Wednesday, April 20, 2011

How to Set Up Motorola WX345 Playlists

One thing I noticed when we received our Motorola WX345 cell phones is the lack of explanation in the manual as to how to set things up.  The phone is capable of quite a bit for what we paid (nothing with Consumer Cellular's plan). 

My husband and I wanted to figure out how to use the "playlist" feature, and it took a little doing, but once set up, it's great!  I'll explain in a minute...but first want to say that I found Consumer Cellular in our AARP magazine, as they are already VERY low priced and have good coverage using the ATT network, and on top of it offer an AARP members a discount.

We waited patiently for our contract with the service we had to end in order not to be penalized, then joined Consumer Cellular...a service with no contract, and easy-to-follow website, and reasonable prices with minutes my husband and I can share between our phones....we are saving $30 a month over our previous plan, some may save more depending upon what service and plan you have.  You can get $10 off your first bill, and so can I, if you contact me with a comment I'll tell you how...your comments are moderated, so won't post if you don't want them to, I'll just find them and respond to you personally so give me a way to contact you...I don't spam, I promise...I'm just happy to help someone else save during times like this when things are so challenging.

What I love most is that we signed up for the least expensive plan, and can upgrade it and downgrade as needed, any time.  They even have a feature that warns you when you are reaching your minutes limit so you can upgrade as needed and thereby save over what it would cost to pay for the extra minutes individually.  We are not heavy cell phone users, but even if we were, we'd be saving LOTS over our previous plan.

So, back to the Motorola WX345....it's the free phone being offered right now, with a reasonable charge to activate.  We chose the free one not only because it is free, but the battery life is amazing.  However, the manual is VERY basic, not bad, but leaves out some helpful details, and we've done a lot of discovering on our own.

The phone has an MP3 player, and 1 GB of memory, so we purchased microSD cards to expand the memory a lot in order to save music, and in my case, music and audio books.  But how to listen?  I started out by saving my music and audio books directly on the microSD from my computer to the phone with a usb cable (another extra we purchased)...but had to listen to each song and section one by one...no continuous play...right from the SD card.


So I got the manual out to try figuring out the playlists.  It got me started, and the rest I figured out myself.  Here's how it's done, for those of you who, like me, find it a little challenging to figure out technical things:

Before you start, you'll want to have some mp3's saved on your phone in the phone storage itself (it only has 1 GB) or on a microSD card (I believe you can get as much memory as your like...we got 8 GB).  They aren't hard to insert into the phone.

Here's how to set up playlists:

1) Open the phone and go to "menu" by selecting black button surrounded by "silver" square on top of keypad.

2) Go to "multimedia"...should be the top left corner icon on the screen, select

3) Go down to "music player", select

4) Go to "my playlists", select

5) Select "options" by pressing the button on the top left of your keypad

6) Go to "new playlist" and select

7) Type the name of the playlist you want to make on the screen then press the select button...."done" should be highlighted, select again.

8) You will now see the title of your new playlist on the screen. 

9) To load your music or other mp3 selections into the playlist, select the playlist title, select "load", and you will have the option to get music from your phone or SDcard storage, choose the location where you have stored your music files.

10)  Go to the file with the music you want to load and select it, then select the mp3's individually one by one, and select - it will say "done" as each is loaded to your playlist. When you've loaded all the songs you want to, back out, or close the phone.

How to play:

1) Repeat steps 1-4 above

2) Choose the playlist you want to play and select

3) Select "load"

4) Select the first song or whatever song you want start playing from

5) Select play

And now I'm going to have to tell you how to do the settings so that it will play continuously through the songs and repeat them or stop at the end of your list.

How to set up Playlist settings:

1) When you have chosen a playlist you'd like to play following the steps just above, select "options" using the upper left button

2) Go down the list to "settings" (it is out of view on the screen) and select.

3) Select "player settings"

    a) You can select "all" or "off" depending upon whether you want the playlist to play again when it gets to the end or not.
    b) You can turn "shuffle" on or off, I think this means that the music plays in random order, but have it off, so don't know.
    c) Here's an IMPORTANT setting - in order to keep the music playing when the phone is closed, you need "Background play" ON...otherwise music will stop when you close the phone.

That's about all you need to know, you'll find that you can fast forward and back using the right and left side of the "silver thingy" surrounding the "select" button at the top - first go to "now playing" by pressing the top of the silver square, and from there you can stop what you are listening to by pressing the button in the center of the silver square, or you can fast forward and back using left and right of the silver button

If you stop the music and close the phone, return to "now playing" as described just above, and continue from there any time, it will save your place...great for audio books.  If a call comes in, or message, it will pause for a moment and continue when your done.

That's about it for now, I hope this helps you figure out how to set up and use playlists on your WX345 Motorola Cell Phone and play music or other mp3's with the flip phone closed.

Updated 11/28/18

5 comments:

  1. Keep up the good work! I have had this phone for years{wx345}and was unhappy. It was the only phone consumer cellular had that met my needs.After getting it to ring way louder with a real ring{had to record my house phone with a Tascam DR40 then put sd card in wx345}. I think this a great phone for $35.00 and want to learn everything it can do{manual not so good}. THANKS! GARY

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  2. Very understanding...but: can upload music from my computer.
    As you said that it can be attached to a "usb" cord; it may be plugged into pc. ..isn't that right? then, load the music from my files.

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  3. Anonymous who posted 12/20...first and apology for the delay in responding.

    You can upload mp3s of music that are saved on your computer, and make playlists to sort the music as described in the post.

    There is a limit to the number of playlists that you can make, I've discovered, but I have several.

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  4. I am trying to send mp3s to my wx345 using a USB but it does not work. I can plug the micro SD directly into the computer and it works fine, but that means taking the back cover off the phone, removing the battery, and removing the SD. Then putting it all back together. Any ideas how to use the USB cord?
    Thanks,
    John

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  5. Anon who posted 11/30/12, sorry for the delay in replying...you should be able to do what you are trying to do. When you plugged into you computer did you look at your phone and select "mass storage" which should appear on the screen when it is open? When you do that you should soon see two files on you computer, one for your phone and one for your sd card, and should be able to drag and drop or copy and paste etc. the files very easily. Hope you can figure it out!

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