How Far MP3's have Gone?

[sysfreak]

I am so far outside the audio world. I don't even have an MP3 player. But I was researching cell phones and I found the motorola MPx220 has an MP3 player with a removable disk. I was curious if anyone has heard about this cell phone and the what they think about the built in player? I found the cell on...www.motorola.com/offers. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[alumpkin]

I always have and always will be skeptical when it comes to little devices like these with all of the gadgets it has built in. The problem is when you cram that much in something too small, there are definitely trade-offs. There are a few major trade-offs it appears with this phone. If these don't matter to you, then go for it but realize they exist.

1. For the built in MP3 player it says deep within the technical specs: "Internal memory: embedded - 64MB ROM and 32MB SDRAM expandable - up to 512MB via mini SD". Therefore, in order to get more than 64MB, you will have to purchase extra memory at who knows what cost. And they might use memory made only for their devices and charge an arm and leg for it. Also, looking at my computer, most MP3's are 2-4 MB, but can be upwards of 6MB. Therefore, realize that you therefore might only be able to fit 16 MP3's on it. Again, if that doesn't matter to you, don't worry about it.

2. The battery life as listed in the specs is "up to 300-440" minutes of talk time. Keep in mind that if you are walking around listening to MP3's, this talk time will be greatly reduced. It clearly states that the battery life depends on "other application usage patterns."

3. It does have a 1.23 Megapixel camera on the phone. The quality of photos will not be that great, especially since there is no mention of any zoom or flash, but I am sure it will suitable for close snapshots.

These are things to keep in mind, but again it all just depends on what is important to you.

[Kaboom]

Sd cards are actually somewhat of an industry standard for small players and cameras, and they arent that expensive.
Battery will no doubt suck when u are using it as an MP3 player. It might, however, be slightly longer than the battery life for talktime since it doesnt have to send a radio signal.
Camera is for nothing but close shots. Dont expect it to capture any of the scenery...
the way i see it, u are better off getting a separate mp3 player... cheaper, easier, better... plus listening on the street with headphones will not show the inherent limitations of mp3 encoding unless u go well bellow 96kbps. even 64 might do. and u can fit LOADS of music on a 128 card with 96kbps encoding...

[alumpkin]

Sd cards are actually somewhat of an industry standard for small players and cameras, and they arent that expensive.
Battery will no doubt suck when u are using it as an MP3 player. It might, however, be slightly longer than the battery life for talktime since it doesnt have to send a radio signal.
Camera is for nothing but close shots. Dont expect it to capture any of the scenery...
the way i see it, u are better off getting a separate mp3 player... cheaper, easier, better... plus listening on the street with headphones will not show the inherent limitations of mp3 encoding unless u go well bellow 96kbps. even 64 might do. and u can fit LOADS of music on a 128 card with 96kbps encoding...

I agree 100% with your recommendations Kaboom. However, I would imagine that the phone would stay connected and still interact with the network while listening to MP3's. I might be wrong on this, but you wouldn't want to miss a phone call because you were listening to a MP3. Therefore, I think that it would only make sense for the phone to still be operating and interacting with the cell phone network.

[Kursun]

A word about SDRAMS... As far as I know SDRAMs lose all their memory when the supply voltage drops below a certain level. I had a miniature camera (with SDRAM) that lost all the pictures when its battery was not charged soon enough!

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

... plus listening on the street with headphones will not show the inherent limitations of mp3 encoding unless u go well bellow 96kbps. even 64 might do. and u can fit LOADS of music on a 128 card with 96kbps encoding...

It really depends on the quality of the headphones that you listen with. Headphones have the capability of output to beyond 20khz(depending on the headphone) At 96kbps, the highs are severly rolled off, as well as some frequency response deviations are apparent. On cheap open air headphones, this might not make a difference. On high quality studio grade portables which I listen through, you can really hear the difference. Also, if you are a listener of classical music, MP3 at that data rate can do some funky things to the tonal qaulities of certain instruments. Clarinets are not exstinguishable from oboes. You sometimes cannot tell a trombone from a baritone. And stringed intstruments sound harsh, strident, and steely cold.

I personally use a portable DAT player for listening along with my high quality portable CD player. Unless MP3 codec has the sophistication of either the AC-3(with a higher bitrate) or Dts(at full bitrate) it will be unsuitable for any listening needs I have.

[Kaboom]

yarh for sure the phone is still online while u are listening to music. one of my friends had the siemens that could to that, and u can recieve phonecalls while u are listening to mp3s. thing is when its online the batt consumption is minimal because the signals sent are recieved are quite scarce.
U see one thing i dont quite understand (and which actually pisses me off) is how phone batteries last ages nowdays. In the good old days batts would last a day, so it would be part of ur daily routine to get home and leave the phone charging for the night. but now they last several days so u never know when its gonna end, and i finish up running out of battery in the middle of the day... Well in any case this rant is because i think that it doesnt matter how much battery it eats up so long as it gets you through the day. u get home and recharge.
Oh and concerning the answer below about bitrates and earphones, if u are walking on the street you should NEVER be wearing closed-design headphones (i come from the cycling culture where when u wear headphones while you train you are regarded as a suicidal idiot) because its actually pretty dangerous to not hear what's going on around you. This comment is of course invalid for anywhere but the street.