Apple, Motorola Plan An iTunes-Friendly Phone

PabloJones writes "Apple and Motorola have come together to create a new mp3-enabled cell phone, according to this Reuters article. It says that the device will be capable of storing about 12 songs, and will be fully integrated with iTunes. Perhaps this is a beginning of a new relationship between the two companies, after the PowerPC problems between the two in recent years."

Press Release from Motorola

[Saxton]

Press Release from Motorola [motorola.com]

Yes, I understand that might be considered karma whoring, but at least it's informative. Enjoy.

-s4xton

Re:iPhone?

[agentmouthwash]

they still do.
Go to iphone.org

Not that exciting

[localekko]

The Nokia 6230 [nokia.com] (and the forthcoming 6260) are somewhat more impressive, using interchangeable MMCs to store up to and above 128Mb of data. And I don't think iTunes compatibility is a great reason to endure such lousy storage capacity.

Re:But iTunes is not mp3 ?

[wbd]

The iTunes MUSIC STORE uses AAC encoded music (an open standard) with Apple's proprietary FairPlay DRM.

The iTunes APPLICATION, which is usuable with our without the iTunes Music Store, supports MP3, AAC, AAC+Fairplay, WAV, Audible audiobooks, Apple Lossless Compression (ALC), possibly more I can't remember. It can rip to MP3, AAC, or ALC.

Re:12 songs? does it play pong also?

[Graff]

12 songs? like an... album? what do they got in their, a hamster? it can't possibly be that hard to find somewhere to stuff a couple more MP3s in a cell phone. why so stingy?

The poster of the story got it a bit wrong. It's not a dozen songs, it is dozenS of songs. [macworld.com] So think more like a couple of albums worth, not one album worth of songs.

Remember that most songs will probably be full 128 kbit iTunes Music Store AAC files. Judging from the songs I've bought from the iTMS each song will take up around 3.5 MB so a dozen will take 42 MB. That adds up pretty quick. You could fit about 36 songs onto a 128 MB flash card, which sounds reasonable for a flash-based cell phone/MP3 player.

Re:Sounds Good...

[Anonymous Coward]

they have that. it's called a Sony Ericsson P900.

Re:Wow.

[Fuzion]

I'm using the Motorola V220, it has a mini-usb connector, which you can connect directly to your computer, and download MP3s, images, etc. It only has 1.8MB or so of storage, so you have to re-encode your mp3s at a lower bitrate, and maybe crop it also, but overall it's not too bad. And it's got quad-band, a camera, and quite a few other features.

The "New" Motorola

[stox]

Two years ago, Chris Galvin was at the healm of Motorola, now it is Ed Zander. To say that the difference is night and day would still be an understatement. Ed Zander actually works for a living. The market knows this, and so does Apple.

Re:Sounds Good...

[cynic10508]

I should have prefaced: I'm on a CDMA network, not GSM.

Defenisve action

[Johnny Mnemonic]

There were some rumors that Apple would sue Motorola for breach of contract once Apple fully migrated to the IBM processor; I don't think that's happened 100% yet, but Apple's pretty close. The suit would've been based on the grounds that Moto didn't give Apple the year warning they were required to that they were going to end their desktop PPC chip, which necessitated Apple scrambling to find a replacement--originally, IBM didn't have a lot of interest in supplying Apple, and only bolted on the AltiVec co-processor at a later date.

I strongly suspect that this relationship is related to terms to arise out of an out of court settlement between Moto and Apple--it's clearly no longer in Apple's interest to sue Moto, so this was worth something to Moto (if the suit had any merit; but it sounded like it may well have.)

I don't know if it's better for Apple or for Moto to play iTMS music on Moto phones; but it does mean that QT is there instead of WMA, which is indeed worth something to Apple. My hunch is that Apple was awarded this privilege for free, and in return they'd drop the suit.

Re:Wow.

[guiscard]

The Nokia 6230 [nokia.com]. You can put up to a gig mmc [mobymemory.com] card into it (it comes with 32mb, I use a 512mb) and you have a nice little mp3 player. The Nokia headphones are terrible but you can mod [origin.mine.nu] them and use your own. I use a pair of Sony e888s and the sound is fantastic. Plus when you get a phone call you can patch it trough to the headphones and use the mic on the wire, the little button will switch to the next song otherwise. Plus you can use mp3s both as ringtones and as your alarm clock.

Re:12 Songs?

[Doppler00]

I hope the phone has a SD/MMC slot in it. 256MB of memory can be found for less than $50 now. You should at least be able to store a couple or more CD's worth of music on the phone.

Re:Sounds Good...

[OS24Ever]

My Treo 300 would last a work day (6 - 9 hrs) with heavy phone use. DOn't know about the 600. But eating the battery in an hour is a bit of a stretch.