MP3 Ringtones on the Sidekick 3

UPDATE: While there’s still no support for mp3 ringtones on the Sidekick 3, you CAN add mp3 ringtones to the new Sidekick LX 2009! You can download Sidekick friendly ringtones for the Sidekick LX 2009 over at Skringers.com

So everyone is clamoring for the ability to set MP3 ringtones. Let us start by saying, “Not gonna happen” (well at least not this way). Here’s the original info that was floating around the net (Don’t bother trying, it doesn’t work):

Hello everyone! My name is Melissa Trepan, and as well as working for Random House Canada, I am a software technician for Research In Motion (RIM), makers of the Blackberry family. Being in the handheld device “industry”, I’m very interested in my field of work, and after visiting New York City last week, I’m very interested by the T-Mobile Sidekick 3. I understand that many of you have complaints about MP3 files for the player. sonicBOOM, not being ‘transferable’ into the ring tone application on your Sidekick 3. Working with Blackberry’s latest 8700 series, I’ve been trained to have a feel for the whole MP3 file transfer, as it was implemented on our newest devices.
Well, enough of the long intro! Let’s get started!
What you’ll need to begin:
Your T-Mobile Sidekick 3 (fully charged, ready to go)
A working USB cable designed for the Sidekick 3.
An hour or more to get this done.
Unlike the Blackberry 7290/8700/07), after inspecting the OS COD. files, it’s got what we call at RIM, a “ventilation” file, which is blocking the transfer of mp3 files from your sonicBOOM/MiniSD, to the actual hardware of the Sidekick 3 – keep in mind, that all of your MP3s aren’t actually “ON” your Sidekick, they’re just temporarily there, and housed by your SD card.
The “ventilation” file is known as VENDOR.XML , and is (almost) encrypted into the device – this is something that Danger obviously does not understand, because the VENDOR.XML is on the Sidekick 2/Hiptop 2 as well. Throughout the rest of this tutorial, I will refer to that file as Vendor.
The Vendor file is completely pointless (other than blocking out certain options). This file HAS to be deleted in order to transfer files to your Sidekick 3. If you have a blackberry, you may know what I’m talking about. Often on blackberries, the system will crash to a “JVM” error, most commonly errors 102, 103, 507 and 544. To fix this on a blackberry, the Vendor file must be removed as well.
Lets get deleting! Now, you’re going to need a device that is specifically designed for Blackberry devices, Blackberry JDE Component Package v4.1.0 by Research In Motion. This is also known as Javaloader. This is not designed for the Sidekick, but it will work. This can be downloaded at https://www.blackberry.com/developers/downloads/jde/index.shtml , click the first option, Blackberry Java Development Environment v4.1 .
Once downloaded, you will be prompted to install the software to your computer.
Now, the satisfying part – lets delete Vendor! If you chose to run JDE upon finishing the download, close it now. Click the following on a Windows operated PC:
Start>All Programs>Research In Motion>Blackberry JDE Component Package v4.1.0>JDE Components Commands Prompt.
You’ve just opened the Command Prompt, kind of like a DOS Prompt that some of you may be familiar with. For those of you that are a little intimidated by it’s look and feel, don’t worry, this is simple. What we’re going to do now is tell the prompter that we want to delete all ventilation files (there’s only one, Vendor). We’re going to do this by simply typing in the following:
Javaloader -usb wipe
This is going to wipe the ventilation file on your device clean, i.e., no more Vendor.
Press enter.
You’ll notice the Sidekick 3 and computer communicating. Don’t worry, you’ve done everything right so far.
Now, we’re going to need to download the Blackberry Desktop Manager, which is also compatible with most handheld devices. We can get this through the T-Mobile SE site, https://software.se.t-mobile.com/ . Scroll down until you see “8700g”, and download the Desktop Manager version 4.1.1.12. You will be redirected to www.T-Mobileapps.com where you will be prompted to download.
Once downloaded, close and restart. Now, click Options>Connection settings>select USB>Connect.
Once connected, minimize.
You’re almost done! Now you’re going to transfer your MP3 files to your Sidekick 3. We downloaded 3 files from a file share program called BearShare (this is not required, it’s used to download music etc). Save the selected MP3 files to My Documents. Make sure that they are MP3 files.
Now, back to Blackberry Desktop Manager. Click on Application loader. You should get a message saying that no additional software was found. This means that you need to scan manually for your files. Go to Add. From My Documents, select the MP3 files you wish to transfer. Click next, and voila! When we tested this, we tried to transfer 40 MP3 files to the Sidekick, and only 32 transferred due to space restrictions. You may want to delete some of your default Sidekick 3 ringers to make space, if you need it.
Disconnect your Sidekick 3 from the USB cable.
The selected files should appear in your Ring tone library in a name format like the files we transferred, which appeared as “SKI_Jealousy_Paris_Hilton”, which is “Jealousy” by Paris Hilton. After setting this as your phone’s ringer, you’re DONE!
This process takes a while, but once completed once, it should take you only a few seconds to transfer additional files.
Now there’s something you don’t learn at Danger High! Good luck! Happy transferring!

And here’s the word from appletech as posted on the hiptop.com forums:

Just a little note to yall that the recently posted MP3/Ringtone “hack” thing is nothing more than an elaborate prank by a troller to get your hopes up and waste time.

There’s absolutely no way the trick will load an mp3 on the device. The procedure won’t even work on a blackberry. The vendor.XML file is a PC-side file not a device side. There’s nothing we can find at all with respect to the term “ventilation” and a blackberry, and that javaloader cmd will indeed wipe a blackberry device but the tool won’t talk to an Sidekick at all.

The good news you won’t brick your device trying to do so. We’ll keep banging away at the app to make sure though because if you do manage to screw up your device with this “hack”, Tmobile won’t replace your device and you’ll be out a few hundred dollars.

But its a good way to make someone kill 3 hours trying

Does this randomhouse person really work for RIM? I doubt it. Looks more like a recently banned user, kickside2, who attempted to start a bashappletech website. His/her blogger profile ID even was “RIM!”, the company randomhouse claims to work for. Coincidence? I think not.

And why would a RIM software tech work for a book publishing company (Random house Publishing) anyway?

So again folks, don’t waste your time. Nothing good, or bad, will come from this little prank…only a few hours of wasted time.

70 Responses to “MP3 Ringtones on the Sidekick 3”

  1. Dario Mayo Says:

    god i fucking hate lil wayne.

  2. patol Says:

    NO MORE SIDEKiCK PlEASe! ThIs SUCKS…
    Im GoING TO BrAKe MiNes N trOw iT aGaIn..
    ReAllY SiIdEKiCk SUcKs..
    MiNe IS A Slide..
    N it TuRn OFf by itself

  3. Supremacy Says:

    Hey SK owners the only way to fix this problem is if all of us start sending emails to t-mobile or danger zone. Other possible way is to email CNET.com for example so they show this freaking issue in their review and people stop buying this piece of S.H.I.T. See is this way to motivate themselves to send an application that can fix it

  4. sexyred Says:

    Well I was doing everything rite untill the javaloader part so I think its really stupid how u have 2go thru all of this jus 2put ringtones on ur phone

  5. erin Says:

    hiptop slide, or sk3 or whatever the hell you want to call it, is the biggest freaking waste of money.
    i looked at reviews of the phone before i bought it and it never said anything about not being able to set your own ringtone, so naturally, i was quite peeved when i found out that you couldnt.
    when i bought the stupid thing, it was like $500, actually, i think it was more than that, and for that price, you would think that you would be able to set your own ringtone.
    i dont want to do it because im ‘cheap’ i would have no problem paying the $5 for the ringtone, if they had the ringtone that i ACTUALLY WANTED in the catalogue!!
    its a pain in the ass. dont buy one. theyre a waste of money and a waste of time.
    and mine tends to wipe itself of everything. and i have no idea why. like, it deletes names, numbers, texts EVERYTHING! and dont go saying its ‘the user, not the phone’ it is the freaking phone because i havent done anything to it that would ruin it.
    and youre supposed to turn it off for a few hours a day too, because otherwise it reboots itself, according to the douche at the telstra shop. i so regret the decision i made to buy the dumb thing, and im stuck with it for another YEAR! ugh!

  6. Zarkeon19 Says:

    How about for games, sometimes I get bored an I dont want to paly the same games all over everyday

  7. Blueberry Says:

    w0w well that was useless

  8. Sammeh666 Says:

    i’m not cheap. i’ve got music i payed for with my own money that i then put on my computer. then i get a kick @$$ phone. all i want to do is put my awesome paid for songs on my awesome paid for phone.

    is there anything wrong with that?

  9. jaleel Says:

    i got my phone today and the phone is the cooles phone i very had and preson are best and do love me so much

  10. Rubu Says:

    I have a Side kick slide been up all night trying to figure out a way to put F*****g personalized ringtones since I have 8 from da catalog and they have bored me as hell.. But Tmobile made sure their is no way around it u have to buy them can’t personalize them at all!!!!! F**K TMOBILE

  11. Sab?i?aMa?ie;;? Says:

    uuhmmm this deff isn’t ah ringtone website u should b more fxckin specific nxt buddie ok….

  12. dave Says:

    This sklx is a piece of f.uc.kin s.h.it. No flash, no custom tones, nothin. It s.ucks a.ss and fu.ck.in tmobile and danger and of course the single most evil microsoft, yes thas right and it almost explains everything that is wrong with this phone and software, they should all fu.ck.in die, I would fu.cki.n do it my self if if I could. This is a scam and is outright robbery. If you fu.ck.in dum fu.ck pieces of sh.it eating feces breathed co.ck gobbleing cu.m luvin worthless lowlife scum fu.ks are reading this, I have one thing to say. Go fu.ck ur mothers. I tell everysingle person I meet how much I hate this phone and u all. I have talked at least 100 people who wanted this phone, to not get one and they changed their minds and got something else. A.ss.hol.es.

  13. dave Says:

    Oh yeah. I almost forgot. Fu.ck you.

  14. dave Says:

    Davidtheta@gmail.com
    Don’t like what I said, or if you do like it, tmoble or anyone else that’s my email.
    Oh yeah. I almost forgot. Fu.ck you. Danger, tmobile, microsoft.

  15. michael Says:

    greg_t_tech on November 27, 2007 at 1:57 am said:

    This may come kind of late, but I just found this thread… I have to agree with this AppleTech guy… The trick won’t work. The RIM desktop interface won’t even recognize your SK. They have completely different OS’s and the Danger OS won’t use an MP3 as a ringtone unless it’s “Media Rights Managed” or something like that… It basically ensures that people pay for the music. This way T-Mobile gets a cut and so does the record company, and so on… I’m also not sure that a SK will use an MP3 file from the memory card as a ringer, but I’ll look into that. I’m thinking too that there would probably be a size issue with a standard MP3 file… I had a similar problem with a SonyEricsson w810, but sony has software that allows you to alter the file and make it work. As far as voiding your warantee goes… The only thing I can think of that will void that is liquid or physical damage, anything else just looks like a software problem…

    Hey I got an idea try no spaces on the usb error and dumbasses unlike us hackers know how tomake a fake license so I bought one found out it uses hex data and the sonicboom player to play it and the data encryption for fake license is hex so just screw around with it find the part with the name of the ringtone and it’ll work plus the vendor is real its one of the things I think the government doesn’t want u 2know about bcuz of the copyright of the sidekick 3 by tmobile so ur welcome to any hackers out there who wanna try it out

  16. rebelrenegade1 Says:

    Ok To the jackass who said stop being cheap and buy your ringtone. You go ahead a pay the 4 to 6 dollars for a clip of a song. I would rather take the Full MP3’s I have and load them onto my cell rather than paying for a 4-6 dollar clippet of a song.

  17. michael Says:

    Hey guys I’m back this piece of shit tmobile shut down my fucking phone I put 17 of my own ringers on it and deleted my others they found out it was set to allow data management them cheap ass bitches ripped me and u know what good cuz I’m in the middle of restarting it and switching to verizon and I’m using the blackberry plan( the blackberry plan should use the same internet on it and txts heard it doesn’t allow txting without the right plan and the backup won’t work not much of a loss and It may even be a faster network and yes guess what I’m not 13 but email me at mikeike51497@yahoo.com if u try the plan for a blackberry on a sk3 and it worx if it does try to donate onto my games account its called knight online on playspan and buy me premmy my email for playspan userasdf2081@aol.com thanks lots if it worx

  18. mike Says:

    Hey guys I’m a pro dev on the sk3 and if and if this does work try loading it in programmer mode (press 1+@+0 then hold w then there will be a lil sad face that loads) after that run htconsole register @ developer.danger.com and run all the stuff it says to do download all the stuff and install NO viruses are in this run ht console and while that’s loading plug in ur sk1 2 3 slide (etc) and click upload bundle go to where ur ringtone is open it has to be wav or mp3 and ur done should work haven’t tried it yet if it doesn’t work apply for a developer key file and load it onto ur device and bamm free ringers have fun this method is almost a guarentee of working not risky at all unless u download ur ringer from limewire get it from skringers.com all virus free sidekick friendly and yes I’m 13 in case anyone doesn’t know this

  19. rebelrenegade1 Says:

    Hey Mike,

    If you haven’t tried it then how do you know it works?

  20. mike Says:

    Back and I tried it just yesterday with my method u need a dev key u can get 10 yes 10 ringers ONLY 10 just go to developer.danger.com on a pc mac or linux take a premade mp3 or wav ringer and put it in this location c:/programfiles/danger hiptop/ then find htconsole and put it in that folder with it upload ur dev key then ur ringer through bndl or flash for the dev key and then upload bndl go to where ur ringer is tried it I got 4 ringers only tricky part though is getting the dev key I suggest asking a techie good with java to help with that the other technique stated won’t work



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