Consider the history of social mobile phones. In the beginning, there was the Skypephone. Then there was another one. Then, manufacturer INQ appeared on the scene, and made the world of social mobiles their own; their first phone was the INQ1, a phone that immediately became (and will forever be) known as the Facebook phone. And then, recently, there was the double header of Twitter phones, the Mini 3G and the Chat 3G.
So, what’s next for the social mobile manufacturer?
Well, according to TechCrunch, INQ’s next phone is going to be a Spotify phone. And I have to confess, I wasn’t overly knowledgeable on what Spotify actually is, having never used it, so I looked it up. What Spotify is (for those, like me, who weren’t sure), y’see, is an online music streaming service. Basically, it uses peer to peer software in a legal way, letting you connect and listen to music any time you want. Oh, and there’s a social element, as well, with sharing of playlists, and things like that.
So, in effect, it’s like listening to radio, but where you pick what songs you want to hear, and they’re all stored on Spotify’s own servers.
Allegedly, INQ are planning on making that the centrepiece feature of their upcoming, unnamed phone. And given that other rumours also indicate that their next phone’ll be an Android device, does that mean we’re getting the first Android-powered Spotify phone? And will it be as good as the Motorola DEXT (hint: probably not)?
The thing is, though, I have some concerns. Spotify, by all accounts (which I have to trust, since I’ve never used it), works very well on one’s home computer, and there’s almost no delay while tracks buffer. Do you reckon the same will be true over a mobile connection? Not to mention the fact that if you’re using it on your PC or your Mac at home, you’re guaranteed a connection. Now ask yourself what happens when your mobile phone loses its signal, at which point, you’d have to have the music on your phone itself, as you’d have no signal to stream anything, and that negates the entire purpose of Spotify altogether…
And there’s the big worry, of course…
If it does make it onto phones, big time, I would hope there’ll be some dedicated Spotify tariffs, because if not, imagine how much data it’s going to eat, and imagine how much it’ll cost you, if you go over your data allowance.
So, all in all, it has potential, but I have some concerns about using the service on a mobile phone. Especially when songs on the Amazon MP3 Store (which is, incidentally, where I get all the music on my phone from, or at least, the songs that aren’t ripped from my own CD collection) are so cheap and they’re DRM-free, and, to top it all off, their catalogue of tunes is MASSIVE…
So, we’ll have to see if a Spotify phone can compete with that…
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