3 posts tagged “s60 internet radio”

Over the past few weeks I've become increasingly annoyed by my phone's problem with streaming audio.  Whilst my N95 8GB is connected to WiFi it can play internet radio streams fine, on 3G it's a very different situation.  Buffer, buffer, bu... f... f... e.. .. ..

I used to be able to listen with barely a problem.  Occasionally I got the odd second or two of buffering - but often listened for over an hour without even one blip.  My trusty old N73 even managed fine and that didn't have super fast 3.5G.

It's got really annoying now though and I've had enough!  I want to find out what the root of the problem is and fix it.  I've got great reception where I use my phone most, so that doesn't seem to be the problem.  I have a phone which is supposedly cutting edge, has lots of memory and supports HSDPA - so that shouldn't be the problem.  It's gotta be the network right?  They must be the ones that are throttling my connection, it has to be...

...that's what I thought anyway but I've just discovered it can't be.  Why?  I've just had my phone hooked up to my Eee PC and have been streaming the same stations, same streams that I attempted earlier on my phone and had completely different results.  Listening on my phone I suffered buffering problems every couple of mins on average.  Listening on my laptop to the same stations, using the same connection, I had no problems at all (well that's not entirely true but one station I tried is useless on anything other than my home broadband).

So it looks like there's something wrong with my Nokia and I need to suss it out.  Why does the phone need to buffer a stream on the handset but dosn't need to when it passes the connection on to the laptop?  It makes no sense!

Nokia Internet Radio seems to suffer worse than S60 Internet Radio.  Anyone got any ideas why?  Anyone else having similar problems?

I've just discovered this via MOSH.  I had known about it but had no idea it would work with a phone that didn't have WiFi.

Park Cast is a media player that has four radio stations to choose from (I know, not a lot).  These include three major New York stations and there's also a strange assortment of video streams.  Sound quality is excellent and the player shows what could be possible if some clever person were to play with Nokia's open source S60 Internet Radio.

Best things about it?  It works in the background and uses the handset's volume keys.  Those might seem like minor things but in reality they're the difference between an app being a novelty and an a app being an everyday useful utility.

More info here: S60 Mulitmedia Blog

What can you do?  When your operator allows almost complete freedom, almost anything that your phone can handle!

• Podcasting (listening to news, sport, comedy, music, specialist shows for specialist interests) Nokia Podcasting and Mobilcast on 3
• Internet Radio (1000s of stations from around the world) S60 Internet Radio, Spodtronic and TunIn.FM
• Video clips and streams: YouTube, mywaves, blue apple and even live TV from around the world Canal 24 Horas (Spain)
• Maps (directions, satellite, aerial): Google Maps, Nokia Maps, Mobile GMaps and J2MEMap
• Search: Nokia Mobile Search (it's Yellow Pages in your pocket - but with maps and speed dial!)
• The Web: Opera Mini (almost the web as it was meant to be)
• Then there's email, social networks, IM, feeds, Flickr pictures straight from your phone to the web, Google Product Search and Kelkoo whilst in the shops(!) and lots more.

All the above's free to use, all you need is an all-you-can-eat plan and a suitable phone (FWIW my phone is a Nokia N73)