MObile phone/MP3

I've been thinking about getting an mp3 player. I'll also be looking to get a new MObile in the not too distant future too. So, is there a phone that makes a decent player?

Or are the two best kept seperate still?

Also, on a similar note...

I'm planning on putting my collection onto a harddrive with the plan of adding a squeezebox or such down the line. I'd like to do this with high quality being a priority over space saving. However, as quality wont be as much of an issue with an mp3 player, would I then need to re-rip the music at a lower rate? Or can I put them on the harddrive at a high rate, and then compress them onto the mp3 player? I think that makes sense

 

Lad at work has a Sony W810i that seems not too bad for MP3 walkman playback. I think its fair to say the quality could be *slightly* better on a dedicated player, but overall for portable use, as long as you use reasonable headphones, I see no reason why it shouldnt be sufficient.

Now that I have a squeezebox up and running, I do the following (other people will have different methods).

First, rip CDs into FLACs. Convert the FLACs into Muspack and MP3/OGG files. Then burn DVDs containing each of the 3 file formats. Why 3? Well... I cant tell any difference between FLAC and musepack, yet musepack files are much smaller and it takes less effort to back up your hard drive / copy them back if need be than FLAC. MP3 and OGG is used for walkman use. FLAC for archival (so you have a bit perfect copy of the original). Its worth the effort in the long run IMO.

 

mo,
i use an orange spv c550 as my phone / portable music player with a pair of shure in ear phones it sounds pretty good. the new nokia (n91?) looks good if a bit chunky. one thing i would say is if you go the phone route make sure it can play numerous codecs - mp3, wma, etc. as i've found that wma 128 offers the best compromise between size and quality. alsomake sure you can expand the memory with an add in card or it has > 512 mb built in as you'll need room for pictures, ringtones, etc as well as mp3 / wma / whatevers.
as for storage my solution is to rip from cd to flac and then transcode using foobar to wma 128 when i want to put something on my phone. i've not bothered with a backup at present as i have all the originals stashed in my wardrobes.
that's the beauty of this kind of thing. you can tailor it to fit your own circumstances.
cheers


julian

 

I'm using an SE phone at the MO and apart from the occasional joystick issue, I like it. So another SE is quite probable.

The W900i and W810i look pretty impressive and seems can be had for under £200 on ebay.

Some seem to go for MOre than double that though. Am I missing something?

This thread was started partly out of wanting a new music player, and and my phone seeming to be failing. Seems the charger contacts just needed cleaning, so I'm in no rush.

The main reasons for wanting an all-in-one solution (video and camera required too), is 1) I don't want to be carrying seperate items when they seem to be merging anyhow. and 2) I'll be using it while working, but don't want to miss calls. So having the music interrupted to alert of incoming calls (which I belive happens???) is essential.

Perhaps I'm looking for too much? Is the technology quite there yet for an all-in-one solution?

 

Whatever you do, don't choose a Samsung ZM-60 at least. The sound through the speaker is splashy and bright and through the supplied headphones it's dull and lifeless. As far as I know you can't use any other headphones either. I believe that the Sony Ericsson walkman range at least have an adaptor so you can use different headphones.

I have a iPod Nano and my wife has a Sony MP3 Flash player (the small round one) and in my experience the supplied headphones are what dictate the percieved quality of the player (though headphones at least). I can't say I'm that impressed with either player to be honest. Sure you can get a pretty good sound from an iPod, but it requires using full closed/open back headphones and that pretty much defeats the point of a portable player in my eyes. I would also say that my old Sony CD walkman knocks spots off any MP3 player I've experience of and that's through the supplied "in ear" headphones too.


GTM

 

gtm, have you tried the in ear phones like shure or etymotics? i use a pair of shures with my spv and it sounds ok
cheers


julian.

 

Julian, no i haven't. Which model Shures do you have?


GTM

 

i use e2c's, the only slight complaint i have with them is footstep noise when your walking but this is the case with all in ear phones i've tried.

 

The Sennheiser CX300 is a very decent little headphone for a portable player.

I think one would have to question the need to spend much more unless they really needed the added isolation of the shure or etymotics, as the ipod is at the end of the day fairly limited of a source, and its competing with ambient noise (and in the really good isolating ones, as julian says you can hear your body like footsteps, heartbeats and chewing).

 

On the phone question... I want a Motorola RAZR V3i. This has MP3 player, and a microSD card slot (up to 512MB), so with a few extra cards you've as much storage as you like.

 

I've had a lot of faults with RAZR handsets Isaac. I wouldn't reccomend them on those grounds.

 

i've also heard that the menu system is improved over the normal v3 but is still a bit kak. looks nice though.

 

I'm not a fan of flip phones and much prefer the style of the SE's.
The w900i with it's rotating style is one I'm not sure about. I'd need to play with it in the flesh first I think.

I think I could deal with a sliding style one, but nah, flips aren't for me.

I think a lot of the mp3 phones have the ability to take meMOry cards, not just the Razr. Does anyone know if you can swop them while it's on? Or do you need to turn it off?

The O2 XDA range look very nice too. Not sure if I'd really need all the features, but they great

 

I have a W800i and it lets me remove the memory card and put it back in again without switching it on.

I very rarely use the mp3 player part to be honest, but it seems good enough, although I don't have a normal mp3 player to compare it with.

 

How about the menu system? Is it easy to use (as an mp3) and navigate?

Also, just to confirm, if you're listening to music and you recieve a call, does it interrupt/alert you?

 

Menu is easy enough, sorted by Artist and then album

There is an interactive thing here:
http://www.sonyericsson.com/spg.jsp...oader&php=php1_10245&zone=pp&lm=pp1&pid=10245

Can't get it to work at the moment though.

When a call comes in, the music stops and then starts again when the call is stopped

 

Have you had any issues with the joystick thing? The one on my T610 plays up sometimes, and friends with similar SE phones have had problems before too. Have they sorted it out yet?

 

I've never had any problems with it and haven't heard any reports about these, it certainly looks like they fixed it.

I think I've been quite lucky though, have had SE phones since the T68i and never had any problems.

 

So, I'm sat here looking at the SE site comparing the various MOdels and one of my brothers walk in asks what I'm doing, and returns with a brand new Nokia 6280 and says "there you go".

It had been delivered to their place for the previous occupier. They contacted the company and they said someone would collect it. a week or so later no one came, so he called again. That time they said might aswell keep it as wouldn't be worth their time collecting it!

He turned it on briefly and thinks it was barred. So i've been trying to figure out how to get it unbarred. All the stuff on ebay seems to be for if it's network locked. Is it possible to get it unbarred?

There's quite a few of them selling on ebay as UK barred (probably all nicked!!!), and they fetch £50-£100 so might be worth selling if can't get it to work.

Ideas?

 

The 810i is a good phone but its expensive and not so reliable, if you do want an MP3 player phone try to get one with an SD card slot, that you can upgrade it very cheaply.

The problem is Sony is nothing is standard, having said that the interface on SE phones is wonderful.