Way back in February, I got a new phone. One of the coolest features to me initially was that it had a mini-SD card in it that I could put music, photos, etc on. It only came with a 32M card, but I figured until I really knew what I could do with the card, I didn't want to purchase a bigger one.
The first problem that came up was I didn't have an SD card reader. Oops! I tried to borrow one from friends to no avail, so I started looking in to buying one. Right around this time I ordered some new laptops for work which showed up. Low and behold, the two Fujitsu laptops had SD card readers in them. Woo!
So, I brought the adapter (mini-SD to SD) one day and plugged the card in. I saw a few folders on the card, one of them called Music. There we go! So, I threw an MP3 in to that folder and put the card back in my phone. Nothing :( I also had noticed an m3u file in that directory, so I put the card back in and tried to hand edit that file. Still no luck. I quickly gave up and went back to work.
Recently, I have been thinking a lot about having music on my phone. I walk a lot and it sucks not having anything to listen to. I don't have the cash to afford the iPod I want, so getting music on my phone seemed to be the easiest solution. I thought I had gotten a CD with my phone, so I thought maybe that would have some software to copy music to the phone correctly. I looked around, no CD :(
So, I went to the one place for all the information you need, the web. I went on to Samsung's web site and looked up my phone. I then headed to frequently asked questions. It said that the way I had put the music on the card was pretty much correct. The one thing it mentioned was that the music would either go in the Music folder or the Media folder depending on your software version. Hmmm.
So, today I once again brought my adapter in and looked at the card. I had put an MP3 in to the Music folder, so I tried moving it to the Media folder. I then put it back in my phone and SUCCESS! So, I then said I should get a bunch of songs on there. Well, since I already had a bunch of photos and movies on the card, I only had about 22M or something available to me. So, I ended up copying about 3 songs (192k MP3s) on to the card. So, now, I have some music, but that won't even get me from home to Fanueil Hall (my normal walking path).
I figure I have 2 options. Option 1, use lower quality MP3s to cram more music on to the phone. This will work as a stop gap, but not the solution I really want to use going forward. The second solution is to buy a new SD card. Luckily for me, mini-SD cards are pretty damn cheap. I saw a 2G card on Amazon for about $60. That will give me a ton of music to be able to carry around with me on the T or walking or whatever.
The last issue? I still only have an SD reader in a machine that is on my desk in the office. As many of you know, I pretty much work from home every day these days, so having to be in the office to move music on or off the phone doesn't sound like a fun task. So, I think I am going to need to buy an SD card reader as well. I am hoping that it will work under Linux, so I can easily move stuff to and from the card. I _THINK_ I may even be able to fake Rhythmbox in to thinking it is a music player and be able to manage the music right from my music app on Linux, which would be perfect :)
