Boomtrends

Phling - Putting your iPod in your Phone

I do not own an iPod. I’ve been very tempted to get one, but I really don’t need another gadget to carry around. I do have a mobile phone that has a microSD slot so I can bring 2gb of music with me, however my phone has a USB 1.1 connection which makes data transfers painfully slow. And besides, 2gb is just a tease, I want to have my whole damn music collection with me, all the time!

I was hopeful Orb would do the trick but it didn’t work for streaming music to my mobile. Today I discovered Phling!, a mobile music social network. First and foremost, Phling! claims to allow access to all your music and photos stored on your PC from your phone. In addition, it is supposed to allow you to snap pictures with your mobile phone and have one touch uploading to your PC or your MBlog (mobile blog?). This all requires your PC to be running the “Phling! My PC” client application on your PC, just like Orb and for it to be running all the time.

So I gave Phling! a shot. After signing up for an account, I filled out a short profile (like any social network) and installed the desktop background client (which requires WMP 10 or newer). Just like any social network, you can have “friends”, six of whom you can share all you music with (a limitation Orb does not have, but then Orb doesn’t seem to work!) When I went to select my phone to which I found there to be a VERY limited selection of Symbian based handsets. The java app only works on a handful of Nokia and Sony Ericsson models. Disappointed that the E61 was not a choice, I selected the Nokia 5500. I lucked out and was able to install the app on the phone.

I started up the program, logged in and I was greeted with a shrunken home screen, I assume due to the fact that I was running software designed for a phone with a smaller screen (I wish java apps could figure the screen size out without requiring a version for each type of phone!). I was able to navigate my way through all my music and select “U2 - Elevation” then select play…then buffering…then MUSIC! Phling ! took about 5 seconds to buffer each song when running on EDGE, so I imagine it performs very well on a 3G network (I couldn’t get Phling! to run on my LG CU500).

I was also able to browse the photos on my PC. The software automatically resizes pictures to the size of the phone’s screen. If my phone had a camera, I would have also been able to take photos with the phone and upload them to your PC or my Phling! Mblog page. So far, there isn’t much “mobile social community” here. But this is where it is…Phling! allows you to see what music is most popular amongst other Phling! users, as well as rate and comment on songs. Those songs you can select to buy, which I didn’t try this time.

Overall I am very impressed with Phling!. I am now able to listen to my entire music collection from my phone. Where I think Phling! can use some work is with their support for additional models and by making their software a little more “music playery” and less “phoney”. Prefetching would greatly improve the mobile application’s performance, just like it does with Google’s mobile Gmail application. Phling! is really cool and I bet Phlinging music is going to become very common in the not too distant future (Sling for your video, Phling for your music and photos…Merger!). If you have a Symbian based Nokia or Sony Ericsson, you have to check Phling! out!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 at 4:01 am and is filed under social networking, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.