K500i MP3 player
Skip contentSubject: Sony Ericsson K500i MP3 player
From: Kevin P
Date: February 21, 2005
To: info@mobile-phone-directory.org
Please will you send me any info on how to store music on the phone’s Mp3 player, and how many songs will it hold?
Thanks
Reply:
Hi Kevin,
I think that the K500i is not the ideal phone if you want to use it as an MP3 player. There is 12 MB of internal memory, and only about 8 MB of this is accessible to the user. Remember that many MP3 players offer around 128 MB of memory capacity as a standard.
If you use straight MP3 tracks, then they use up about 1 MB for each minute of music, so you wouldn’t expect to get more than 2 or 3 tracks onto the phone at that quality. However, it is possible to compress the MP3 track (which will reduce the sound quality) to get more tracks onto the phone, and I have seen that one user managed to get 6-7 MP3 tracks onto this phone by using compression.
Your Service Provider may offer some sort of music download service (this is an easy way to put the tracks onto your phone), and I noticed that the network Orange offers a free Music Player to its customers, which compresses a 3 minute song down to about 750 kB. In this case I guess you might store something like 8 or 9 tracks if you are lucky. If you want to check that out go to:
Nevertheless, I do not think this would make for a successful MP3 player on the K500i, as you could not really use it as a music machine with playlists. In our review of the phone’s features we relied on the descriptions that Sony Ericsson has given in the User’s Guide, but on reflection that may not be as helpful as it could be.
I think the MP3 player is not intended as a serious mobile music player - maybe just a player for the few tracks that interest you that day - and if you are looking for a full MP3 machine then there are other phones with a better specification. If an MP3 player is one of your priorities, then I would suggest you look for a phone with expandable memory using memory cards, as this greatly increases the amount of storage space you would have available for music, pictures, games, etc.
Regarding how you store music on the phone, I am not completely sure. I expect that you will be able to download the MP3 file over-the-air from a Website or your Service Provider, and then use the File Manager (in the phone’s main menu) to save it. However, I guess you may be thinking of using your own source of music? Perhaps you should investigate the chances of transferring MP3 tracks from a computer to the phone, by cable or infrared connection. If you need it, there are free software downloads of the DCU-11 data cable driver at:
and the File Manager at:
I suppose you now feel the MP3 player is not as good as you would like. If you only want to listen to a few tracks then maybe it is good enough, but remember, with the phone’s limited memory, this will also limit your ability to take photos, videos, and use the other memory-hungry functions. It is a compromise when memory is not expandable.
Get back to me if you need to.
Mike S
Technical Consultant
