Best cell phone for playing music in car?

[archcommus]

Hi, I have a Samsung A990 right now and I am eligible for a new phone in February, might not buy till as late as May, though. I am on Verizon and intend to stay with them. I don't need or want to pay for internet and e-mail access. The one thing I do want is a really good music player, something that'll let me easily transfer MP3 files, preferably without stupid Verizon software, support a large memory card (at least 8 GB), and, so I can do this easily in my car, have really easy to use controls and a 3.5 mm headphone jack (my car stereo has a 3.5 mm aux jack). Does any phone exist or will exist by spring that satisfies these requirements?

Thanks!

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

how about just get an ipod nano and be done with it.
for ~$100, it's better than just about every phone out there for mp3 playback.

 

[archcommus]

Originally posted by: BlahBlahYouToo
how about just get an ipod nano and be done with it.
for ~$100, it's better than just about every phone out there for mp3 playback.

Yeah, I thought about that. I was trying to avoid having two devices (never owned an MP3 player before), but if it was primarily left in the car, wouldn't be a big deal. However, doesn't seem like I can get a Nano for any cheaper than ~$130, and considering I also need to buy a phone that'll be at least $50-$100, it'd still be nice to combine the two.

 

[archcommus]

LG Chocolate 3?

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Something with a good speaker built into the unit. Or just buy an external speaker with a 3.5mm headphone jack for use with any device.

 

[gorcorps]

Originally posted by: ChAoTiCpInOy
Something with a good speaker built into the unit. Or just buy an external speaker with a 3.5mm headphone jack for use with any device.

Wow, you missed a lot in his post. He plans on plugging the phone into the aux jack of his car stereo.

 

[uli2000]

My wife's BB pearl has a 3.5mm jack and a decent speakerphone, so you wouldnt have to unplug the phone to take a call. Thought the BB media player leaves much to be desired, not very user friendly for navigating between songs. I dont know if a 3rd party music player is avalible, but I dont think Id do it with the built in media player. I have a Mogul. I have WMP and TCPMP installed, thought there are other media players you ccn get. Personaly, I find WMP easier for navigation, and ususally use it when listening to music. HTC has a weird mini-usb audio connector, so you will need a adapter for a 3.5mm jack, but I think they are including it with newer phones.

 

[gorcorps]

Originally posted by: uli2000
My wife's BB pearl has a 3.5mm jack and a decent speakerphone, so you wouldnt have to unplug the phone to take a call. Thought the BB media player leaves much to be desired, not very user friendly for navigating between songs. I dont know if a 3rd party music player is avalible, but I dont think Id do it with the built in media player. I have a Mogul. I have WMP and TCPMP installed, thought there are other media players you ccn get. Personaly, I find WMP easier for navigation, and ususally use it when listening to music. HTC has a weird mini-usb audio connector, so you will need a adapter for a 3.5mm jack, but I think they are including it with newer phones.

Are you sure the pearl has a 3.5mm jack? I thought they all had 2.5mm so you'd need an adapter, or a cable with a male 2.5 and a male 3.5.

edit: just looked at specs of the pearl, and the one I have (the 8100) has the 2.5mm jack but other pearls do indeed have a 3.5mm jack.

 

[archcommus]

BB Pearl won't work - it's a smarphone, so Verizon requires the data package, which I don't want. The Mogul appears to be the VX6800 in Verizonland, which is also a smartphone, so same problem.

Right now it either looks like a Chocolate 3, or just forget it and get a dedicated MP3 player.

 

[Ksyder]

I have to say, I agree with the person that said you should get an ipod and be done with it. I bought one of those LG Muziq phones from Sprint, thinking I'd be able to drop carrying the ipod around. Unfortunately, I found that any phone calls interrupted the music and if you are taking calls, you'd have to unplug/plug the device while driving in order to take the call. I don't know the details of the phone you might get but in general, I was underwhelmed with the end result. ( I was using FM transmitter, but same idea) Not to mention the sprint music player is absolutely shitty. I've heard the verizon software is better, but if the chocolate is anything like the muziq, then I wouldn't even consider it as an option. Also, that muziq phone only worked with up to 4gb micro sd cards, supposedly. 4 gigs didn't hold enough music to make me want to switch from my 30 gb ipod.

Honestly, the best solution IMO is either an ipod with direct control from the head unit (which you probably don't have if you are using 3.5 mm jack) or a USB equipped head unit. In either case, you control both devices from the head unit. Not to mention with the USB, you can cheaply get large capacity drives (16 gb and up). Also, if you do have an ipod ready head unit (i.e. dock connector cable & digital signal) then you have the added convenience of the unit being charged by the head unit whereas otherwise, you'd have to deal with both changing the songs on the ipod as well as the fact that it would need to be charged.

The ipod/head unit combo is amazing. Its just like having a hard drive hooked up to your stereo (duh). I just throw it in the glove box and switch albums on the head unit, and its fully charged when I remove it.

I'm sure none of these solutions are applicable to you, but since I just had a similar scenario within the last month, I thought I'd share my experience.

 

[archcommus]

Thanks for your input, Ksyder, anything is helpful. I initially wanted to go the phone route because I'd be getting a new phone anyway and wanted to combine devices and save money. I also don't care about the music functionality being *the best* because I'll only use it in the car - I don't need music on the go anywhere else. But I understand it can be frustrating, hard to use, and will also drain my phone's battery, requiring me to get a car charger. So, a dedicated MP3 player like an iPod or ZEN X-Fi is a fine option, albeit a more expensive one.

However I am interested in methods that continue to allow control from the head unit like you mention. Don't really want an iPod-specific one because I don't plan on always owning an iPod, but USB with a small 2.5" external drive or maybe better yet, an SD card slot sounds great. My factory stereo is double DIN. Any suggestions of that size that have a USB port or SD card slot?

 

[Ksyder]

http://www.crutchfield.com/App...00&i=020DUZ385&tp=5684

Something like this might be what you want. You used to be able to filter results by DIN size, for instance but now I'm not seeing that option. I guess you'd have search for double DIN size radios manually. Onlinecarstereo.com is another site you might have some luck when looking at stereos. That is not counting DVD/Navigation heads which I think are also double DIN. A little expensive for me though. Having usb in the back of the unit is probably best so you don't have some usb drive sticking out of the head unit waiting to be snapped off.
As far as the sd card slot, its not something I shopped for so I'm not familiar with any units, but I recall seeing some that have that. Personally I like the USB flash drive because they are cheap and require no reader to alter the files on the drive.

Also, when I say the Muziq phone sucked, it was really sucky in ways that I didn't expect, like the fact that all music was automatically categorized by ID3 tag and all of your music was in an alphabetical list. If you wanted to go to something that started with a w, you would have to scroll all the way down through *all* of your music to get to it and it would be even worse if you had more than 4 gigs (I only had 4). Another terrible thing (and I don't know if it was a Sprint bug or what) was if you loaded podcasts or any large file sizes they wouldn't even play. Things between 10 - 20 MB showed up and I could play them but if you tried to skip through the podcast instead of moving forward or backward as you want it will simply go to the beginning or the end, and you would have to listen to the whole thing over because the scanning did not work, if this makes any sense. Podcasts larger than 20 MB (which is most) would not play, they would just give an error msg if you try to play them. Needless to say, I returned the phone disappointed. They definitely didn't have the savvy user in mind when they designed this unit, they just made it "good enough."' Also, there was absolutely NO EQ whatsoever.

There may be some good MP3 phones out there but I certainly didn't end up with one of them. Anyways, I love talking about car audio so excuse the long posts