A New Tune for Cell Phones
— -- For a long time, downloading music to cell phones has been a clunky and inconvenient process, usually involving a USB cable for syncing audio files between a phone and a computer.
A new system has finally arrived, available from both Sprint and Verizon Wireless. Sprint's Music Store and Verizon's V Cast Music both allow you to buy songs over the air and download them straight to your handset. This means you can bypass the computer and the USB cable--though that option is still available, too.
The Sprint and Verizon music services are similar in that they allow you to browse, preview, and buy songs from an online music store and download them to your handset and your Windows XP computer. You need a compatible cell phone and must subscribe to the carrier's data plan that supports the music store.
I tested Sprint's Music Store on the Samsung MM-A900 (also known as the SPH-A900) and Verizon's V Cast Music on the LG VX8100.
Overall, both music services offer buy-it-now convenience, speedy downloads, and a satisfactory selection of songs. But with both services, the steep prices, problems with proprietary audio standards, and inability to use other features on the phone while listening to music kept me from fully enjoying the experience.
Verizon charges $1.99 to download a song to a compatible phone, or 99 cents if you download it to your PC first and then transfer it to a phone, similar to the Apple iTunes scheme. At the Sprint Music Store, songs cost $2.50 a pop. On both services, you get two copies of the song: one for your phone and another for your PC. On top of the per-download fee, you also pay for a data plan that supports each carrier's music service.
Each carrier says that its music library contains hundreds of thousands of songs, with tracks from major labels that include EMI, Sony BMG, Universal, and Warner. With both services, you key in the first few letters of a name or title to search for an artist or a song. The list updates as you enter a letter. Text entry on cell phones can be a slow process that involves a few taps on a number to get your desired letter. Also, it takes a few seconds to stream and refresh the content to the phone.
In my search tests, Sprint fared better overall because it had the songs and artists I looked for. Verizon didn't have two of the three tracks I wanted; I expect that more tunes will be released as the service matures. Both services' online menu structures have multiple layers of information. Thankfully, the good-size LCD on Sprint's Samsung MM-A900 makes browsing easy on the eyes.
The phones themselves don't come with much. Sprint is a little more generous than Verizon, though: The MM-A900 includes earbuds and a USB cable. Verizon's LG VX8100 lacks such amenities and comes with only the battery charger and a manual. You need to dish out $30 for the V Cast Music Essentials Kit that includes earbuds, a USB cable, and Windows Media Player 10 on CD (which is a free download from Microsoft). A MiniSD card for Verizon's LG phone costs extra, too. A 1GB card can hold up to 480 songs, says Verizon, and costs about $90--a good investment in the long run.
Sprint's MM-A900 lacks a card slot, so you're limited to its 52MB of internal memory. That memory is shared with other apps, so the handset can't carry many songs. The size of each track varies, although Sprint estimates a typical song is about 1MB. You'll need to offload songs to a computer to make room for new ones.
If you want to download tunes from Verizon's music service to your computer, you'll need to run Microsoft's Windows Media Player 10 and Windows XP; currently, it doesn't work on the Mac OS and Linux. And importing MP3s into a phone involves an unnecessary step: Verizon's bundled software converts the MP3 files to WMA format even though phones compatible with its music service support MP3s. This transcoding process can degrade the files' sound quality.
Verizon took a lot of heat on this subject. As a result, it plans to let its V Cast Music customers download both WMAs and MP3s to their phones sometime before the end of the year, according to a report from my colleague Elizabeth Montalbano of the IDG News Service; read "Verizon Wireless Defends MP3 Policy" for details.
Adding insult to injury, Apple iTunes won't play nice with the Verizon service. If you buy songs from the iTunes Music Store, you can't play them on Verizon's phones because Apple uses a proprietary digital rights management technology called Fairplay. Since Apple won't license Fairplay to other companies, files using that technology won't run on any other media player but its own.
The Sprint Music Store has issues, too. For example, you can't play a song that was downloaded to a Sprint phone on a PC and vice versa. Over-the-air downloads are in AAC format, and PC downloads are in WMA; Sprint's software won't let you change formats. The company says that AAC files are more compressed than WMAs, making them more efficient for cell phones.
To play songs that you've purchased from Sprint's Music Store on your PC or notebook, you need to go to Sprint's site and download them to the computer; you also need to run Windows XP and WMP 10.
The good news: You can listen to AACs and MP3s that you've ripped from your own CDs, as well as downloads from Sprint's Music Store. If your phone uses a memory card, you can drag and drop songs to the card, pop it back into your phone, and listen to the saved music tracks. However, you can't play DRM-protected files, such as those purchased from iTunes, in Sprint's PC software.
A great perk is Sprint's and Verizon's fast data connection. Each carrier's EvDO network promises average downstream speeds of 400 to 700 kilobits per second. In my tests, one song took about a minute to download, on average. If you lose your wireless signal during a download, you'll likely have to download the file again. EvDO coverage for both Sprint and Verizon is mainly limited to metropolitan areas, although both carriers continue to expand their services.
Regarding sound quality, you can't expect too much from built-in speakers and generic earbuds. Overall, tunes sounded better on Verizon's phone than on Sprint's: The LG VX8100 provided a little more depth, while the Samsung MM-A900 sounded tinny.
You can accept or ignore incoming calls on the Sprint and Verizon phones I tested. When you're done with a call, the phone resumes music playback. But the built-in music player on each of these phones is limited; while music is playing you can't do very basic things, like browse your playlist. Both of my test phones performed very slowly when browsing my collection, navigating menus, and selecting songs.
The phones' battery life wasn't great, but that's not surprising given the tasks I put them through. Verizon's Web site says the LG VX8100 lasts up to 3.5 hours of talk time; Sprint's site shows that the MM-A900 will go up to 3 hours of talk time. In general, I had to recharge each phone after a day and a half of what I consider normal usage: placing calls, going online, downloading music, and listening to about ten songs a day. Other music phones I've tested, including the Sony Ericsson W800i, lasted a day or two longer.
Sprint's Samsung MM-A900 (a super-skinny model that competes with the Motorola Razr), and Verizon's LG VX8100 feature a 1.3-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, and a 2.5-millimeter headphone jack. You can't use a Bluetooth headset for music playback with either phone, but Sprint does allow its customers to use the phone as a modem via a Bluetooth connection.
Sprint sells four other Music Store-compatible cell phones: the Samsung MM-A920 (aka SPH-A920), the Samsung MM-A940 (aka SPH-A940), the Sanyo MM-9000, and the Sanyo MM-9500. Verizon offers two more V Cast Music handsets: the Audiovox CDM8945 and the Samsung SCH-A950.
To use the carriers' music services, you need to subscribe to a compatible data plan in addition to paying for your voice service. Sprint has three Power Vision plans, costing $15, $20, and $25 per month. Verizon sells the V Cast VPack for $15 per month.
In the end, what price will you pay to download music to your cell phone without using a PC?