Use your phone as an MP3 player

Alistair Warmington

Use your phone as an digital audio player

Control music playback, build playlists and stream your music wirelessly

The Samsung X820 offers a music player that will play MP3, AAC and M4A music files. Unfortunately, there’s no removable memory option in this handset so you’re going to be limited to what remains of the 80MB internal memory. Once you have copied some music across, you can use your phone as an digital audio player.

The handset does not come with a 3.5mm headphone jack, but it does come with its own set of earphones or you can use the stereo Bluetooth profile to control and stream music to a wireless pair of headphones.

By default, the X820’s music player is assigned to the Up key shortcut on the direction pad. However, if you want to change it, you can still access it through the main menu. Press Menu on the standby screen to enter the main menu, then scroll up and right to highlight ‘Applications’ (Figure 1). Press Select and you will see ‘Music player’ (Figure 2) at the top of the list. Press Select again to start it up (Figure 3).

The direction keys act as shortcuts to various media controls. Pressing Up will take you into your playlist. Left and Right act as skip controls and Down will stop the track. The ‘i’ button acts as the play/pause control.

Before you can start playing your tunes, you need to create a playlist. Press Up on the directional pad to enter the playlist. To add files, press Options, then scroll down to highlight ‘Add to playlist’ (Figure 4). Press Right to bring out a new menu, then select the location where your music is stored. You can use ‘Add all’ to copy every music file in the memory to the playlist.

If you want to make your individual selections, choose ‘Add files’ and press Select. To pick single files, highlight them and press the ‘i’ button in the centre of the direction to mark the check box. When you have the ones you want marked, press Select to create your playlist and return to the playlist menu. Press back to return to the music player controls. Your new playlist will be queued up and ready to go.

You can generate up to four playlists, called albums on the X820, at a time. If you want to change playlists, press Up to access the playlist menu, then press Options. Scroll down to ‘Go to album list’ (Figure 5) then press Select. Choose the album you want to use and press Options; finally choose ‘Open’ and press Select (Figure 6).

To stream to a pair of stereo Bluetooth enabled headphones, ensure that they are switched on and paired with the X820 handset. Enter the MP3 player and press Options. You will automatically start off highlighting ‘Play via’ (Figure 7) so press Right to open the menu further then scroll down to highlight ‘Bluetooth stereo headset’ and press Select. Your phone will connect to your headphones and start audio streaming (Figure 8).

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Quick Links

Select Make	Select Model

Figure 1
From the Main Menu select Applications
Figure 2
Select Music Player
Figure 3
The direction keys act as shortcuts to various media controls

Figure 4
To add files, press Options, then scroll down to highlight ‘Add to playlist’
Figure 5
Scroll down to ‘Go to album list’ then press Select
Figure 6
Choose the album you want to use and press Options; finally choose ‘Open’ and press Select