al­ized Ringtones

Some­thing that is neat to do is record indi­vid­ual MP3 files for spe­cific con­tacts in your list. For exam­ple, let’s say you had a con­tact named “Tom Smith”. Depend­ing on how you are related to Tom, you could cre­ate an MP3 file that says:

1. It’s Tom Smith calling.
2. It’s Dad calling.
3. It’s that pain in the behind calling.

This way, you would never have to look at your phone when it rings — you would know instantly who it is!

Pop­u­lar­ity: 13%

Tags: Android, Android Transfer files, DROID, Ringtone, Ringtones, smartphone, Transfer Files

Category: News, Telephones