OK… a little off topic here, but recently got a new TracFone and was trying to set a custom ring tone (the Oregon State University fight song… Go Beavs!). This phone uses a ringtone filetype of "qcp."
I’m on a Mac, so most of the ringtone converters I found either didn’t have this option, or were Windows only.*
OK. So, in short, the trick / tip is to email an MP3 version to your phone and save it as a ringtone. The phone will take care of converting it to qcp.
How do I email an MP3 to my tracfone?
Try this first:
Send an email with the desired MP3 attached to ##########@mypixmessages.com, where the ### is your 10-digit phone number, no initial "1" needed.**
How to set a received Sound file as your ringtone
If that doesn’t work, then just a few EASY Steps!!!
- Determine your phone’s MMS address: To do this, use your phone to send a multi-media messsage to your regular email address. (Yes, you can send texts to regular email addresses from your cell phone). Basically just attach a photo and send. ***
- Reply to the MMS with your MP3 attached. Or you can create a new message to the MMS email you determined.
- Open the MMS message. Scroll or touch to get to "slide 2" and the MP3 should start playing automatically.
- Touch Options button in upper right of screen (see image) and Save As Ringtone. Rename if desired.
- Set As Ringtone? Yes: The next screen will ask you if you wish to set the newly saved sound as you ringtone.
You’re Done!
Notes:
* I fired up a sometimes-working hand-me-down HP Media Center PC and used a demo of Create Ringtone, which worked… but, the demo works for only 14 days and will only save half of your audio file if it is under 5:00 min. So, a workaround to that is to use some sort of audio editing software to DOUBLE the length of your ringtone. Basically, select all, copy, put your insert point at the end and paste. Your source file will now be twice as long, perfect for ‘halving’ by the demo version.
** This is for the LG505c that runs on the Verizon network. I used to have a LG500g, that was on the ATT/TMobile network and the phone’s email was:
1##########@mmst5.tracfone.com
but it seems it used a more common file format for ringtones, so I didn’t have to send it to myself.
*** To find out your phone’s text-only message address, send a new text-only message to your regular email address. On Verizon/LG505c, the email should resemble this: ##########@vtext.com
Closing caveat: sending MMS messages use more air time than text messages. Seemed to be about 2 units or so to get the whole thing (vs. .3 unit for a regular text). Really, not that much in these days of triple-air-time phones.