averydonovan
Headphoneus Supremus
I picked up a BlackBerry 8100 (a.k.a. Pearl) a few days ago to get something smaller than the 8700 (classic BrickBerry-style) handheld I was using. I did want the camera it had for occasional use, but didn't plan to use the music player it had. After having lots of different phones with built-in music players I didn't expect much out of this one.
I ended up with a nice surprise when I did try it out. The sound is not tinny and weak like I expected, and it actually sounded pretty decent when I tried it with Koss KSC-75 earphones. I doubt it will unseat many, if not most, flash players out there, but for a phone this is pretty good. I've had a few different phones with music playback ability (Motorola MPx200, LG MM-535, Qtek 8010, T-Mobile SDA, and T-Mobile MDA) and this is easily the best sounding out of any of them. The 8100 music player software is somewhat primitive and doesn't support things like on-the-go-playlists but does support album art, either in .m4a files or stored in the folder Windows Media Player-style. Using MediaMonkey to transfer files I found that album art did not show up since it doesn't transfer over the separate album art files inside the album's folder along with the tracks.
Of course, the BlackBerry 8100 is also a great smartphone. I'm still amazed they packed so much functionality into such a tiny package. To me, it is easily the best smartphone available on the market right now as it is. It is a nice bonus that it has a pretty decent music playback ability. It certainly won't replace my Creative Zen Vision:M but it is nice to know I have a usable, compact back-up music player if needed.
I ended up with a nice surprise when I did try it out. The sound is not tinny and weak like I expected, and it actually sounded pretty decent when I tried it with Koss KSC-75 earphones. I doubt it will unseat many, if not most, flash players out there, but for a phone this is pretty good. I've had a few different phones with music playback ability (Motorola MPx200, LG MM-535, Qtek 8010, T-Mobile SDA, and T-Mobile MDA) and this is easily the best sounding out of any of them. The 8100 music player software is somewhat primitive and doesn't support things like on-the-go-playlists but does support album art, either in .m4a files or stored in the folder Windows Media Player-style. Using MediaMonkey to transfer files I found that album art did not show up since it doesn't transfer over the separate album art files inside the album's folder along with the tracks.
Of course, the BlackBerry 8100 is also a great smartphone. I'm still amazed they packed so much functionality into such a tiny package. To me, it is easily the best smartphone available on the market right now as it is. It is a nice bonus that it has a pretty decent music playback ability. It certainly won't replace my Creative Zen Vision:M but it is nice to know I have a usable, compact back-up music player if needed.
