So I got a memory card for my 8100, eagerly anticipating setting up an mp3 for my ringtones and for my alarm. However, to my great disappointment, it appears that when used as a ringtone, only the first 15 seconds are played. Is there a way around this limitation, or am I missing a setting somewhere to change this? The mp3 plays in its entirety through the mp3 player, so I don't believe there is a problem with the file.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8100/4.2.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/100)

All I can say is that I have an MP3 ringer and it plays as long as it rings. Did you try different songs? Maybe bit rates? Anyone?

if you search you will finds something along those lines Im not sure of the right thread off hand. I had tmo increase the number of rings before my phone gos to voice mail and I get through a whole song sometimes

I believe 30 seconds is the longest... there is a number you can call to set this up from your phone. Just do some research and I'm sure you will find it. I don't have it with me right now.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8700/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/100)

I guess my question is, y would u want to wait until the whole song is over before u pick up the phone? Let alone wait more than 15 seconds when someone calls u???

Sorry, perhaps I didn't explain myself clearly. Let me clarify a couple things:

This is not a "going to voicemail" problem. Obviously I don't want the phone to ring forever and will have to go to voicemail eventually. The issue is that the mp3 ringtone starts playing the first 15 seconds of the song AGAIN before going to voicemail.

I'm assuming you're referring to the time to voicemail issue - see my response above. If this ISN'T what you're referring to, I'm confused as to why I would have to call an external number and/or use another service to configure the length of ringtone that would play locally on my phone.

I'm on call a lot for work - I like to use ringtones that start quietly and get louder, so that my girlfriend or roommates don't get jarred awake by a loud ringtone at all hours of the night - but if I'm not near the phone at the time, I'll hear it after a few rings. However, this is somewhat besides the point as I would like my ALARM to play through a whole song as well, as mentioned in my original post. Surely you can see why I'd like to have a whole song play as my alarm rather than repeat a 15 second loop? Much more entertaining first thing in the morning.

So, I'm back to square one - I will keep trying different mp3s to see if that solves the problem.

By the way, this is a Rogers 8100.

I understand what you mean now. It 'should' play the song until the phone goes to voicemail assuming the song you are using isnt 15 seconds long. Ringers will all work the same, they play on a loop until there is no need for the phone to ring anymore. I've definately never heard of your problem before. I use mp3s as ringtones quite often and different ones for different people and they will always continue to play up till the phone stops ringing (30 seconds) and the person calling gets my voicemail prompt.



I'ts not an external service. Basically, you can call TMO and tell them you want your ringer (time to voicemail) shortened or extended. To my knowledge 30 seconds is the longest time. I know I set this up on my account a few years back by calling a tmo phone number with something like **30** at the end of the number which was the number in seconds I wanted the ringer for incoming calls. It then changed the setting for me automatically.


That DEFINATELY makes sense when using a song as your alarm. I never use my alarm on my phone so perhaps someone else can chime in on this one. If you find out let us know.

FYI, and others who may be checking this post - Rogers does not support this feature, and there is NO WAY on their network to change the time before transfer to voicemail. Apparently when they first implemented GSM, too many people were using these codes and "breaking" their voicemail (ie: turning off forwarding and forgetting to turn it back on, and the like) and due to the increased call volume regarding "broken" voicemail they simply disabled the feature.

I'm still working on my mp3 looping problem. Was my roommates b-day this weekend so I've been partying rather than playing with my phone, I suspect I'll find some time to fiddle with it tomorrow at work.

Bumping this topic back up to the top to see if anyone has new info/comments on it.

FYI - I've tried different MP3s and all the same result on my alarm - they play for about 20 seconds and then stop. It's not the same spot every time, so I'm really not sure what is going on. Wish I could fix it. Help please?

its 30 seconds however if you have t mobile you want your ringtone to be about 20 seconds so it cuts off smoothly

I was trying to figure out how to use my MP3 songs stored on my SD card as an alarm. I can use them as ring tones but can't seem to find them on the list when trying to change my alarm tones. Any ideas?

My ring will loop instead of play all they way through also. I have cut parts from my favorite songs to 30 seconds and set them as ringtones, but only about 15-20 secs of actually play and then it loops. Is there a way to have it play all the way through?

Has anyone figured out this bug? I wanted to set up some nice wake-up music for my alarm, and I'd like to have the whole song play, but it gets cut off!! Very upset. can anyone help?

bump... is this an OS bug?

I'm on O2 UK and my phone does exactly the same. I've got Easy like sunday morning for an alarm and it cuts off and starts again before returning to the beginning. My ringtone goes part way through and then returns to the beginning a couple of times before going to voicemail. Also my SMS alert will repeat through the first part of the mp3 before stopping instead of just playing the whole tune. Slightly annoying if you're in range but just can't answer it.

I'm experiencing the same problems! I'm on a Rogers 8100 with the .72 release. I'm guessing this is an OS version issue? Can anybody testify to that?

If you put your mp3 under ringtone folder, you should be able to see it. But it'll only play the first 5 seconds or so (not exactly sure but really short). I guess things other than ringtone will mostlikely play only a short period of time, hopefully RIM would fix it :/

To get your alarm to play things from your music folder just open up the things browsed and press the menu key and browse your media card, I've been using my music folder for my alarm since I had a media card... Now if we could only get this looping fixed cause it bothers me too.

I found that for ringtones, the size should be under 500KB (1/2 MB). I use Soundforge to edit mp3s and save as 128KBPS files. I believe there are a lot of free programs out there for encoding and editing mp3 files. As for alarm tones, I am able to play entire songs, no matter the bitrate of the mp3 file. Cheers.

I'm having this problem also. My ringtones(mp3) are about 30 secs, but it RESTARTS itself again at 15 secs. BOO!