Don’t you ever just want to slow things down and stop to catch your breath once in awhile? Things are so fast-paced and people (myself included) don’t seem to have the time to get everything done that needs to be done. Multitasking and mobile devices are now a necessity for most. Heck, I can actually remember a time before the Internet and before 85% of people had a mobile phone. These days (however) I too wouldn’t be able to function with my mobile phone or my iPod. And as companies start combining the two (Apple’s iPhone, the Moto KRZR, etc…) things begin to get interesting.
One such marriage of mobile music and phones comes in the form of the new Cingular Music service. Now I’m currently running many of the Cingular Music applications though my new Samsung SYNC phone and I must say that many of the features of both are pretty awesome.
The phone itself is unassuming at first, but when bundled with a 1 gigabyte mini SD card, USB cable, software, and earbuds, it becomes a pretty cool alternative to carrying two mobile devices. When playing music on my Samsung SYNC phone, I was most impressed by the quality of the music that came from the tiny speakers on the phone. While not as loud simply because of their size, the quality rivaled that of the speakers integrated into my laptop. The phone also has a 2 megapixel camera that is the best I’ve seen on any mobile phone.
A phone that plays music? I know you are thinking, “Big deal.” Well, Cingular Music offers many really cool features. Users can subscribe to streaming radio stations of every genre imaginable, order music through Napster, and even connect to any of 25 XM Radio stations. The first song I heard through Cingular’s streaming Mobi Radio was a Yeah Yeah Yeah’s song. Not too shabby. You can also get weather and even stuff from NPR. Another ridiculously cool feature that Cingular Music offers is something they call Music ID.
Cingular’s Music ID is essentially an application on the phone that will name any song you are listening to. Start up the Music ID application, hold the phone up to whatever song you are trying to identify and 15 seconds later the name of the song and the artist pops up on your phone. Seriously. I tried it out with three songs. Lily Allen’s “Smile,” “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins, and Braid’s “Please Drive Faster.” All three were identified without a hitch.
The only snag that I’ve run into is that my Samsung SYNC phone’s memory card doesn’t read about 90% of the time. It’s a tiny little memory card that fits in a tiny little slot and you gotta jam it in there just right or else it doesn’t read, and even then… Even so, if you are a Cingular subscriber, I’d totally recommend getting the music package.
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wow. I’ve always said that internet radio, when available on mobile devices, will kill off satellite radio (with the possible exception of Howard Stern), but I had no idea it was already here… what do you pay? I assume the station (ie KEXP) is free, but you pay for bandwidth?
as I re-read… “Users can subscribe to streaming radio stations of every genre imaginable”
I’m thinking you can’t access any internet station you want – rather you are listening to Cingular stations that you pay for?