The corner of Church Street is largely responsible for my purchase of a new phone, since if I had dropped my six-and-a-half-year-old Nokia for the hundredth time somewhere with better lighting, I would probably have been able to locate the battery. Instead, I left it to its fate and was without a working cell phone. This is such a nerve-wracking situation that I made a decision in five minutes that would normally have taken me weeks. I simply grabbed the most expensive free phone AT&T had, in other words the phone that would have cost the most money had I paid for it without buying a plan. This turned out to be an Android phone, the Motorola Backflip, and for the most part I adore it. I love having a full keyboard and the option to watch an unencumbered screen. I like not being in thrall to Macintosh for every piece of technology I own. However, since I do have a Mac laptop (such as it is after three + years), my one regret in not getting an Iphone was not being able to use Itunes. But dammit, this is the 21st century. There has to be an app that allows me to use Itunes on my Droid-enabled phone....
There are two versions of the Easy Phone Tunes app. The free version will transfer music only, while the pay version will transfer podcasts as well. The free app also transfers some non-copyrighted videos, but I haven't systematically tested this function yet. Since the only time I manage to catch up on podcasts is on my commute, I figured the pay app was worth the $3.27 (1 pound 99 pence plus a small foreign transaction fee, since it's British). In general I'm quite pleased with it. The music and podcasts go directly into my existing AT&T music player with no problem. However there are some aspects of the functionality that are annoying. Most importantly, the user doesn't have complete control over the transfer. You can't add songs one by one as you might do with a regular Ipod. Your options are to have the app add your whole library, and despite the Backflip's fairly large storage capacity it won't all fit on your phone so you get a somewhat random assortment, or you can create specific playlists to add. Another hitch is that for several years Itunes was the only music service to use built-in electronic copy protection. So the app will load any song you ripped from your own CDs and any song you purchased from another service, but not songs bought from Itunes during the period prior to their deciding that the policy was incredibly stupid. If Itunes songs from this era comprise the vast majority of your music you might want to go with another option.
Summary: This app is useful if you don't want to lug around both your Droid phone and an Ipod. It's especially recommended for those who have already divided their Itunes libraries into playlists, and those whose libraries are largely compiled from CDs or other free sources.
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