More on the iTunes Cell Phone

andyring writes "According to PC Magazine, a Motorola exec demoed the rumored iTunes cell phone. According to the article, the phone syncs with a computer and the iTunes Music Store like an iPod does, and incorporates the iPod interface for navigating and playing digital music." We've mentioned this before.

Comments

This is not the final form factor

[computerme]

According to appleinsider sources, the form factor of the phone you may have seen in images is only a test mule based on a diff moto phone.

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=816

snip:
Update: According to sources, the phone shown above and elsewhere on the internet is not the rumored Apple-Motorola cell phone, but rather a development phone used for demonstrating the embedded version of iTunes that will be included with the Apple-Moto phon

Re:Salling Clicker

[Anonymous Coward]

Something similar exists for the PC, called PuppetMaster.

In praise of Salling Clicker

[XavierItzmann]

Salling Clicker is rock solid. And it is not a gizmo: it is something thousands of people use daily. It truly is phone/iTunes integration.

I use it daily with my Sony Ericsson T68i and/or Palm Tungsten T3 to control iTunes without line of sight from anywhere in my (admittedly small) apartment. Integration, stability, user interface are all golden.

S Clicker makes a "device" out of this functionality, not a flashy demo app.

Re:Worst of both worlds

[jschottm]

if you are tired of new features taking up battery life, then don't use the feature or buy a phone with[out] it.

I would have been happy to keep using my StarTac indefinitely except for the fact I couldn't get parts for it when they started wearing out. There wasn't anything like it on the market when I got a replacement. The LG I ended up with is slower, has taken wear and tear far worse, and doesn't offer any real improvements. The damn thing doesn't even have a ringer that sounds anything like a phone.

Or you can use Bemused

[Catullus]

which is free software (and coincidentally written by me ;)

Get it here.

Someone's ported it to Linux too.

TFA is wrong

[pauljlucas]

The phone syncs with a computer and the iTunes Music Store like an iPod does ...

An iPod does not sync with the iTunes Music Store. It syncs with the iTunes music player. The significance is that the iPod (and presumeably the new phone) can play any MP3 file regardless of how you obtained it and not just music purchased from the iTunes Music Store.

Re:Back to "dialing" the phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, Nokia was toying around with that idea (obviously inspired by the iPod), witness the now-cancelled Nokia Neo. Rotary dialing works, and obviously such an input method is also valid for a portable music player, but anything more than that (like writing a text message) is pure torture. Thank god Nokia still has some business sense.

Myself, I'll just continue using my Nokia 6630, which has MP3, AAC and OGG (with a plugin) playback at full 44.1 kHz 16 bit stereo goodness. Transferring music to the phone is easy with Bluetooth, or I could just download music from the Internet with GPRS/EDGE/UMTS (3G) if it didn't cost so much. Anyway, I have no use for an "iTunes" phone, Nokia already has something much better than that.

Info on the demoed phone

[Lepton68]

A full review of the phone used in the demo is at http://www.mobileburn.com/review.jsp?Id=903. Stereo and much other good stuff. Imagine it white instead of black, and major Apple help with the UI, and you might have something very, very nice.