Amzar File

Nokia Comes With Music service on
the 5800 XpressMusic handset

By Irene Tham

WITH four million tunes, the collection at Nokia's Comes With Music store is as good as - if not more exhaustive than - that of PlayNow Plus.

The 5800 XpressMusic touchscreen is easy to use, especially for users with long fingernails.

The handset acknowledges an input with haptic feedback.
Unlike the Sony Ericsson handset (see other story), this touchscreen phone does not come with the TrackID, or an equivalent, feature.

However, the quality of the music at the store more than makes up for it.
(You just have to buy another standard 3.5mm headphone as the supplied Nokia earphones do not do justice to the high quality music.)

Music file sizes are about 4MB to 5MB as they are in the WMA format with a higher 192kbps bit-rate - even for downloads on the phone.

Best of all, all the tracks downloaded are for keeps even after the one-year service expires.

The catch: The music is locked to one phone and one PC and you cannot transfer them to another device.

You also cannot renew the music subscription service; you have to buy another Nokia phone.

However, your music account can be transferred to another phone-PC pair but only one pair can play at any one time.

One thing I like about this service is the freedom to choose the 3G data service of any of the three telcos.

Separate 3G data charges apply.

With Sony Ericsson PlayNow Plus, I am limited to its exclusive partner telco, SingTel.

The biggest complaint I have with the Comes With Music service is the tardiness of the music downloads on the phone. A 5MB track, for instance, took about 11/2 minutes to download via 3G. Downloading on the PC is much faster. Also, it did not make sense to have to click on every track even when I am downloading an entire album and key in my username and password again when I visit the store after the phone has been switched off and on. Yet another snag: You have to click on the "Back" button a few times to return to the main menu to continue with music searches while music downloading is taking place.

Final say

Imagine keeping all four million songs for $798, excluding telco subsidies.

It is still worth your while even if you download only 5,000 tunes.

Based on online prices of $1 a song, that would have come up to $5,000.

This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life.

Source: Asiaone