So that's left me the choice between Android (Sumsung Galaxy SIII) or Windows Phone 8. (Nokia Lumia 820/920)
Trouble is, there's one thing Apple does best and it's because they invented it. When it comes to mobile music, iPods set the standard and everyone else has been playing catch-up ever since.
Oh, even with iPods I tried to resist. But nothing comes close to iTunes as method of managing your music library. The way iTunes keeps track of what you've played, how often and when so you can create "smart playlists" giving you fresh music every time you sync your device is sheer genius.
I've always considered the iPhone to be an iPod first and a phone second. So it's only logical to assume when it comes to music, the Lumia and the Galaxy have a way to go, right? Well maybe not quite as far as you might think.
Since microSD cards have been available with significant storage capacity, I've been filling them up with music to play out of my handset. Even before I had a smart phone, I was using my old Nokia Classic 2730 as a mobile music machine, although getting the songs in and out of it was never an entirely straight-forward process. It still isn't, but it's getting there.
Let's start with the finished product and work backwards. Obviously, both the Galaxy S3 and the Lumias have music players installed as standard, and you can choose any number of alternatives on their respective app stores. Both allow you to play your collection pretty much the way you're used to, you can create and select play-lists, shuffle, repeat all of that. The Lumias allow you to pin individual Artists, Playlists, Albums and Songs to your start screen so you can play them with one touch. I couldn't figure out how to do that with the Galaxy's default music player, although there is a widget you can drag onto your home screen that shows you what's playing and has basic play/stop/next track controls.
The cool thing about the Lumias is a very similar widget appears whenever you push one of the volume control buttons - even if you're only on the lock screen, so turning your music on, off or skipping a track is only a couple of button pushes away.
What's the sound like? That's a hard one. Although my job involves listening to stuff all day, I'm not actually massively fussy when it comes to things like speaker quality. In saying that, I would never choose to listen to music through my phone's little speakers, not when you can just plug it into the nearest stereo or set of headphones. But if I did, the Samsung has a slightly livelier sound, while the Nokia squeezes a little more bass out somehow. I'd call that even - although, like I say, why would you ever listen that way? Both phones have preset and customisable EQ controls available, although they're a bit harder to find on the Lumia - you have to go out of the music player and into Settings to find them, but once you get there you can choose Dolby noise reduction and something called Audio Levelling as well.
This last feature's quite groovy, because there's always been a disparity in volume between my old songs and my new ones - Audio Levelling seems to even that out.
So in terms of just playing the music, the Nokia Lumias sound a bit better, are easier to control, but the EQ settings are more accessible on the Galaxy.
How about the radio? I'm not talking about streaming radio over the net, any WiFi device can do that. There's a great FM radio on the Galaxy - again, there's a widget you can drag onto your home screen to access it instantly, just plug in your headphones and away you go. Bad news for Lumia fans, though... NO RADIO AT ALL! Given I work at a radio station, this seems like the dumbest thing ever, especially since the old Lumia 800 had a perfectly good radio on it. Where's it gone? Apparently, nowhere. The radio hardware is rumoured to be installed in the Lumia 820s and 920s, Microsoft simply hasn't turned the software on yet. Just bizarre. I can only hope they sort this out in a future update, but who knows?
Now let's back-track to actually getting the music onto the phone... how hard could it be? On the bright side, both Android and Microsoft seem too have conceded most people would prefer to sync their iTunes playlists onto their phones, rather than mucking around with yet another media manager program. Previous Windows Phone users had to use Zune to sync their phones - not a terrible application by any means, but still not iTunes and trying to keep playlists synced between iTunes and Zune required a lot of cumbersome double handling.
With Windows Phone 8, Microsoft have streamlined the whole process dramatically - there's a very stripped-down utility that automatically loads either your iTunes or Windows Media Player libraries, and from there you can choose which playlists (including Smart Playlists) you want to transfer to your phone. Just one trap for young players: If you're planning on storing your music to SD card in the Lumia 820, I'd advise you to start with a clean slate. Format the card and install it BEFORE you do any syncing. Everything got a bit confused for me when I decided to change where I was storing my songs after a few days, and I ended up having to reset the whole phone to sort it all out. Not an issue for the Lumia 920 of course - it doesn't need an SD card due to it's ample 32gb internal storage.
On the other hand, when it comes to syncing, I've found the Glaxaxy SIII to be a complete nightmare. For starters, there are 2 different utilities available; Easy Phone Sync and Kies. Easy Phone Sync looks a bit like the Windows Phone program, but instead of syncing from iTunes itself, it seems to use information from whatever backup was created the last time you synced your iPod, which isn't that useful.
Kies is much more comprehensive, but I couldn't connect to it via my USB cable and had to sync wirelessly instead. While that SOUNDS like a cool idea, if you're trying to transfer any decent amount of music at all it takes HOURS, and inevitably something will interfere with your connection when you're 82% complete and you'll have to start all over again. Maybe other Samsung users have had better success with different computers running different operating systems, all I know is I've wasted many hours of my summer trying to keep my Galaxy synced with very limited results.
To be honest, there's really not much difference between these phones when it comes to getting music out of them, but because I found it so damn hard to get my music INTO the Samsung Galaxy, Nokia Lumia would easily have to be my first choice. Now if we could just get that radio working...
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