Sony Ericsson USB Cable Driver for Mac OS X
After buying Sony Ericsson k750i, was (sadly) excited by the USB cable included in the box and the prospect of using my Sony Ericsson’s card reader interface with my mac 
.
This didn’t last for long though, as Mac OS X does not have a driver for the cable and there isn’t one on the CD included with the phone. After searching high and low on the Sony Ericsson website and Google I found that Sony Ericsson do not make OS X drivers for using their phones with macs and it seems no-one else has bothered to make one either, most Sony Ericsson “hackers” and the like seem happy with their phones bluetooth capabilities. Without a driver the cable merely functions as a charger.
However I eventually found mobile.feisar.com which explains that most of the USB cables are based upon the Prolific PL-2303 USB-Serial chipset, for which there is a driver for Mac OS X Tiger available for download on the Prolific Technology website
Notes
This driver enables the use of the card reader functionality of most Sony Ericssons, so that OS X mounts your phone’s memory stick to your desktop as an external drive. You can then import your photos directly into iPhoto, as well as download or upload any files directly from or onto your phone’s memory stick. Please note however that this driver only enables access to the phone’s memory card and not it’s internal memory, so you cannot access your calendar or contacts, or synchronise your phone with iSync. The USB cable is therefore no replacement for bluetooth in that respect, but you can send contact details from Address Book on your Mac to your Sony Ericsson by exporting a vCard for a contact or group of contacts (via the File menu), either directly to your phone’s memory stick, or locally and then copying the vCard onto your phone’s memory stick.
Directly accessing your Sony Ericsson’s memory stick on OS X with Finder will unfortunately cause Finder to leave behind folder setting in “invisible” .DS_Store files. This is normal, Finder does this in all folders but you don’t usually see them in Mac OS X because it hides them by default. Your Sony Ericsson on the other hand does not hide them, so they can be a bit of a nuisance in File Manager. Luckily there are a good few programs around that will delete all the .DS_Store files in a given location. Out of the one’s I’ve tried, the best and most professional seem to be DSWipe and AppleOff, but there are many available.
Instructions for downloading and installing the driver:
- Go to Prolific Technology website by clicking on this link (3647 downloads).
- Download the Mac OS X PL2303 driver by clicking on “md_pl2303H_HX_X_dmg_v1.1.0b1.zip”.
- Unzip the file, making a folder called “md_pl2303H_HX_X_dmg_v1.1.0b1?.
- Go into the folder and double click on “PL2303_1.1.0b1.dmg” to mount it to your desktop.
- Double click on “PL2303_1.1.0b1.pkg” inside the disk image to install the driver.
- Restart your mac for the new settings to take effect.
- Plug in your Sony Ericsson Phone to your Mac using a Sony Ericsson USB cable to mount it’s memory stick on your desktop.
Requirements
The basic requirements for use of the driver are:
- An Apple computer running on Mac OS X
- A compatible Sony Ericsson phone
- A Sony Ericsson USB Cable
The driver has been tested on and reportedly works on following Sony Ericsson phone models on Tiger:
- w600i
- k750i
- k800i
The driver has been tested on, but did not work with the following models:
- k700i
Finally the following models are reported to mount as external storage devices in OS X without the installation of any driver or third party software:
- K610i
- w810i
- k800i
If you successfully use the driver with a different version of OS X or a different model phone please comment on this page with the details so that they can be added to the list. Thankyou
August 27th, 2008 at 6:05 am
I use sony ericsson K800i
August 25th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
’m using a w580i on a PB G4 and no love. 4GB M2 card, installed both the Prolific and SiLabs drivers (uninstalled original Prolific driver, then reinstalled too) and still get nothing. The phone shows up in System Profiler, but will not appear in the Finder. Any suggestions?
August 8th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Nice one… just installed the driver on my MacBook Pro running Leopard 10.5.4 and have just synced my K550i using iTuneMyWalkman perfectly. Thanks!
July 30th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
i’m using a w580i on a PB G4 and no love. 4GB M2 card, installed both the Prolific and SiLabs drivers (uninstalled original Prolific driver, then reinstalled too) and still get nothing. The phone shows up in System Profiler, but will not appear in the Finder. Any suggestions?
July 14th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
oh yeah
June 29th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
I like to connect my K800i on my Mac OS X
May 27th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Gde mogu da nadjem usb drivers za sony ericsson k800i???!!!
May 21st, 2008 at 8:21 pm
I want to try it with with a 550K.
May 3rd, 2008 at 7:58 am
I tested your method with OSX 10.5.2 and a SE 500i and it works perfectly, although the connection is quite slow… for a 4 gig memory stick it takes some time to get music onto it - compared to the iPod
Thank you very much, works great!
April 11th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
usb
April 6th, 2008 at 9:04 am
K810i, Power Mac G5, OS X 10.5.2, driver PL2303_1.2.1r2. The driver seems to work, although not every time. I was using this phone on 10.4.x with no driver installed. That worked most of the time, but stopped working with Leopard.
April 2nd, 2008 at 6:04 pm
I have been trying to get my Phone (w880i) connected with either a windows or Mac machine all day. I was getting fairly upset. I am sure you know what I mean.
When I told the phone to go into the file transfer mode, the phone just started-up again asking me if I wanted to start in normal or flight mode. After countless hours, I disabled the feature of being prompted with this question. By-passing this allows you to access the memory stick like described above on your w880i. Maybe it will do the trick for John V as well.
March 9th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
I have been trying to make this setup work with my PowerMac G5, with 10.4.11, and a Sony-Ericsson W880i phone. It doesn’t work for me - nothing mounts on desktop. I am curious to know how you, MIchael, got yours to work - what computer are you using, for instance? Thanks much, John
March 6th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
My SE K800i conects perfectly well straight out of the box to my powerbook 10.3.9, yet causes an instant crash if connected to my powermac 10.4.1
weird
March 4th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
I tried this solution with my Sony Ericsson P1i (a new model). If I connect that with the USB cable that came with it to my Mac (PowerPC, OS-X 10.4.11), I immediately see it in the System Profiler, but it never shows up on my desktop (or anyplace where I can find it).
In the ReadMe file that came with the PL2303 drive it said “Remove any previously installed USB driver first”, and I don’t know whether this applies also to the USB driver that is certainly part of OS-X.
Can anyone help?
December 17th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
I have just bought a K810i - my first Sony Ericsson. I like the phone but does anyone know if there is a way to sync a Apple Mac Address Book with the phone contacs (Like iSync?)
December 12th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Thanks for the information. It works with my W880i.
September 11th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
salaam friend i needed w810i USb cable driver if any body send me THIS ID waqas_mughal@yahoo.com
September 7th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
My K810i mounts without problem with usb cable but Im unable to use iSync.
It does not find new device (yes, Im using phone mode, not file transfer
any ideas?
also I have some kind of problem with bluetooth (its not functioning) maybe those two problems are connected and I have faulty phone…
August 30th, 2007 at 1:41 am
Recently was given a k700i without the usb cable Purchased a cable and have downloaded your driver but the phone is a no go mounting to my desktop. I am running OS 10.4.10.
It also does not charge my phone as you mentioned yours did, so I am not sure if the driver is not compatible with the k700i or if I simply have a bad cable.
Anyone else try this driver with a k700i? Thx
August 29th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
I’m using a Sony Ericsson k810i just fine with Mac OS X, I plugged it in and both the phone’s internal memory and the external card are regonised and I’m moving media between phone and MAC no problems. I’m using OS X Tiger
August 22nd, 2007 at 9:21 pm
Salamz friends friend i have SonyEricsson W600i but yaar i have no its cable driver can any bOdy send me its driver or link i will be download it imediatly ok thanx yara
Email: rizwan143_mughal@yahoo.com
April 29th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
w8101i worked! great driver!
March 26th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
It works perfectly with my k800i as long as I select file transfer mode when I plug it in. It is able to access both the phone mempry and the expansion card, and I have been able to transfer over everything I have tried so far, so I don’t think it is limited to certain things.
yippeee!!!
March 5th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Hi,
I’ve just connected my SE k800i blissfully ignorent of its incompatibility with OSX. I got instant access with USB, though. Only I can’t seem to find the destination folder for the vCards I’ve created from my Adressbook. Where do they go? And can I also export my Calendercontent in kinda the same way?
Cheers!
March 3rd, 2007 at 1:43 pm
the trick to transfer file from SE K800i to Mac OS X 10.3.x is when connect the USB cable, select “File Transfer” mode from phone, there you have the drive mounted and ready for your application, but limited to photos or videos only.
February 4th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
i had the same experience with my k610i and os x 10.4.8, i just plugged in the supplied cable and it just worked.
the phone showed up immediately on the desktop and it automatically opened iphoto as though it was my digital camera.
then just imported photos as per usual. no 3rd party software installed.
January 10th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Each time i click on the link i get a virtually empty page with no download link, is there another site i can get the driver from?
any help much appreciated
January 2nd, 2007 at 3:01 pm
sony ericsson is maybe the best phone on the world
i prefere it than nokia
January 2nd, 2007 at 2:48 pm
I recently bought a SE k800i and have just tried connecting it to my G5 iMac with the supplied usb cable. I have no 3rd party software installed.
The phone is mounted on the desktop as a removeable device and it auto opened iPhoto and asked to import from the Camera Photos folder. It’s also charging it for me, which means I don’t have to fork out for a second charger for work. I’m rather pleased.
December 26th, 2006 at 11:49 pm
This is odd.
I have literally stumbled across this site whilst looking for a Mac version of Sony Ericsson’s Mobile Phone Suite.
I have been transferring files with no 3rd party software, just the provided cable, my PowerBook running 10.4.8 and my K610i for the last hour or so.
December 12th, 2006 at 4:14 am
Unfortunately this does not work with the w810i as it does not use the PL-2303 but instead uses the Silabs Cp210x device, I know this because I looked at the Windows drivers. I can write a driver for this device if anyone is interested, as you all can tell it does not come up as a Mass Storage Device in Windows. I could given some time, build a cable which works as a Mass Storage Drive and run faster, and support Mac OS X, would anyone be interested.
December 5th, 2006 at 8:27 pm
Many thanks for the link to this:
http://dynamictangentconceptions.dtcnet.co.uk/go.php?http://www.prolific.com.tw/eng/downloads.asp?ID=31
Just used it successfully between my SE K800i and my C2D Macbook (OS 10.4.8).
Cheers!
November 21st, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Thanx!!!
August 23rd, 2006 at 11:20 am
Any way I can do this with my T290 i got the cable but can’t get it to connect - i bought the cable especially
June 29th, 2006 at 2:35 am
I tried the new driver (Intel) with Mac OS 10.4.7 and my MacBook Pro still doesn’t mount my w600i with the USB cable connected. Do you have any suggestions ?
Thanks
April 4th, 2006 at 1:25 am
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! Found this post via Google. I just got a w600i from Cingular today and I can verify the driver works with this model. Yay! I am using OS X 10.4.5.