I bought a copy of VirtualRadio for my Nokia N90. At the time I thought it would be killer to have a shoutcast client on my phone. I don’t listen to mp3’s on my phone (I have an iPod for that), but the iPod can’t stream bassdrive, my background music of choice for slinging code. At $10, I figured it was worth a try partly for the novelty of it actually working, and partly to help justify the costs of my unlimited mobile data plan.

In the paragraph above I did say “at the time” it was a good idea. Turns out that the novelty wore off real quick. The problem is that you need to use a really low quality stream when pulling audio over GPRS (the fastest data option I have with T-Mobile in the States), and low quality audio doesn’t work well for Drum-and-Bass since the “bass” part tends to vanish in the compression. Imagine listening to d-n-b on a mono AM clock-radio stuffed in a pringles can, and you’re pretty close to the sound quality.

VirtualRadio does seem to be a fairly nice application though… except for one minor problem: it stops playing music if you close the flip, if it’s in the background, or if the screensaver comes on. That means you can’t put the N90 in your pocket while you listen to music, and you have to change your screensaver timing while listening as well.

On the bright side, I’ve shared my complaints with a few other mobile industry folks I know, and through that I’ve learned about a couple more shoutcast-on-symbian projects that sound promising. The newer apps may not help the low-bandwith situation, but they could be a viable option for 3G and WiFi phones.

[Update: 2006-04-18]
Nokia has released Internet Radio for S60. This is an open source streaming music client (ie., Shoutcast), which just so happens to be one of the “shoutcast-on-symbian” projects I was referring to. Unfortunately, the code is for S60 3rd Ed., which isn’t compatible with my N90.