If you have anything to add, correct, or clarify, please post your thoughts in the comments section. We will then attempt to incorporate them into the main article for the benefit of future readers.

Here is the article, with many, many thanks to Paul for selflessly taking the time to create and edit the document:

Edit 6/29/09: This page is a compilation of Things I have learned from Patrick Bushman’s Weblog Motorola W376G review Part-1, Part-2, and  Part-3 and the succeeding comments..

The things I am writing in this entry are not new and not my own.  I have scraped these from entries in this blog and attribution goes to pbushx2, ortizmro, karl, jake, john, rich, dick blaine, genetuck, BenB, and perhaps/probably/definitely others.  Any that I fail to recognize I offer my apologies.

I recently bought the Tracfone Motorola W376G and, while pleased with the phone, I was frustrated by some of its apparent limitations.  After reading all of the review and comments to this blog, I am not nearly as frustrated and a number of the limitations have been overcome.  I hope that putting it all(?) together in one entry will save some frustration for other users.

Contacting Tracfone: The normal number is (800 867-7183) and is all I have used.  Tech Support is menu selections 1-4-5 but if you are trying to transfer a phone number select 1-4-3-1.  You always need your ESN/IMEI but you should also know your SIM serial number and the SIM Title number starting with TF that is on the card which you break the SIM card out of.  The one that says underneath, “This is NOT your SIM Serial Number.”  Something like TF64SIMT5 or TF64SIMC4. If it ends in T5 it is T-mobile.  If the SIM title ends in C4 you are on an AT&T network.  (Attribution: Ortizmro) Also, if they do not resolve your problem, ask for a CASE NUMBER.  They still ask the same questions every time but it establishes your history.

Manual: What comes with the phone is pretty poor.  A true Motorola manual is found at http://www.motorola.com/Hellomoto/Master%20Lists/Product%20Manuals/Static%20Files/US-EN/W377g_UG_.pdf and is a little more helpful but still lacks a lot.  (Attribution: Karl and Jake)

Display Screen: The icons are obscure and so tiny I can barely make them out. (Yes, I am getting old.)   And it keeps displaying time and renewal date such that it pretty much obscures your wallpaper.  But the most important hint I found in the blog concerns the lowest line of the display.  On the left and right are words describing the function of the left and right Soft Keys at that moment.  In the center, sometimes there is a pile of horizontal lines, sometimes not.  When the lines are there, pressing the Open Menus Key (center of the Navigation Key wheel) will bring up a menu with actions different from those offered by the Soft Keys.  Lots of important functions hiding there. If the lines are not there, the Open Menus key functions as the left Soft Key. (Attribution: John and Ortizmro)

Phone Book: You can enter Names and Phone Numbers on a computer and transfer them to the SIM card.  The phone will show these in the Phonebook.  The phone can store names and numbers either on the SIM card or in its own memory.  Phonebook entries in its own memory can contain other info, like what type of phone number (Home, Mobile, Work, etc) and can clssify entries into categories (VIP, Family, General, etc.)  You can copy entries from Phone to SIM card or SIM card to phone and even merge entries from one to the other.  Copying from Phone to SIM card saves only the Name and Phone Number.  There does not seem to be a way (I haven’t found it) to mass delete numbers from the SIM card, so if you copy from the SIM card to the Phone memory, you end up with two Phonebook entries for each that was copied.  You can choose to display certain categories, so you could probably suppress the SIM card number display but I haven’t tried that.  What I did was, after copying from the SIM card to the Phone, I put the SIM card back in the reader and used the computer to delete the entries.

I bought a Fonemate USB SIM Card Reader on eBay for $7.  It works and drivers load in XP.  (I have my doubts about Vista support.)  Software runs but does not read and write the SIM card.  WWW.DEKART.COM offers two levels of SIM Manager software that have 30 day free trials.  Both work with the Fonemate reader and read and write the SIM card.  If you only need it the one time, that works fine.  If you expect to need it more often and for more phones, or if you are running Vista, DEKART sells a reader with software for $33 ($39 with the fancier software).  Since the software is $29, I think it would be worth the investment.

The menu system for the phone is convoluted and confusing.  I know that I found a menu that allowed me to mark phone entries with categories while scrolling down the list.  I don’t know where that was.  Also, once you tell the phone to display a certain category, it is difficult to persuade it to show you other categories.  Must be a way but only way I have found is turn the phone off and on, which resets category to ALL.  You can slso delete existing categories and create new ones that fit your needs.

When entering a new Phonebook entry, at the bottom of the list is a –MORE– entry that will allow you to enter a second phone number or an email address.  What this creates is a second (or third or fourth) entry in the phone book under the same name.  You will probably want to set the TYPE value so that a different icon shows in the list to differentiate the numbers.

When the phone book pops up, you can press a key and it will jump to the first entry with that letter.  Initial impression is that pressing another key jumps you to the first entry with THAT letter.  Actually, if you type fast enough it will allow you to string letters together so that you can jump not just to S but to SI or SIM.  You do need to be quick.  Or you can change the search mode to one that will allow you to type in all the letters you want on an text input screen and then it will search for those.  I’ve tried that for a while and am about to switch back.  YMMV.  [Main Menu, Phonebook, Menu Key, Setup, Search Method]

Charging the Phone: The bizarreness of charging is not Tracfone’s fault.  My wife has a W315 from Alltel and it has the same issues, though with different driver solution.  You get an AC charger which terminates in a Mini-USB fitting.  Aha, you think, I can charge it from my computer.  But when you plug in the USB from the computer, nothing happens.  For whatever reason, you must load the appropriate modem driver on your computer before it will charge the phone.  You can get the driver at http://www.sudhian.com/index.php?/forums/viewthread/103433/#901386.  (Attribution: Rich)  Also drivers at http://www.motorola.com/consumers/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=bda09ec8009a0210VgnVCM1000008806b00aRCRD W376G is not listed.  It has been mentioned that it has more in common with W375 than W377.  (Attribution: BenB)  To get the driver to work, it is apparently necessary to make a manual change to one of the files.

Extract the ?TI-CDC-w2k.inf? file, open in Notepad and find the  [TexasInst.Mfg] section.  In that section, add the following lines?
%TexasInst.DeviceDesc0% = Serusb, USB\VID_22B8&PID_4061
%TexasInst.DeviceDesc0% = Serusb, USB\VID_22B8&PID_4061&Rev_0001

No, you cannot do anything else thru the USB port.  I have other power devices that have mini-USB connectors and which do not charge the phone.  I purchased a ‘Universal Motorola’ car charging kit at Big Lots for $7, with some trepidation.  It works.

Phone Number Transfer: If you are happy with the phone number straight out of the box, you probably won’t have any great problems.  OTOH, if you previously had a Tracfone and want to transfer the number, prepare for a week of ‘issues’.  It’s possible that if you called Tech Support before ever powering up your phone the first time, they might be able to do something with it.  I’m unsure.

Edit 6/29/09: If you have not yet activated your new phone, check out this tutorial. http://thejmart.com/gsmgsm.htm I was not aware of this process and did not use it but it would have saved several days of frustration.

My comments following are based on my unsatisfactory but ultimately successful experience (largely because of information from this blog).  My experiences are with T-Mobile data network support, the AT&T info I provide is from other commenters.

Edit 6/29/09: The following link has a lot of info on SIM cards and Tracfone. http://thejmart.com/siminfo.htm

When you try to transfer the number on the website it will ultimately tell you to call Tech Support.

When you call Tech Support they will try some magic over the airwaves and tell you it will take 72 hours for the changes to take effect.  Ask for a Case Number at this point.

After 72 hours and nothing has changed they will say that they are shipping you a new SIM card.  If nothing else, ask for a shipment tracing number.  If they cannot give you a number, they have not shipped it.  Before you agree to their shipping a new SIM card, ask them to determine whether the original SIM card is AT&T or T-Mobile.  Insist that they send you the same type of SIM card.  Several commenters have claimed that the AT&T SIM cards work better for data transfer.  My T-Mobile is working fine now, so I don’t know.

When you receive the new SIM card, examine the TF number to determine whether is is for the proper network.  When you contact Tech Support for activation, verify that they are activating a SIM card with the same Serial Number as what you received.

With a new SIM card and the appropriate Serial Number, they should be able to get your phone working with the right phone number.

Data Transfer, SMS messages and MMS messages: SMS messages are the short form text messages.  MMS messages are long form and can have attachments, like pictures and sounds.  MMS messages are the only way to get pictures out of your phone, so you want to be able to send them to your email address.  And you would probably like to be able to receive MMS mesages with attachments, though that doesn’t appeal much to me.  BTW, sending data, like pictures and sounds, costs you minutes.  Typical picture is at least one minute.  Of course, this is a double minutes phone, so that helps.

Set up a phonebook entry for your email address.  Take a picture with the camera phone.  Choose ‘Store Only’.  Choose ‘Messages’, ‘Create’, ‘MMS’, ‘Insert’, ‘Picture’, ‘Additional Storage’, ‘Select’, ‘OK’,'Select’, ‘Add’,'Send’, ‘Send’.  If you don’t receive anything, there is a problem.  If you do receive pictures, note the return address.  This is the address you send to to get email on your phone.

My own experience was that I was able to send SMS but not MMS.  The new SIM card was on T-Mobile.  The following message provided the solution.

“The problem was that although the sim card was coded for t-mobil, the phone was coded for cingular (att). I suspect that most people with w376g phones with t-mobil sim cards can easily resolve the MMS problem by doing the following:

1) call tracfone and describe thay you are unable to send MMS message and text messages to your computrer.

2) ask the customer service rep to walk you thru the steps to look at the following code parameters:
115 ? should be ?PG Port 8080; 216.155.165.40?
and
122 ? should be ?http://mms.tracfone.com?

If these parameters have anything else, the service rep will send codes to update these locations.”

and

“For w376g?s which come with ATT (Cingular) sim cards the parameters in the phone are as follows:

115: ?PG port=80; 66.209.11.32?
and
122: ?http://mmsc.cingular.com?

Users should call Tracfone to assist in displaying and/or modifing these parameters.”
(Attribution: dick blaine)

To display the code parameters for your phone, go to the Prepaid menu, select Code Entry, enter *#115 and press OK and *#122 and press OK.  (Does anyone have a comprehensive list of these codes and what they should read?)

My phone did indeed show the wrong parameters for T-mobil, so I called Tech Support and explained all this.  They asked me the standard questions and had me read them the 115 and 122 codes and then said I should leave my phone on for 24 hours and it would be corrected.  8 hours later I checked the codes and they had been changed and I can send MMS with attachments fine now.

How to Send a Picture: Success on sending photos to my computer! (The quality is lousy, as expected)
First I put an email adress in the phonebook, like Joeblow@yahoo.com.
I took a photo and stored it, as per manual.
(I hope I?ve remembered all these steps, but it is as described in the manual, except you have to figure out things. There is not exactly an ?insert? button that the manual calls for)
From the menu, select messages, go to ?create? and click ok.
Click ok on MMS
Write the text of the message and click ok.
Select the email address and click ok.
Press menu and scroll down to attachments, click ok.
Select ?change? and click ok.
Select ?picture? and click ok.
You should have stored the picture in ?additional storage device?. Select that and click ok.
After you get the photo selected with the softkey , press ?back? button.
If the photo file is shown as the attachment, press the ?send? button.  (Attribution: genetuck)

I think this covers all the things which were a mystery to me and which the blog solved.  I know that there are some open issues on the blog.  Some are probably not solveable, like getting around Tracfones limitations on bluetooth functionality.  Others might be, like how to incorporate MP3s sent as email into the sound scheme.  For someone with much more expertise than I, it appears that it is possible to run an application from the SIM card.  This might provide a way to change the phones internal programming.