The Two Inch View

Qtek 8500 as a Music Player: The Hardware

August 2nd, 2006 Jason Dunn

[yes, that really is a Bangles song on my phone! ;-)]

I’ve been using the Qtek 8500 (a.k.a. HTC Str Trk) as a digital audio player the past few weeks, and have a few thoughts on the experience. Overall, it’s been a mixed bag: in some ways, the experience has been excellent, but in other ways I found it frustrating compared to the Zen Vision:M I’d normally be using for listening to music. Certainly, a converged music player is bound to have compromises, and depending on the scenarios in which you’re using the Qtek 8500 as a music player, some of these may or may not affect you.

Let’s start with the pluses: the ultra-slender profile of the phone makes it much more pocket-friendly than an average audio player, and the obvious advantage of a converged device is that you’re only carrying one device with you. It easily fits in the front pocket of my pants, and the headphones don’t take up much space either. The importance of this can’t be stressed enough: if you like to travel light, using a single device for your music, phone, email, Web, organization, and gaming needs is unbeatable.

Audio quality is better than expected - there was no hissing, buzzing, or popping that I could discern. That’s a good sign, because quite often in device such as this the tightly-packed electronics can cause interference resulting in noisy audio. Unfortunately, the lack of choice in headphones prevents me from really digging into how the audio sounds (more on that below).

The player buttons on the outside of the phone, along with the small LCD screen, make for a quick and easy way to access music. It’s great being able to skip from song to song without having to open up the phone, and because the buttons are of a decent size and front-mounted, they’re easy to use by touch rather than sight.

Some of the down-sides of the hardware include the choice by HTC to use microSD (which now tops out at 2 GB) means that you may not have enough storage for the music you want to take with you. As I pointed out in my Sandisk 1 GB microSD card review, with quality set to 128 kbps WMA, I could fit 260 songs. If you’re used to smaller Flash-based players, this limit might not be a problem. If you’re used to larger hard drive-based players with 30 or 60 GB capacity, carrying only 1 or 2 GB of music might be a serious limitation. As microSD card capacity grows, this limitation lessens, though it’s unlikely we’ll see microSD cards bigger than 2 GB that will be compatible with the Qtek 8500 - the 4 GB SD cards require a new type of SD card reader, meaning all older hardware is incompatible with this new format.

The choice to use USB 1.1 rather than USB 2.0 means that music transfers are s-l-o-w. I did some testing and transfers speeds clocked in at a glacial 370 KB per second. That means to load up a 1 GB memory card it will take around 45 minutes, and that’s if you’re doing a direct transfer and not transcoding it to a lower bit rate. That’s not a big problem if you have to do it once, but if you’re constantly refreshing your music, that time drain adds up. And because the microSD card slot is underneath the SIM card, it’s not fast or easy to access.

Perhaps the single most frustrating aspect of using the Qtek 8500 as a music player was the fact that I had no choice but to use the included headphones. The only port on the phone is the flat USB-type connector, one that is new on HTC devices. The port is for charging, synchronizing, and audio. So that meant that I was unable to use my Shure E2C headphones, which sound fantastic. Headphone quality is another point of discussion I’ll save for another day, but suffice it to say that the included headphones aren’t the best sounding or feeling. The ear buds are standard “fit in your ear” types, not anything that fits deep inside your ear canal, so they fall out easily. They lack any covering, so they get waxy quickly, and do not create a seal in your ear - meaning at loud volumes everyone around you can hear your music. The headphones are designed with the right headphone cable being long enough to fit behind your neck. There’s a volume slider that sits at chest height, and it includes a hands-free microphone and a single-button push to pick up a call. Pressing and holding the button will allow you to use the included voice activation software.

What I’m hoping for is an adapter that would allow a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack to plug into this HTC flat USB port, but I haven’t seen or heard of any such thing yet. In fact, I’m awaiting responses from HTC to questions about this very issue - they’ll be published at Smartphone Thoughts. If this special port was created by HTC for their own use it may be difficult (and expensive) for other companies to make compatible cables.

Battery life is an issue that I haven’t had a chance to test yet - I’ll be charging the battery fully, looping the 128 kbps WMAs on the memory card, and measuring how long the phone will play for (look for that later this week). Converged devices are always at a disadvantage when it comes to battery life, because they need to continue working in other capacities when you’re done listening to music.

So would I use the Qtek 8500 as my one and only media player? At this stage, probably not. I prefer to carry a great deal more music with me for variety, and the slowness of the music transfer means I wouldn’t want to swap out the music very often. The main issue for me are the headphones - I’d really prefer to use my own headphones, and not the awkward and uncomfortable ones provided. I think the Qtek 8500 makes a great back-up digital audio player, but it doesn’t quite match up with my needs. Now the Toshiba Gigabeat S on the other hand, that might do the trick…

Entry Filed under: Opinions, Smartphone