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

Worst of both worlds

[DrKyle]

Take a cellphone I have to charge every day and add an mp3 player that gets charged every day and I'm willing to be that doesn't make 2 days worth of charge. When will convergence end and manufacturers just give me one thing that works well for a long time? Next they'll add video playback that will kill the battery in less time than to watch a movie.

Re:Worst of both worlds

[computerme]

well if you have any ideas of how to break the laws of battery physics and do so in a cost effective manner then go right ahead and send them you plans...

Re:Worst of both worlds

[SoCalChris]

Not to mention that I generally regard cell phones as being disposable, but keep something like an ipod for several years.

Two years from now, I'm not going to want to have to get rid of my ipod so that that I can get the newest model phone.

Personally, I would preffer that device makers stick to making one thing work well instead of converging several items into one bulky and mediocre performing item.

Re:Worst of both worlds

[wankledot]

Good thing you don't have to buy one!

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

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.

Re:Worst of both worlds

[iamacat]

If you think about it, the only satisfactor solution are custom made devices. People who don't spend much time at home really need a phone with a camera, HD mp3 player, big color screen, keyboard and WiFi. Beats having to go home to e-mail a picture you just took, spilling devices out of full pockets or always carrying a backpack.

On the other hand, if you only want the phone, you would rather have a little thing that fits on top of one ear when in use. And if you only want some of the function, you expect your phone to be proportionally smaller and cheaper.

They should make a modular device with a main board that supports, say 4 plugins such as a hard drive, an 802.11 radio or a keyboard. But instead of attachable dongles that fall off and break, you can just get a smaller case that excludes the sides you don't use.

Salling Clicker

[Raynach]

There's a nifty little utility called the Salling Clicker that lets you take control of your Bluetooth-enabled Mac with any Bluetooth enabled cell phone. Not exactly like playing music from your cell phone, but navigating your Apple with your cell phone, including iTunes.

I used it just recently with the car stereo I installed. ;)

Re:Salling Clicker

[Anonymous Coward]

Something similar exists for the PC, called PuppetMaster.

Will it sell well?

[anime_nerd]

I think that people who already shelled out cash for an I-pod aren't going to rush out and buy this now. It's going to be a toy for the rich. Plus, quite frankly, most people want to be able to download free music to their MP3 player, and this sounds like it can only use I-Tunes store. I doubt that it will be popular.

Re:Will it sell well?

[Bricklets]

I think that people who already shelled out cash for an I-pod aren't going to rush out and buy this now. It's going to be a toy for the rich. Plus, quite frankly, most people want to be able to download free music to their MP3 player, and this sounds like it can only use I-Tunes store. I doubt that it will be popular.

I-Don't know about that.

Re:Will it sell well?

[savagedome]

I think that people who already shelled out cash for an I-pod aren't going to rush out and buy this now

Cell phone is even more a 'style' thing for people than an mp3 player. Take a look at how many accessories are available for a cell phone that you and I and most of /.ers would think as asinine. The colorful antenna where the phone antenna goes bling bling when a call is received or even face plates for your phone. People love to decorate the cell phone so that they can whip it out and use it in public to be a little more flashy.

I am convinced that Apple is going to design one heck of a cell phone as far as style is considered.

And one more thing. Ringtones is already a multi-billion dollar industry. Now imagine iTunes providing tunes for ringtones. Yeah.

Buy AAPL. There is more juice left in that stock.

Re:Will it sell well?

[2nd Post!]

I think it will.

If IBM, Alpine, and Pioneer think there is a market for car adapters for the iPod (to transform your car into an iPod sound system) why wouldn't the same market want a phone that can play all their AACs and MP3s after synching with iTunes?

It's not like the phone market is stagnant! People get new phones every few years, some of them at least.

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

Back to "dialing" the phone?

[PornMaster]

I can't help but to think that the idea of using a clickwheel to "dial" the phone like in the days before many Slashdotters were born is kind of funny. Even if it's not the preferred dialing method, someone's gotta do a dialing hack for it. :)

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.

Oh yeah?

[sploo22]

Well, it may be wireless, but I bet it still has less space than a Nomad!

Woohoo! No more asstastic ringtones!

[Jailbrekr]

Why spend upwards of 2 bucks for a crap ringtone when we could (assuming it supports this feature) use actual song snippets

Re:Woohoo! No more asstastic ringtones!

[YrWrstNtmr]

Right. And when you're listening to music on your iPhone, and it rings...will you be able to tell if its just another song, or an incoming call?

Re:Woohoo! No more asstastic ringtones!

[aardwolf204]

Dude1: Check out this new ring tone I gots
Dude2: Sounds familiar, who is that?
Dude1: Thats 50 cent y0?!
Dude2: Right on. Where'd you get it?
Dude1: Verizon's dank ring tone store online
Dude2: Really, how much?
Dude1: Less than a buck. 99 cents.
Dude2: Hold up, you mean to tell me you paid 99 cents for a 50 cent ring tone
Dude1: Yeah, whats up?
Dude2: You paid 99 cents for... ahh fuck it, nevermind...

True story

How long will it take....

[overbyj]

before this item gets added to that crazy iPod/iTMS lawsuit?

Plaintiff: But your honor, Apple is now in collusion with Motorola to extend their monopoly. Not only am I forced to buy an iPod to use iTMS, but now....I have to buy a phone too! Will the insanity never end?

User Interface?

[grahamsz]

It sounds like the ipod UI will be used for playing music, but does that mean a different UI will be used for placing phonecalls.

I'd say that was very-motorola to have an inconsistent user interface... tho to be fair i haven't used one of their phones since the early 90s.

Ummm..

[TheKidWho]

Less space then an iPod. Lame.

Motorola code quality - poor, very poor.

[zerofoo]

Uggh, I can't take any more featureitis from Motorola. My last two motorola phones had all kinds of software problems:

T720 Phones that would ring and hang when you answer them.

(T720) Black-screen hang during charging that requires a reboot.

V710 phones that would crash during MP3 playback and require pulling the battery off of the phone to stop playback.

Hey motorola, how about STABLE phones first - then gee whiz features?

-ted

-1 Flamebait

[fo0bar]

What an idea! You know, I bet this would work for other devices as well. I could probably take a GBA and put a cellphone on it.

Excuse me while I bouce this off Nokia's marketing department. BRB.

When will we see the Apple logo on a phone?

[Dr. Spork]

The cell phone market is very sensitive to "cool" - Nokia really rode that wave for a while and it took them far.

The tech company most assossiated with style and hipness is Apple. If they made an iPod mini with a number pad, speaker and mic, which can be used to purchase whatever song you feel like hearing on your car trip or subway ride, there would be long lines of buyers - and a lot of spontaneous/impulse song purchases from iTunes (if the price was reasonable). There are lots of people with disposable income for whom this sort of instant gratification would quickly become irresistable.

Now sure, they could contract Motorolla to make a phone with similar specs, but the Apple logo itself would sell lots of units. Could this be their devious plan? Should it be?

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.

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.

Great, but what about the other stuff?

[seanbry]

All this iTunes support, yet still not Moto Bluetooth Support. Nice going Apple and friends -_-

Re:Phone & MP3 player?

[Kirby-meister]

You're listening to music, you have an incoming call... and then what? You can't talk to somebody and listen to music at the same time.

...Maybe...you could "pause" the music?

cool, but

[Cow007]

Where are the pics?

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.