How to Send Pictures From Computer to Phone

Today, the cell phone has become more than a style statement. Various ways have come up to customize a phone like themes, ringtones, caller images and lastly, wallpapers which is the easiest. For setting wallpapers, you need pictures in your cell phone. Transferring photos from the PC to your phone is quite easy as there are basically two ways in which you can do this. Lets us discuss these one by one.

Emailing Pictures

If you wish to send a picture to a phone, one way is to send an email to the cell phone. It is done in the same manner in which you email an attached image file to someone's email ID. This method of sending attached emails may slightly vary for different cell phone models, but here are the basic directions, which are similar for all brands. The email address of the cell phone will depend on the carrier used by the cell phone.

Typical cell phone email addresses for various carriers are:

AT&T: phonenumber@txt.att.net
Nextel: phonenumber@messaging.nextel.com
Sprint: phonenumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com
T-Mobile: phonenumber@tmomail.net
Verizon: phonenumber@vtext.com
Virgin Mobile: phonenumber@vmobl.com

While mailing images, you must keep in mind that the screen on a cell phone is of a much smaller resolution. So, you must send a picture of a file size much smaller than what you are used to seeing on a digital camera or computer. Moreover, large picture file size may result in some cell phones running out of memory. You just need to re-size the picture to a resolution suitable for your cell phone display, which in any case should not exceed 640 x 320 pixels.

Using Devices

This is the more widely used method these days. There are three ways in which you can upload pictures from a computer to a cell phone. This method, basically involves direct transfer of the image files to either the phone's internal memory or expanded memory. Here, the services of the carrier are not used and this type of a transferring can be done free of any charges. Let us discuss these:

Transferring via a Data Cable
This is the easiest and the most beneficial way to send pictures to your mobile. Most cellular handsets are equipped with data transferring capabilities in the form of some kind of a port. It may be a firewire or more commonly a USB port. USB cables can be phone specific, so make sure to get the right one for your cell phone model. Your phone kit may include cables that connects the handset into the computer's USB port as a part of the standard cell phone accessories. If your phone does not support plug and play you may need a software to facilitate the transferring of files to the phone.

Once you establish a connection between your phone and the PC, you'll have a file transfer ability as you have when you connect an external memory device like a USB flash drive to your computer. By using this technique, you can only transfer images to a computer, and not to some other phone. This technique is the most advantageous method in all respects and it has the maximum transferring speed.

Bluetooth Transfer
Transferring images to a cell phone equipped with the Bluetooth technology is easier. For this you not only need a Bluetooth enabled cell phone but also a Bluetooth equipped notebook or a desktop computer. Not all cell phones come equipped with Bluetooth, and even less PCs have this technology built-in. However, most cellular phones these days are pre-equipped with this technology and you can easily add Bluetooth compatibility to a computer, by purchasing a USB Bluetooth module and configuring it to connect to a phone's Bluetooth.

All you need to do is to pair the phone to the computer. Once you've got the two devices communicating to each other, sending image files to the phone is child's play. Also, with Bluetooth enabled phones you will be able to send files to other phones with Bluetooth without any wires or charges.

Removable Memory Cards
Newer phones are equipped with a slot for an external expandable memory cards. As images in such phones stored on this removable memory card, images can be transferred from a computer very easily. All you need is an external card reader. Now, just detach the memory card from the phone and put it into the card reader. Instantly, the computer will recognize an external memory being connected and all you need to do now is to use the 'cut' and 'paste' commands in Windows. Once you are done copying, just reinsert the card into the phone and you can now use the new pictures.

So, overall there are four methods of sending pictures from your computer to your phone. The one using the email is the most disadvantageous as it is not free. On the other hand, the one using data cables is the mostly commonly used method as it sports many advantages for the user.