Cell phone accessories for my teen

My 15-year-old has a no-frills Pantech cell phone. I paid $30 for it about a year ago. She picked it out because she liked the keyboard for texting, it was easy to use and it was in mom’s price range.

My 13-year-old bought herself an iPhone last year. I agreed to the monthly fee (about $10 more per month than her sister’s phone) if she purchased the actual phone. The reasoning behind the iPhone purchase was that L. wanted an iTouch. But after some research found out that the iPhone was actually a cheaper option and it had more functionality. L. has been very happy with her iPhone and uses it not only for it’s talking and texting capabilities but also for the iPod and various apps.

G. could have cared less about an iPhone last year. She is not overly impressed with apps (not enough to give up her keyboard). But after seeing her sister’s use of the iPod functionality, she’s been a bit envious of it (even though G. has a separate mp3 player device that has a radio function as well).

G. did some research on her Pantech phone and found it was possible to download music to it. The catch was that she needed some accessories.

First on her accessory list was a pair of headphones. Her Pantech does not have a regular headphone jack. G. found headphones compatible with her Pantech phone on Amazon for under $10.

Then she looked for a USB cable to connect her phone to the computer so she could download music. She found a review on Amazon that suggested another approach but she was confused by the suggestion. I stepped in and sifted through her phone's specific features and options and found that what she needed was not a USB cable, but a mini SD card with standard SD card adaptor. It too was under $10.

I thought the $18 price tag for both items (including shipping) was a reasonable amount of money to invest for a phone "upgrade" and I bought them for her.

I don’t have much experience with mini SD cards but it was simple to use. The mini card came in a larger adapter card (it looks like a standard size SD card you use in a camera). I plugged it in to my SD card reader slot on my laptop and it prompted me to open to view it’s files. Then G. chose some mp3 tracks from my machine and dragged and dropped them on to the card. Then she pulled the mini card out of the adapter and slipped it in to her phone.

The mini card goes in to the base slot in her phone. To add more music to the card, she simply pops out the card, puts it in the adapter, puts that in to my laptop's card reader then drags and drops mp3 files on to it.

This music interface is not as easy as her sister’s iPhone but the end result works. She now can add music to her phone and listen anytime she’d like. No need to tote around two different devices all the time.

The one snafu in making her phone a music player was iTunes. L. has downloaded a variety of music for her iPhone (thanks to iTunes gift cards last Christmas). Unfortunately iTunes does not allow their purchased music to be played on an "unauthorized" device. G. was out of luck in downloading some of her sister’s music on her mini-SD card. That annoys me because it’s legally purchased music that should be able to be used for personal use on a non-Apple device.

We had to do some more creative thinking for G. to get some of the music she wanted on her phone.

Fino and I have a bunch of CDs from the 80s (mostly "alternative") as well as a smattering of 90s and 00s. But it’s a sparse collection (we're more audio book types these days). G. and I had an amusing conversation after she went through the collection and chose a handful of tracks. Her choices included some Grammy Nominee compilations, some Broadway musicals and one early 90s techno song by KLF. It's quite an eclectic mix. I expounded on the awesomeness of Depeche Mode and even explained how good they were in live concert. She failed to see the light on this and many of the other 80s bands I suggested but decided to add KLF to her playlist to "give it a try." The musical debate reflecting our generational gap was all in good teasing fun for both of us.

When we put our minds to more seriously looking for music download options, we decided to try Amazon’s new mp3 cloud player. We purchased a song and downloaded it from my account’s cloud to my desktop. Then I dragged and dropped it on to her mini SD card. It worked like a charm on her phone.

My learnings about creating a multi-tasking phone without buying a new one are:

A little creative thinking can usually come up with a solution to expand your less expensive cell phone's capabilities. 

Read the reviews of your phone product because these people also have experience using your phone. Sometimes there are ideas for a different way to make a feature work. An accessory purchase can be a lot cheaper than a whole new phone and especially nice when you really like the phone anyway. 

Amazon sells a ton of accessories for cell phones at a fraction of the cost of the cell phone stores.

I'm not too happy with iTunes right now and wonder where others buy their mp3 downloads? Or do you still buy CDs and add them to your computer's music library?