Sony Ericsson K800i mobile phone
This article provides some useful information about the Sony Ericsson K800i mobile phone, including its specifications, how to connect it to the computer, how to put music and photos on it, where to find themes and wallpaper and how to install them, and how to get your photos off onto your computer. If you have a different make and model of phone, you might still find the information useful because it will probably connect in a similar way.
Specifications
Size: 105 x 47 x 22 mm |
Screen: 240 x 320 pixels / 262,144 colours TFT |
Memory: 64Mb built in, up to 2Gb Memory Stick Micro supported |
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Connecting the K800i to the computer
Connecting the phone to the computer can be achieved using the Bluetooth networking capabilities of the phone and the computer, or it can be connected using a USB lead.
A lead is usually provided with the phone, but it can be purchased as an optional accessory if it you do not have one.
It is actually easier to use the USB lead than to fiddle around with Bluetooth and you just plug one end of the lead into the phone and the other into the computer. To OS X the phone appears to be a USB storage device, rather like a USB flash memory drive.
The phone has 64Mb of memory built in and this appears as one disk drive and if you have a memory card installed in the phone, this will appear as another disk drive. You will therefore end up with two extra drives. It's easy to tell which disk drive is the phone and which the memory card by looking at the names. You can also discover which is which by checking the size - unless you have a memory card that's the same size as the phone's memory! If you want to store lots of photos and music on the phone, you are best getting a 2Gb memory card - they used to be expensive, but now they are much cheaper.
When you plug the phone into the computer the phone prompts you to select Phone or File Mode
on its screen. Select the File Mode option and the phone will shut down and restart in file transfer mode. When this hapens you will see two new disk drive icons on the desktop like the ones shown here.
One disk is for accessing the contents of the phone memory and the other disk is for accessing the contents of the memory card (assuming you have one in the phone, otherwise you'll just see one disk icon). In each case you can double click a disk drive icon to open a window to view the files and folders using Finder.
With two windows open you will be able to see a list of the folders on the phone and memory card (assuming that you have one). The two windows look the same and that's because they can contain similar content - for example, photos can be saved to the phone's memory or the memory card.
It's fairly obvious what each folder on the phone/memory card is for and you can tell from the names. DCIM is for digital camera images, Music is for music, Picture is for images, Theme is for themes, Video is for video clips.
Add your own music
Adding music to the phone is a piece of cake and it can play standard .mp3 music or iTunes .m4a 
(only unprotected music you have ripped from your own CDs into iTunes and not copy protected music you have bought from the iTunes online store).
Navigate to your iTunes folder by opening a Finder window and selecting your Home folder, then open Music, open iTunes, and then open the iTunes Music folder. You'll see all the artists in separate folders. Just drag an artist from here to the phone's Music folder to copy it.
If you don't want all the artist's albums, open the Music folder in the phone window and create a new folder with the artist's name. Now open the artist's folder in iTunes Music and drag the albums over. It's easy and you should end up with something like this in the Finder window showing the phone contents.
If your music is stored as MP3 files you just need to open the Music folder on the phone, create a folder for an artist, open it, create a folder for the album and then drag your MP3 files to it.
Add ring tones
Ring tones are big business and companies make a large amount of money from selling them. There isn't anything special about a ring tone though and you can easily find freebies on the internet. For example, go to www.myk800.lasyk.net and select the myRingtones section. There are 50s, 60s, 70s, blues, jazz, classical and many more. When you find a ring tone you want, right click the Download Now link and select Save Target As. Save it to the Windows desktop and then drag it to the Explorer window showing the phone's contents. Drop it in the \Music\Ringtones folder.
You'll see that ring tones are just standard MIDI files and they have a .mid extension. You could use any MIDI music, but don't choose a piece that starts off quietly or you won't hear your phone ringing! Choose something that starts off quite loud.
Add more themes
A theme is a collection of wallpaper, icons, colour scheme, and so on that can be applied to the phone's user interface. The phone comes with one or more themes and when you select one it completely transforms the look of the menus, backgrounds and so on. You will find many companies trying to sell you more themes for your mobile and it is easy to end up spending a lot of money for them. However, why bother to pay for them when you can get them on the internet for free?
One of the best websites for themes for Sony Ericsson phones is www.esato.com/logos/colour/themes.php. You'll see a long list of phone models and you need to select the right one. Just click your phone, the K800 in this case, and you'll find hundreds of great themes. Ten thumbnails at a time are displayed at the bottom of the page and a full size preview is shown of the currently selected theme.
When you find one that you want, just right click the Download link on the page and save the file to the windows desktop. The next step is to drag it to the \Themes folder in the Explorer window showing the phone or memory card contents.
There is a theme to turn your Sony Ericsson K800 into an Apple iPhone, which is a laugh, and there is a superb Windows mobile theme that looks fantastic.
Make some wallpaper
You will find lots of companies encouranging you to buy wallpaper for your phone and although they may be quite tempting, the prices are not cheap. Filling your phone's memory with lots of wallpaper is a good way to spend money. However, it is so easy to make your own wallpaper that it is hardly worth paying for it and you can create an attractive image in just a couple of minutes. It really is that simple.
You can use any image you like, such as a photo, scanned image or even hand drawn artwork and you are only limited by your imagination, to use a well known phrase. Just load your photo editor, Photoshop if you're rich or GIMP if you're not, and then resize and/or crop a photo to 240 x pixels wide by 320 pixels high and save it as a JPEG. Other file formats may be recognised, but this is a well known format and it creates compact files.
Save the image to the computer's hard disk drive, such as on the Windows desktop and then just drag it to the phone's \Pictures folder. There's really nothing to it and when you unplug the USB lead and start the phone, you can select the image as wallpaper in the Settings in the usual way..
To find interesting images that you can use as wallaper or screen savers on your phone, just go to Google (www.google.com) and use the image search facility For example, you could find your favourite film and download the wallpaper from the website (most films have websites with freebies like desktop wallpaper), find your favourite music artist or Hollywood star and search their website for images. They often have one you can use and you just save the photo to the computer.
All you need to do is to resize the original image to 240 x 320 pixels and save it as a standard JPEG file, then drag it to the phone's \Pictures folder and the job's done.
On the left is a James Bond wallpaper that was downloaded from the Casino Royale website and resized to 240 x 320 pixels fit the phone. You can save this and use it on your phone if you want. Just Ctrl+click it and select Save Image As in the menu that pops up. Now all you need is an 007 ring tone to compliment it and you can pretend you're a secret service agent!
Sony Ericsson K800 resources
