Mobile phones have evolved tremendously especially music oriented ones since the times of monophonic tones. The MW team was curious how music phones measure up to one another and against dedicated devices so we put the best of them through a series of grueling tests.

 

 

Remember the days when phones were just phones? No? That’s not surprising because that was a long long
time ago in ‘phone’ years. These days phones come as converged devices that can take photos, play music and do a host of other things.

Phones and music players were always natural fits. The omnipresent mobile phones and head bopping MP3 players are the two devices that are often found in our pockets. It was never surprising then when music phones began arriving in stores.

Although music phones have been around for quite some time now they were not much more than novelties in the beginning. Those early music phones had limited memory storage on mobile phones and users were unable to save much music on the phones. But slowly, memory card slots came along and with larger memory options in the picture, music phones usage grew exponentially.

Mobile phones have steadily advanced too in terms of music support. It started from the terrible sounding monophonic sounds. When polyphonic sounds came along everyone wanted a piece of that. Of course the MIDI format did not keep users satisfied for long. These days music phones are no different from MP3 players - at least on paper.

Trends showed that demand for music phones is huge with the exception of the 60GB iPod-toting crowd. Manufacturers are integrating dedicated music controls, dock connectors and audio accessories into mobile phones. To date there are hundreds of music oriented phones in the market and manufacturers have been churning out more each year.

But just how well do they meet the music needs of consumers today? Just for your pleasure (okay, we admit it; ours too!) we decided to organize a music showdown between music phones and MP3 players with two Bluetooth headsets thrown in for good measure.

 

* Read the full story in the September 2007 issue.