The Sprint LG LX550 or "FUSIC" mobile cell phone is one of the hottest multimedia phones on the market today. Why? It has great call clarity and a ton of geeky features that everyone will love. On top of that - the phone just oozes "cool" from the first time you pick it up. You usually see a lot of reviews where some guy rattles off all of the cell phone specs that he read from the manufacturers web site - but what I tell you about the fusic in this article will be what I know because we actually own a LG Fusic LX550 cell phone with service from Sprint and we (my daughter) use it every day.

This is what you can expect to learn from my LG LX550 Fusic cell phone review:

  • How to get a LG Fusic Cell Phone, including how to get a Fusic without a contract
  • I'm going to list all the cool geeky tech features of the Fusic multimedia cell phone
  • I'm going to explain how to create your own free mp3 ringtones for your Fusic LX500 and upload them to the phone in 5 minutes or less

How to get an LG Fusic Cell Phone, including how to get a Fusic without a contract from Sprint

Well, the first way to get an LG LX550 Fusic of course is to order it through Sprint and get a 2 year contract for a new line - or upgrade your existing Sprint phone (and contract) to get the Fusic. They say you'll save about $150 from the price of the phone this way, since the retail is $299.00 (as of March 2007), and I'm sure the price will only go down as new phones come out. A lot of people feel that this is the only way to purchase a new cell phone (from your provider), but there are other ways!

First - you can buy your phone from an online merchant. How much it costs depends on who you buy it from. Take for example amazon.com:

Currently (as of March 2007) the LG Fusic LX550 costs $199.00 on Amazon. As I write this article today - the phone (on Amazon) has an additional $150 rebate (if you activate NEW line of service - not use the phone on an existing line). That means (with a new cell phone line) that buying the Fusic through Amazon costs only $49.99. Not bad!

You can also buy the phone from any of the online cell phone merchants (like Let's Talk dot com) and get the phone for (currently) $49.99 as well. Sometimes when there's a special you can even get it for free. Just click the picture or link below for the latest price.

LG Fusic LX550 (Sprint)

LG Fusic LX550 (Sprint)

If you want to purchase an LX500 Fusic cell phone with not contract than your best bet is Amazon. You can get either a USED LX550 or NEW LX550 on eBay. The Sprint Fusic that we have now is one that we purchased (for my daughter) off of eBay used. You can get some great deals on used cell phones on eBay. But be careful when buying a used or new cell phone from an eBay auction. Here are some things to look for when buying cell phones on eBay:

  • Make sure the person you're buying from has an adequate amount of feedback (I'd say 20 or more, but I prefer 100 or more
  • Make sure that their feedback rating is high enough (I try not to buy from anyone <98% positive feedback)
  • Make sure that they do not have any negative feedback in the last 90 days (I don't buy from anyone with recent negative feedback
  • Make sure shipping is <$10 (any more than that is rediculous for a small cell phone
  • Don't buy from anyone that won't ship with insurance
  • Don't buy from anyone that won't take paypal (otherwise you lose your 'buyer protection')
  • Absolutely DO NOT buy from anyone that doesn't guarantee that the ESN number is clear - otherwise you won't be able to activate the pnone

If you're in the market for a LG Fusic cell phone and you want to get one off of eBay - I would make sure and bookmark this page. If you're searched through eBay before, you know what a pain it can be to weed through all of the results to get exactly what you want. Especially when it comes to something like cell phones, where a search like "Fusic" gets you phones, accessories, skins, batteries, holster clips, faceplates, and more! I spent a couople hours doing a search for the Fusic, and I weeded out all that crap or you to leave you with the top 25 used and new Fusic phones on eBay right now (live) - starting with the ones that end first:

Now that I've told you how to get a FUSIC - I'm going to tell a little bit about the features of the phone. I know, that's backwards - I should have told you the features first!

I'm to list all the cool geeky tech features of the Fusic multimedia cell phone

I'm just gonna list these out - this is one helluva phone!

  • The Fusic has bluetooth. It works pretty fast too, we transferred some files fom my Sanyo M1 - and it was pretty snappy
  • It seems kinda weird to talk about the speakerphone, but I wanted to point out that the speakerphone on the Fusic is much better than others I've used. It's clear, but also very loud
  • It has an MP3 player, the controls are on the outside face of the Fusic cell phonw (very cool)
  • The Fusic has a Micro SD Transflash Flash Memory slot and comes with a 32 MB memory card. You'll of course want a bigger one (lnks below), and I believe that it will hold up a 2GB card
  • The LG LX550 Fusic is an "EVDO" phone giving it broadband-like speeds
  • The Sprint Fusic has an FM Transmitter built in! This is the first I've seen that has this. I think all mp3 player cell phones should have this built-in feature. We've turned on the FM transmitter and listened to songs in the car (from the phone) on many occations - this is a VERY handy, and possibly the best features of this multimedia cell phone
  • The fusic has removable faceplates - and it even comes with 3 colored replacement faceplates for free new in the box!
  • The LG Fusic has a built-in 1.3MP Camera! Take pictures with your cell phone, and send them directly to picture mail!
  • The screen is 1.25" diagonal screen on the outside and the internal screen measures 2" diagonally (and that's pretty big for a cell phone)
  • It has the ability to show pictures for caller ID if you assign them
  • When using the included USB cable connected to a PC - you can use the phone (and memory card) as a mass storage device
  • The phone kinda looks like an iPod - dontcha think?

How to create your own free mp3 ringtones for your Fusic LX500 and upload them to the phone in 5 minutes or less

Can you believe how much ringtones cost for your cell phone? I just don't think we realize sometimes that it's unreasonable to pay $1.99 - $4.99 for a cell phone ringtone, when you can buy a full song on iTunes for just .99 cents. Also - many of the ringtones expire after 30, 60, or 90 days. You are purchasing only a "license" to temporarily use the ringtone.

Screw that. I'm going to tell you how to create your own ringtones from scratch, for no money, and in 5 minutes or less. I'm going to show you how to create mp3 ringtones for your LX550 Fusic for free, and you're not gonna believe how easy it is!!

First download Audacity - the FREE audio editor. Also, when you're there - be sure to downlod the LAME MP3 plugin as well. Once downloaded, install Audacity on your computer. Then extract the LAME MP3 codec to your c:\ drive.

Now find a song (mp3) that you want to create a ringtone from. In this example, we are creating mp3 ringtones from music files - we're not creating 'polyphonic' ringtones. Once installed, open and run the Audacity program for the first time. Make sure the program is not full screen. Make sure you have your mp3 song file ready on your desktop. Drag (your mp3 file on the desktop) over the the left part of the screen. Drag your audacity window over to the right. Now "drag" your mp3 song file with your mouse into "Audacity". It will take a second or two to import it, and then move the audacity windows back to the center of the screen.

Creating your own ringtone from the mp3 file for your Fusic is pretty easy. You are going to 'select' the part of the mp3 song that you want to use as the ringtone ( you certainly don't need the whole song for a ringtone ) - I usually use the "chorus" part of the song. For example, let's say that I want to create a ringtone for the song "You Shook Me All Night Long" by AC/DC. When someone calls me, I want the ringer to be the part of the song "You shook me all night long...yeah you, Shook Me All Night Long, she really knocked me out, said you....shook me All Night Long......". So, I want my ringer to only be like 10-15 seconds of the song. It also means that the file size will only be like 100-200K or so (and I will be able to store more ringers in my phone).

Find on the toolbar the "select" tool, the one that looks like an up and down line, like a cursor prompt when you're typing text or in Word or something. In Audacity, you should see the "wave" lines of the song from left to right. Click anywhere in the song (like the middle), and then click the "play button" up top. The song should start playing exactly where you clicked. Click in different parts of the song and click play (and then stop) to find where you would like your ringtone to "start". Like I said - for me, it was just barely before they sing "You shook Me All Night Long".

Once you find the proper starting point, you want to click "play" and then watch the tickmarks on the timeline (above the blue wave portion) as your listening. Pay attention to where the "ending point" for the ringer should be, and then click stop. Now with your mouse, go to where you marked the beginning point, and you should see your mouse pointer turn into a finger. Then, with your mouse, drag (with the mouse button down) from left to right and "select" the portion of the song to use as the ringer (from the starting point you marked, to around the tick point you noticed it ended).

Once you get the part of the song you wanted to keep for the ringtone selected, you need to copy it, by either using the "Edit->Copy" menu command or CTRL-C on your keyboard. Then either click "File->New" or CTRL-N to open a new window, and "Edit->Paste" or CTRL-V to paste in the part you selected. Play it once to make sure it's exactly what you wanted. If you didn't select far enough, close the new window (without saving of course) and try again. If you got what you wanted and a little bit extra, just mark the part where it should end, drag to the end of the clip with your mouse, hit "delete" on your keyboard to get rid of it, and you're done!

Last click "File->Export as MP3" from the file menu in that new window. The first time you ever do this, Audacity is going to need to know the location of the "LAME MP3 Codec" that you downloaded, and you're going to "browse" to tell it where to find it. Remember, earlier I told you to extract that to c:\ on your hard drive, which should have setup a folder called c:\lame 1.x or something like that. Browse and find the "lame.dll" file in that folder. Then extract your mp3 file to the folder of your choice (ignore the prompt for id3 tags) and you are ready to upload it to your phone. While all of this may seem a little hard, really it's pretty easy - and once you do it just a few times, it's less than 60 seconds usually to create a new ringtone from an mp3 file.

Once you have created your new free ringtone - it's now time to upload it to your phone. For the LG LX550 Fusic cell phone you cannot place mp3 files or other audio / song files on your flash memory card and use them as ringtones. To assign a file or song as a ringtone it must be on the internal memory of the cell phone, which means you have to use a cell phone uploader to get it there. For sprint phones, I'm going to recommend that you use the FREE Sprint PCS Vision Uploader Tool at http://www.rumkin.com.

Using the uploader web based tool, just enter in the phone number to send the ringtone to, the name for it, and browse to find it on your PC (to upload). Once you do this your phone will get a text message. Click "go" to follow the URL in the text message, and then your phone will give you some kind of message about it not being a Sprint certified download, just click "continue". You should download the ringtone, and it will automatically be placed in your ringtone folder in the internal memory of your phone. Please be aware that you'll have to pay for each text message (if you don't already have a text message plan). Once you master this technique, you will be able to create all your own free ringtones - and your friends will become amazed at your mp3 audio editing skills!

You can create your own ringtones for free using this technique for quite a few Sprint cell phones. I can't verify all the makes and models, but I can tell you for sure you can create and upload ringtones for the Samsung MM-A920 by Sprint the exact same way. My son has an A920, and we created and uploaded half a dozen free ringtones last week like this.

Some cell phones won't let you use an uploader tool for ringtones, I tried this exact same technique for a Nextel i880, and it didn't work at all. Also, some phones (especially older ones) don't accept the mp3 format for ringtones, the song clips have to be converted into 3G2 or 3GP or ACC (or another) format to be able to work. I'll post other ringtone how-to's for specific phones, be sure to keep checking back or subscribe to our RSS feed!