Improving The Music Experience On The Nokia N82
Less than 2 weeks ago, I received my black N82 that I won with the Show Your S60 Smarts contest. I have to admit that I wasn’t initially impressed with the N82 when it was announced, but during the last couple of months, I found myself liking it without even trying it, for one reason only: it packed all that my N95 could offer in a form factor that Nokia had mastered over the years aka candybar, without the heartache that is an Nseries slider. But that isn’t totally accurate as Nokia seems to have overlooked (or under marketed) one aspect of the N82 which is Music. Don’t get me wrong, the N82 has the most important assets for music: a well-placed 3.5mm plug, A2DP support, stereo speakers, a built-in music player, but it does also have some annoying flaws in the music department, like the missing multimedia keys. Those can be overcome with a nice set of tips and tricks.
First tip : Quick access to music
There are 3 different ways I can think of that could allow a faster access to music, despite the lack of multimedia playback keys on the N82.
- Set the music player as one of your standby shortcuts (softkeys or shortcuts). The bad thing about this is that you can only quick access music when in Standby.
- Set Music as your first tab in the multimedia menu. This will allow you to launch the Now Playing screen in 2 clicks no matter what you’re doing on the phone. The problem with this is that there’s the lag time while waiting for the multimedia menu to launch.
- Use MagicKey to set either the multimedia or the gallery keys to map the function of the play button on the N95. Read my guide on how to use this app, and instead of entering 18 in the Maps To field, enter 182. This will allow you to launch the music player immediately in the now playing screen in one press from anywhere in the phone, as well as play/pause music no matter what you are doing. (You can check back in the next days for a full guide on how I am setting up Magic Key on my N82 now)
Second tip : Control the music
There are also 3 different ways to ensure you can control your music efficiently over the N82.
- First one is pretty simple, just get yourself an A2DP stereo bluetooth headset with music control keys. There’s a great collection over at our store as well as others that we have previously reviewed.
- If you have an N95, you can use the in-line remote for the headset (called AD-43) with the N82. If you don’t, you can purchase the whole N95 headset for around 8-10$. I read some places that they don’t work together, so I made sure I tried mine together before buying. (Note: if the N82 asks you which accessory is connected, don’t press Headset, press Cancel. If you say Headset the multimedia keys won’t work)
- This one doesn’t involve buying anything. It’s more of an improvement to music control. The one thing that annoys me is that the keypad keeps locking when I’m listening to music. So I use a freeware called Mr Lock, which ingeniously lets me set a locking time for my phone and also add exceptions, that way my keypad doesn’t lock when I don’t want it to, like in the Music Player (but also gallery, camera, voice recorder and mobireader).
Third tip : Carry more
I am stuck with 2gb memory cards, but I know that even if I had an 8gb card, I would still find it convenient to have an extra card, just in case. This card can be filled with music if the main one has free room for pictures and videos, or free if the main one is filled. But where do you put it so you don’t lose it or forget it? Well under your battery, just over the SIM card slot. If you put the card there, then it’s always with you whenever you need it.
Another way to carry more music (or to free up memory) is to follow snoyt’s tip on compressing music for your phone. I haven’t tried it yet, but plan to in the next weeks.
Fourth tip : Enjoy in company
Music sometimes has to be shared, so you can use your own loudspeakers (read this tip from Devin about using the room’s walls and corners to improve the speaker performance) but you can also use the TV-out cable to either connect to a TV (you will hear your phone’s music and see the screen) or to a set of speakers or to a Hi-Fi stereo.
Last tip : Do more with music
These tips can be applied to any S60.
- Don’t forget that music is not limited to the Music Player, but there’s also the Radio, the Nokia Internet Radio application, as well as the Podcasting application.
- While listening to music, you can use mobbler to scrobble your tracks to last.fm.
- If you’re on the radio or somewhere where you happen to hear a good tune which title you don’t know, you can use midomi (or ShazamID if you happen to live in the UK) to try to get the title.
Do you have any other tips that you’d like to share with us for improving the music experience on the N82? Do you use any of the tips mentioned here or did you just try one of them now? What is your feedback about it? Let us know what you think.
Dotsisx,
I remember mocking the phone because I thought the N95 was better. After the launch of the N82, I kept tracking the reviews and views of it. This device turned out to be way better than a N95(1 and 3).
Last month I bought the N82, after careful consideration (reading reviews after reviews). The device is simply superb in most departments, with its odd chinks thrown in too.
I have put down my views here. (http://adityasphones.wordpress.com/2008/07/16/warm-titanium-or-black/)
This is what I think of the N82 and its music abilities.
As for accessories, in India you cannot get bluetooth A2DP so easily. Apparently the stores out here don’t know what it is or won’t give you a warranty on it. I had a hard time getting hold of a stereo bluetooth. Nokia’s own stores don’t stock it and coyly say its not available in the country, while their customer care says it is!
Hmm.. sad to know that Nokia didnt add the normal music multimedia keys onto the N82. But on my N95 8Gb I press and hold my multimedia key it directly takes me to Music. Shocking that its not the same with the n82.
Haha,Rita here you,can you remember what I said when you were muttering about N82 admitting that N78 is far more superior than this,Actually I didn’t mentioned about music it was the cam that impressed me,But now you are pretty happy with isn’t it?
Good job BTW,and will be very useful for N82 users.
I love my N82 Black far more than my N95-3 even without 3G. The tiny and slim form factor, lens cover, Xenon flash and overall solidarity make it the better pick.
Ravindra, remember that i didn’t say the N78 was superior, i said it had software improvements with FP2, a naviwheel and american HSDPA support, that some people might be into. If you look down to the 6th comment on that post (http://www.symbian-guru.com/welcome/2008/06/n78-nseries-for-the-masses.html) you will see that I said that the N82 is my personal favorite, although I hadn’t tried it yet. That doesn’t make it more or less better than the N78 in general.
Nokia has got ample of N82s to giveaway. Even I had won my N82 classic when they were in India to promote their device. Anyways, I would like to comment to your point regarding the marketing aspect of music. I don’t think the target market for N82 was music listeners but it was their camera with Xenon flash and GPS. I think music was just an added functionality which N82 supported. I don’t know if its peculiar to me but the music from the loudspeaker sounds more stereo-ish than other stereo loudspeaker phones. It sometime kills the songs. However there are no probs whatsoever when listening from earphones.
Hi and thanks for the great post! I just wanted to share I problem I constantly have with A2DP on my Nokias.
I had a N95 and I bought the Motorola S9 for them. They worked well on the first pairing but when turning them off and on later, the connection would fail, so I had to delete the connection and pair them up again.
But when I updated the firmware the things stopped working at all. They woud pair up but the connection would instantly be dropped.
Later I bought a N82 with the latest firmware and had the same problem. So i guessed that definitely Nokia phones and Motorola headsets were not meant to work together.
But recently I bought a car radio form Pioneer with AD2P and have been experiencing the exact same problem, both with the N82 and the N95.
As of today, I haven’t found a single non-Nokia AD2P device that works with Nokia phones. Has anyone experienced these problems? I have searched a lot online for a solution and nothing…
Ps: I also have a HTC Windows Mobile Phone and it work brilliantly with both the Pioneer car stereo and the Motorola S9!
Thanks again!
I totally love my N82 Black. The only thing i miss about my N95-Classic is the multimedia playback keys but thats about it. Good to know you’re loving it too
!
Great article Rita. Love your posts here. I really need to try to give MagicKey a shot. Can you control the long presses of buttons too? I wrote an article at http://www.then82blog.com awhile back ago saying it would be awesome to make the long press of volume keys skip tracks.
Great tips.
Still awaiting the 16 gb from Sandisk. As for now I have about 1-2 Gb left when I’m more selective side on which content I have on my phone.
When it comes to podcasting I do have some of them resident in my phone even after listening to them. World Nomads and SuvivalPhrases are some that is ok to have.
The tip about compression is also great and is useful if sound quality is not that important. You won’t exactly get the best experience if you don’t use a decent wired headset anyway.
I liked Shazam until they had this subscription model where after 5? uses or so you had to pay. So I’m currently using Midomi.
The trick of setting the tabs in the multimedia menu is also great. (It works also to open several windows in the S60 Browser)
Haven’t got MagicKey to quite work when mapping to some buttons so I have to experience more with that.
I recently got my N82 and - after listening to music on my iPod for a long time - I find it nice to have an mp3 player and a mobile phone in one device.
BUT, I want gapless playback. It’s always striking me to hear these little pauses. I think that gapless playback should have a high priority for a music player, especially if the music player is compared to iPods.
I hope, Nokia will add something like this in the future.
I bought a black N82 on Monday and it should arrive by the end of the week. I’m really excited. I’ll continue to use my N95, but I love candybars and the N82, at the moment, seems perfect for me. And, because it’s not brand new, I got it for quite a bit less than if it were.
I may miss the media keys initially, but I know I’ll get over it. Thanks for the tips.
i am glad they did not include the multimedia keys!
as an old school candybar fanatic, i have always liked my candybars and always hated music phones.
SEs, fusic, and any other device with a play, pause, ff, rw, buttons i always frowned upon.
if the playback buttons are in the ui as opposed to taking up precious ergospace i am fine with it.
great job Nokia for not including those buttons on the beautiful fascia.
My keypad doesn’t get locked listening to the music and the player is on top (the active app).
PLz can anyone say that wen N82 Black will be released in INDIA?????? Im desperately waiting for it….
I never ever used any other brand of cell phone and all the S series of Nokia phone have one main problem, battery life. Whatever you do, the battery drains out so quickly. Only thing I hate in my N82 is poor battery life.
2nd thing,absence of dedicated music control keys.
Apart from all this, N82 rocks!
Can some one confirm if 8/16 G card wont slow down the phone?
I think the best option provided in my n82 is something most people aren’t even aware about I think
-> I can use my phone in the wifi network from my pc’s @ home (”own media” icon in the phone)
It makes it possible to play every mp3file wich is on my pc, directly on my phone or make a copy to it from pc to phone and vica versa.
It can also easely play an mp3 from the pc on the pc, being controlled with my phone (play, pause, volume, off, NO fast forward/backwards)
Also I can play any mp3 file wich is on my phone, directly trough the wifi network on my pc (wich is connected with my stereo -> super sound quality on my stereo, completely controlled with my phone, fastforw./bw included !!)
Like this no wires are needed
The same thing can be done with pictures and i was also able to play my recorded videos directly on the pc screen
Simply install simple center, wich makes some kind of server on your pc, and select the directories u want to share
I noticed that it only works if u don’t have any internet applications running, because the program needs the wifi connection all for itself, so while i use this option, i can’t surf on the internet using my wifi acces point
If u buy the full version it supports every sound or video format, and switching between ps3, iphone, etc should also be no problem as they use some kind of built in ‘live-encoder/decoder’ in the registered version
I read on the internet it should also work with nero mediahome, wich is included in the Nero burning rom cd/dvd writing program, but i haven’t fully tested it yet so I can’t say if it’s any good.
Also Mediaplayer 11 should be able to synchronize with the n82 but mine didn’t want to do the job (so far)
I hope this is some help for somebody
When using the N95 headset you mentioned it can be used as a remote controle - Although you must select canx - If i do this the music is played through my loadspeaker and not my headset - I’ve tried all the options and i cant get the remote to work - Can anyone suggest a way for it to happen?… Thanks
hi..
a few days back my n82 had got wet in the rains.. for the water to be soaked out i had put my phone and the battery in a bowl of rice (had read it on the internet).. after that the battery drains of like in 7-8 hrs with a decent usage.. i checked the phone with another battery too.. the same happens.. what could be the problem??? what should i do???
Jul 25th, 2008 at 3:36 am
[...] On the Symbian Guru site, Dotsisx has brought her thoughts about how to improve the music experience of the N82. [...]
Jul 25th, 2008 at 5:01 am
[...] few days ago, I presented to you tips on how to improve the music experience on the N82. These tips involved using Magic Key to launch the music player, but this isn’t the only way [...]
Jul 25th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
[...] Symbian Guru - Improving the music experience on the N82 [...]