Hi! Can anyone recommend a mobile phone, old or new, that has good battery life (3 or 4 days between charges) that can also record decent audio?? I don't mean anything close to hi-def.... but many, if not most, phones distort into disgusting blibs and blobs if you capture so much as vocal and guitar. My last phone (a Sony Ericsson W810i) wasn't bad, but it recently broke and I'd like to replace it with something better. I used it habitually to record song ideas and to help me remember tunes in old-time sessions etc....

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
Thanks!!!!!
Tony

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An obvious answer, but the range of recording Apps for the iPhone make it a perfectly usable tool for odd bits of recording. If you add in the range of audio/mic pack thingys you can plug it into (and now Midi controllers) it really is a seriously useful piece of kit. The internal mic isn't bad either (although obviously not high def).
It's biggest weakness.... battery life is SHOCKING.

Are you kidding me 3-4 day between charges. Dude, when you find that our oil dependency will be over.

Quote luislo:

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Are you kidding me 3-4 day between charges. Dude, when you find that our oil dependency will be over.

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yup, you're lucky to get a day out of an iphone under normal use let alone sucking up audio

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hmmm I think maybe one of the replies got mixed up with my original question lol. I know iPhones and other smartphones are heavy on battery, but that's why I say 'old or new' - my ancient Sony w810i easily lasted 3-4 days between charges, because it wasn't a Smartphone. Don't really need a smartphone, just something to record decent audio memos at high enough bitrate to discern what's going on in a room full of jamming musicians lol Not going to release to album or anything!!

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the issue really, is that all mobile phone Mics and onboard electronics, overload at pathetically low volumes..... leading to the distorted crackly glibs and globs .... this is even true of the iphone, ( although slightly less so than some)

however the iPhone, has the ability to have external mics, pre-amps and AD/DA , connected to it... something very few other such devices can do... simply because of product availability.....

for example IK multimedia make a complete mic package to connect to it....

and there are entire DAW applications available to make use of it....

making the phone, a flexible , portable, multitrack recorder.....


there ARE apps available for android phones, but what i've not seen is things like the IK multimedia Mic, and Guitar interfaces, and so on....


or iAudiointerface2 , for that matter..... which for the professional, looks likely to be a show stealer....

I should probably have added to my first post: although iPhones are an obvious choice and in all likelihood would do the best job there's no way this side of the Apocalypse I'm able to afford one.

But thanks for you suggestions.... what about the battery life thing... I rely on just slinging my phone in my pocket and can't adjust to having to be constantly watchful of the battery indicator... I know as I'm borrowing my gf's smart phone at this very minute lol. So about some older phones I could pick up cheap on ebay?? I know some do it better than others as my previous phone was the best I'd come across.

T

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ive got a 4 track app for my samsung galaxy called fourtracks pro, you can record upto 44.1khz as wav or mp3, also got a few nice stereo apps i think one is called tape machine theres lots of android apps out there if your not an apply fanboi

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Quote luislo:

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Are you kidding me 3-4 day between charges. Dude, when you find that our oil dependency will be over.

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Perhaps sooner than you think : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanowire_battery

Back to recording stuff, saw these this morning : http://www.fostexinternational.com/docs/products/HP-P1.shtml & http://www.fostexinternational.com/docs/products/AR-4i.shtml

Not really an answer, just they were at the forefront of my mind when reading this.

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What you want doesnt really exist at the moment, older phones have better batteries but tend to record poorly, smartphones can record in better quality with better mic capabilities but poor battery life.



IMHO, get a phone to be a phone, then get a portable field recorder for your other pocket.

Something like a Zoom H2 will suit your needs.




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Hexadecimal binary coding anyone?

Hi thanks all for your suggestions. Really helpful.

I too have found some interesting recording apps for my GFs ex android (not my GF's Ex's Android, that would feel somewhat tainted lol, I mean just her old phone). I have to say, I didn't think I would but I'm getting into these new fangled smart phones. A tiny app I found called Tape-a-Talk allows me to record up to 16/44.1 wav and all the increments below. While the file size tends to get massive the results sound pretty awesome compared to what I'm used to - way good enough for reference recordings - and I can experiment with quality verses size later on, together with investing in an 8gb sd card!

I have also debranded it and installed a custom stable rom which, together with a free app called Juice defender lets me control the CPU frequency and extend the battery life an awful lot.

Interesting stuff.

The phone itself is a San Francisco/ZTE Blade Gen. 1, now running froyo 2.2 Swedish Spring and the site I went to for help was http://sanfranciscoandroid.co.uk/. An amazing resource.

So I may stick with the smart phone for a while after all!! lol
Thanks to you all,
Tony

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Thanks for that.
Trying fourtracks and a couple of others - better than the native app.
Now to see if there is a way to hook to an external mike.
(using HTC Desire HD)

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