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lodp
December 12th, 2007, 02:02 PM
Hey everyone,

I was wondering if anybody could give me some advice on choosing an affordable cell-phone that can also play mp3s. There's two major criteria:

1. It has to support bluetooth and more specifically the a2dp profile (high quality stereo), so I can use it with my Nokia BH-501 headset.


2. I should be able to get to any point within an mp3 track quickly (fast forward, seek), as I'm mostly listening to spoken-word pieces that are 60min+ long, and often I want to listen only to certain portions, or stop and resume at some later point.

it's easy to get #1 from the phone specs, but #2 is hard to find out about if you haven't actually used the phone. You can fast-forward on most mp3 phones, but it's often very, very slow (try getting to a point 40mins in, when FF does steps of 5-10 seconds, can't do it).

I was thinking about the Nokia 5200/5300, or the Sony-Ericsson W-something, but I can't find out whether the respective music players are up to the job..

zietbukuel
December 19th, 2007, 04:58 AM
A good and affordable Phone with support for mp3 and bluetooth (a2dp) is the Sony Ericsson W610. I have one and is simply excellent. It also has a nice 2MP camera with autofocus and leds (flash).

Se full specs here:
http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_w610-1845.php

selda
December 19th, 2007, 05:05 AM
I would also recommend any Sony Ericsson Walkman phone

FuturePilot
December 19th, 2007, 05:54 AM
I would also recommend any Sony Ericsson Walkman phone

+1

tgalati4
December 19th, 2007, 06:36 AM
+1 on SE. I've had a w810i for a year. Good phone. No stereo bluetooth support.

lodp
January 11th, 2008, 03:38 AM
I actually tried the W810 once. But you can only fast forward in steps of 10secs with it, so it doesn't meet my key requirement #2.

Convenient seeking within an mp3 track is an absolute must for me -- does anybody know how the Nokia 5200/5300 are doing in this respect?

FuturePilot
January 11th, 2008, 04:12 AM
The newer Sony Ericsson phones have better seeking.

Andrew-buntu
January 19th, 2008, 07:21 AM
I have the Nokia 5300, it's a great phone. The music player does all the basics - play by artist, album, randomize, etc. I played with it a bit to see if you could skip QUICKLY through songs as you asked. If you hold down the skip button, it jumps about six seconds forward about twice a second. It does five second backward jumps.
My one complaint is that the headphone adapter it comes with makes the headphones a bit "noisy" but you won't have that problem with bluetooth.
It's also pretty durable. I've dropped this thing more than any other phone I've owned (guess I'm getting klutzy lately). It still runs like a champ and gets good reception.

lodp
May 11th, 2008, 01:45 AM
Thanks for your help here, everyone. I haven't made a decision, but I have to make one quickly now, since my old Nokia 6230 suddenly died.

Again to repeat the two criteria the phone has to meet:


1.: Bluetooth Stereo support (a2dp).

2.: Music player has to be able to seek fast within a track (have to be able to move 30mins into a long track quickly, not in 10sec steps)

3.: Affordable

Nokia 5200/5300 won't cut it because of the seeking. Same for Sony Ericsson W810. Any other suggestions?


The newer Sony Ericsson phones have better seeking.

Which ones are you referring to?

FuturePilot
May 11th, 2008, 03:45 AM
Which ones are you referring to?

Any model that has the Walkman 2.0 player on it. If I am correct it would be on any Walkman phone released after the W810. Don't hold me to that, I'm not 100% sure. But if you get one that was released within the past 6 months, it will definitely have that. With the seeking, it gets progressively faster the longer you hold it down.

lodp
May 11th, 2008, 04:44 AM
Thank you! I read a report that explicitly said the W850i was capable of fast seeking as you describe it (although I couldn't find out if it actually has the 2.0 player, and it was released in 2006 already). So maybe I'll go for that..

FuturePilot
May 11th, 2008, 05:00 AM
Yes the w850 does have the Walkman 2.0 player.
Here's a good page with lots of details. :)
http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_w850-1563.php

lodp
May 14th, 2008, 07:40 PM
I just got a W850i and seeking works very well. And the attached memory stick mounts as a mass-storage device if you plug it in with USB. i'm very happy with it so far.

thanks for your advice, guys!

Retrograde77
May 14th, 2008, 08:42 PM
Am also using a Sony Erricson W610i, great phone and music player (stuck a 2gb M2 stick in it for good measure)

Best bit is that it works fantastic with Linux :) (as did my previous W900i, great phone just wayyyy to damn big.)

lodp
May 14th, 2008, 10:05 PM
i was just going to take back some of that praise -- turns out i can't get this thing to work with Amarok properly. Most of the times i tried, it's not recognized as the "generic audio player" media device that i set it up as.

how did that work for you with the w610 and w900?

w850i is a bit bulky too, but i guess you can't have it all..