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Tip: Official MP3 Ring Tone Patch for ASUS P505 Pocket PC Phone

I just bought a used ASUS P505 Pocket PC Phone last Friday. (See review here.) It runs Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition and supposedly plays MP3 ring tones. The firmware allows us to select (and "preview") an MP3 file to be ring tone. Unfortunately, the P505 does not play the selected MP3 file properly.

I asked a junior friend who has owned a P505 for more than a year and was informed that this is a known bug in the present firmware (ROM version 3.15.73 WWE). He recalled that there is a patch/fix posted on ASUS website.

I went ahead to ASUS.com and finally found this MP3 Ring Tone Patch. I downloaded the patch, unzipped and installed the extracted CAB file, and soft-reseted the handheld.

The patch is listed as "ASUS MP3 Plug-in" in Settings -> System -> Remove Programs.

I proceeded to Settings -> Personal -> Phone, and tried some MP3 ring tone files out. Bravo!! My P505 now plays MP3 ring tones properly. Personal ring tone management software, such as Photo Contacts PRO, that did not work before now also works great!

Update: June 14, 06:

I copied a bunch of MP3 songs and clips to the SD Card and played with it a bit. Stereo 128-kbps and 192-kbps whole-song files and shorter clips played fine. Unfortunately, the P505 still won't play shorter 320-kbps clips, and it crashed (soft-resetted) when 320-kbps whole-song files were played. 256-kbps files though played properly. Therefore, I guess that

the maximum bit rate that this MP3 Ring Tone patch supports is 256 kbps.



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