How To Turn Your Cellphone Into An Mp3 Player

By Author: Neo Nashville
Total Articles: 30
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The first personal stereo, the cassette-based Sony Walkman, was introduced in 1980 and became one of the technological icons of the 80s. Personal CD players and Minidisc players came along a decade later, but neither could match the Walkman for portability or reliability, and never really took off in the same way. The introduction of the portable mp3 player in the early 2000s, however, trumped all of these technologies and became the dominant music format of the decade.

However, advances in removable memory storage such as micro-SD cards and mobile phone technology have made it possible to use your cell phone as a viable portable music player, capable of storing thousands of songs on a little piece of plastic the size of a thumbnail, which could potentially spell the end for portable music players such as the iPod.

So if you have a 3G phone, which the majority of handsets now are, with a micro-SD memory slot, then you could be (literally, if it is in your back pocket) sitting on a fully-functioning personal media player already. All you need is a cable to connect your phone to a PC, a nice pair of earphones, and ...
... a decent-sized micro-SD card, and you are away!

To copy your music collection onto your phone, all you need to do is convert your music into a format that is compatible with your phone, using a freeware converter downloaded from the web, and copy the converted files to the relevant folder on your phone via the cable that came with your phone.

Unless you just want to listen to the same few songs over and over again, then you will probably need to get a memory card. These can come in capacities of up to 16GB, which is enough to store several thousand songs and even a few full length movies. These can be bought cheaply from the web or from back street mobile phone stores, although avoid buying them on the high street as they can be very expensive there.

You should almost certainly buy the biggest capacity card that your phone will take, as they can be a bit of a hassle to install. The smallest capacity that you should consider is 2GB, although at least 4GB is recommended.

Although you can use the earphones that came with your phone when you bought it, these are generally not very good and will produce a somewhat tinny sound. A small investment in a good quality pair of headphones, from a recognised brand such as Sony, AKG, or Beyer Dynamic, will reap a huge reward in terms of your listening experience.

The currently fashionable in-ear headphones do have an advantage in that they are unobtrusive, but they can hurt your ears after a while and produce a tinny, trebly sound which can be fatiguing. Larger headphones may draw more attention to you, but they are a lot more comfortable for long journeys and are capable of producing a far more rounded, realistic sound. You might need to get an adaptor, but these are widely and cheaply available from most consumer electronics stores.
Vodafone offer a huge range of mobile phones and price plans. If you like smart phones, you will love the Google Phone with its fast internet for express browsing and downloads.