GSM, MP3 and Mac

R

Rafaela

New member
Looking to change to a GSM service in NYC (from Verizon) and specifically want a phone that has a digital music player and is compatible with Macintosh computers for downloading MP3s. T-Mobile and Cingular seem to be the two choices. Any of their phones Mac compatible? Or is there any third party software to get around any incompatibilities? (ie. I currently use Bitpim for my Samsung A670).

Thanks for any suggestions/help.
 
Maybe a Nokia Series 60 phone (N-series, for example) would be good for you. Usually there's an MP3 player included in the software (or you can find one for free) and it uses drag-and-drop for transferring music so that you don't need any software to transfer music.
 
Maybe a Nokia Series 60 phone (N-series, for example) would be good for you. Usually there's an MP3 player included in the software (or you can find one for free) and they use drag-and-drop for transferring music so that you don't need any software to transfer music (that's my experience with Series 60).
 
Hi
I have a Mac and have been using it with the SonyEricsson W810i - its a great phone, best I've seen so far for music compatibility with the Mac. using a third party ap (iTMW) you can synch selected playlists with your phone. It is a GSM phone and my service is through Cingular. A bonus is the camera on it which is as good as a normal camera since it is one of the few cameras that has autofocus. Hope this helps!
 
ANY Pda phone running windows mobile 5 can be setup in a way to show up as a removeable USB Drive (USB Mass storage device) any windows mobile 5 phone can be turned into an MP3 player that supports every format out there, a video player supporting divx/xvid/mpeg4/etc, internet radio client (shoutcast, etc), well to sum it up any WM5 phone can do almost anything,

BTW macs get along good with removable usb drives so you should have a problem, everything is drag and drop,

once you install TCPMP on WM5 you can play anything, you can even read embedded album art in the mp3!
 
Thanks for all your replies. I see that Cingular has the Rzr and Slvr with iTunes. I'm assuming those work with Mac. Are those the phones that are crippled (ie. can only download a certain number of songs, or songs that you have purchased)?

I'll look into the SonyEricsson W810i.

I don't want a pda phone, but would connecting the phone as a usb drive work with any usb phone and a Mac?
 
Yes, the iTunes phones are crippled- limited to 100 songs max (look around this forum- maybe someone here has figured out how to remove it). Also, if you can connect the phone as a USB drive, it will work with Mac, but you can't do things like sync contacts with it (since to the computer it's just a USB drive).
 
Yes, it helps. I bought an unlocked one to use with T-Mobile. Hasn't arrived yet tho.

What is iTMW?
I'm also looking for 3rd party Mac software to use with a basic T-Mobile phone (no mp3) to back up contacts and download photos. Where can I find information about such software? It will help me to determine which phone I want to buy for me (for our family plan--the w810i is for SO)

Tx.
 
I review a ton of T-Mobile phones and none of there Pocket PC phones sync well with the Mac. The samsungs don't do that great of a job either.

I would go with a Treo 650 or 680 next month. MP3 player, expandable memory, GSM, sync's wonders with OS X!
 
iTMW is the iTunes program - For the 810i I am using the Mac iSynch program, works really well. You can go to their site to see which phones will synch using iSynch - it allows you to synch contacts and calendar etc - NOT music. To synch music you need a seperate program. I also own a Treo 650 / 700 and iSynch does not work as well with them, for the 700 I use the Palm software which works great.
 
I've had only so-so results using iTMW with my SE w800i. iTMW (Itunes My WalkMan) is an Applescript that installs a menu within your iTunes program. you create a special playlist and then run the script and your SE walkman phone is synced to that playlist. Works okay but not great for me. I found bettter results using a shareware app called Dreamsicle that syncs both iTunes and iPhoto content with SE phones.

As much as I love the w800i, I also found that Nokia S60 phones and Samsung phones were easier to use in terms of transferring music and photos back and forth with my Mac. Straight drag and drop. Memory card mounts like any removable mass storage device, and even boots up iPhoto automatically (for better or for worse). Supposedly the Cingular-branded w810i will support Mac drag and drop, but I can't confirm that.

iSync, as mentioned before, supports calendar/contact syncing with select phones only. Not music. And I could not get it to work with my w800i at all, even though it's supposed to be supported. Definitely some "Your Mileage May Vary" when it comes to OS X and mobile phone syncing.

Also, FWIW, NOT ALL usb mass storage devices play nice with Macs like they do with WinXP. I have an SE m600i that mounts and supports drag and drop of music and photos on my wife's WinXP laptop. Can't even get it to mount on my Mac. Too bad, too - it's a great phone. Maybe a firmware update will fix that.

That all being said, the SE phones are, IMHO, the best when it comes to music management on a mobile phone. Nokias are quite good, too. Samsung's sound great as well, but the UI is not as nice.

Then there's the mythical Apple iPhone which may or may not drop January 8, 2007 at MacWorld :-)
 
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