LG VX6000 Frequently Asked Questions

How do I connect the phone with my computer?

You will need USB drivers for the cell phone on your computer, and you need a cable to connect the phone to a USB port. We bought our “FutureDial” cable at RadioShack for about $20. The packaging for the cable says that you should also buy the FutureDial Software CD, but we haven’t found that necessary.

Before plugging in the phone, download the USB drivers for the telephone from the FutureDial website. You’ll want to download the Automatic USB Driver Installation. After it extracts, be sure to run the Setup.exe and choose your phone. When the installation finishes, it asks you to plug in your phone. The phone should be recognized as a new device and if you look at the Device Manager (Start | Run | devmgmt.msc), it should list a new port called “Prolific USB-to-Serial Comm Port”

How do I back up the data on my phone so that I don’t mess it up later?

You can use a piece of software named BitPim to transfer data with your phone. At the time of writing, the most recent version was 0.7-test7. It’s important to make a backup all data on the phone before doing anything else.

• Switch the phone’s port type to RS-232 by going to Menu | Settings | 1x Data and choosing RS-232. The default choice of USB may also work. We’ve had success with both while using BitPim, but RS-232 seems to work better when using the phone as a modem.
• Connect the phone to the computer’s USB port (see FAQ 1).
• Run BitPim and select the correct telephone type and port (for me it was com4).
• In BitPim, make sure that the “View | View filesystem” menu is checked.
• Select the “Data | Get Data” menu.
• Check the four checkboxes (PhoneBook, Calendar, Wallpaper and Ringers), and hit OK.
• Go to the Filesystem tab in BitPim, and right-click on the top of the tree.
• Select the “Backup Entire Tree” menu. It will eventually prompt you to save a zip file of all of the data.

How do I get a picture from the phone?

Aside from using the Pix Messaging from Verizon Wireless (which costs $0.25 per picture if you haven’t subscribed to some other plan), you can also use BitPim to transfer pictures. In BitPim, go to the Filesystem tab and expand the tree where there is a + sign and a “/”. There should be an item named “cam” and if you expand that, you will see your pictures with a “.jpg” extension. Right click on any of them and click Save.

How do I add wallpaper to the phone?

The picture should be 120 pixels wide and either 131 or 160 pixels tall. If the picture is going to be used for Contacts or Wallpaper, 131 pixels will work fine. If the picture is going to be used for Power On or Power Off, you’ll want it to be 160 pixels tall. With Contacts and the Wallpaper, the top and bottom of the picture is usually cut off by the status and menu bars.

Other instructions on the Internet say that you need to erase all pictures through the phone and then upload a picture that is an 8-bit indexed bitmap image through BitPim by navigating through the filesystem tab, and then resetting the phone, but we think these instructions are out of date.

With BitPim Version 0.7-test7, one can use the Wallpaper tab to add new wallpaper images. The VX6000 supports jpeg images, which tend to be smaller than the corresponding bitmap. Just click the Add button, and choose an image. Then, choose Data | Send Phone Data, and make sure that Wallpaper is selected in the window that pops up.

Deleting pictures should be done from within the phone. The delete capability in BitPim does not seem to work.

How do I add a ringtone to the phone?

The VX6000 supports sound files in mp3, mid, and qcp format. Any of them can be added by clicking the Add button while on the Ringtone tab, chooes Data | Send Phone Data, and make sure that Ringtone is selected in the window that pops up.

As with pictures, ringtones should be deleted from within the phone.

How do I use the phone as a modem?

Once the phone is connected to the computer through a USB port, it should be listed as a new COM port. As described in FAQ 1, if one views the Device Manager, one should see the COM port listed as “Prolific USB-to-Serial COMM port” and it will say what port it is set to. On our computer, it shows up as COM4.

To use the phone as a modem, you can either download the Verizon software to make a phone call, or you can set up the modem and dialup connection manually. According to various Internet sites, Verizon Customer Service has verified that even if you don’t have a Verizon Express Network plan, you will only be charged for a normal phone call. We haven’t actually verified this claim.

To set up the phone manually:

1. Connect the phone to the USB port.
2. Go to Control Panel and select Phone and Modem Options.
3. Go to the Modems tab and click the Add… button.
4. Select “Don’t detect my modem; I will select it from a list.” and click Next.
5. With (Standard Modem Types) selected, choose the Standard 33600 bps Modem model and click Next.
6. Where it asks “On which ports do you want to install it?”, choose Selected ports and pick the port where the phone shows up (probably COM4), and click Next and Finish.
7. Select the new modem and click on Properties.
8. On the Modem tab, make sure that the Maximum Port Speed is set to 115200.
9. On the Advanced tab, set the Extra initialization command to AT$QCMDR=3 to use the Verizon Express Network.
10. In Control Panel, open Network Connections, and choose the File | New Connection… menu.
11. Click Next, choose “Connect to the Internet”, and click Next.
12. Choose “Set up my connection manually” and click Next.
13. Choose “Connect using a dial-up modem” and click Next.
14. Pick the newly created “Modem – Standard 33500 bps Modem” and click Next.
15. Type an ISP name. “EN” is a decent name for the Verizon Express Network. Click Next.
16. Type #777 as the Phone number and click Next.
17. Type your 10-digit phone number + @vzw3g.com as the username
    with “vzw” as the password. For example, if your 10-digit phone number is 888-555-1234, the username
    should be 8885551234@vzw3g.com. Click Next and Finish.

After setting up the modem and dial-up network connections, you should be able to open the new dial-up connection, click Dial, and it will connect at 115200 bps. You may find that you need to set the phone’s data port to RS-232 if you haven’t already (On the phone, select Menu, Settings (9), 1x Data (6), Select Port (2)) before it will connect. Turning off the phone seems to sometimes revert the port to USB, so if the dial-up connection won’t connect, check that the port setting is still RS-232.