« Amazon.com's Product Wiki: Customers Rule |
Main
| A Hand Cranked Laptop for Students in Poor Countries »
How to Download Music to a Treo 650
If you have a Treo, it probably goes everywhere with you, right? Why not carry your music and podcasts with you by taking advantage of the phone?｢どｨび｢s storage capabilities?
Here is how it?｢どｨび｢s done:
1. SD Card: Treo 600 and 650 models (and reportedly, the yet to be released Treo 700 as well) have an SD Card slot. If you have an SD Card today, pop it out to check the size.
This is a 1GB SD Card.
This will determine how many songs you can store. An average song takes between 3-4MB of memory, so here?｢どｨび｢s an estimate of how many songs you can store based on the size of your SD card:
| SD Card Size |
Songs You Can Store |
| 16MB |
5 Songs |
| 32MB |
10 Songs |
| 64MB |
20 Songs |
| 128MB |
40 Songs |
| 256MB |
80 Songs |
| 512MB |
160 Songs |
| 1GB |
310 Songs |
| 2GB |
620 Songs |
2. SD Card Reader: Unfortunately, you can?｢どｨび｢t sync songs from your computer to your Treo phone?｢どｨび｢s SD card using Hotsync. Instead, you?｢どｨび｢ll need an SD card reader, like this one:
Stick your SD card into the reader then plug the reader into your computer. Drag your favorite songs or podcasts onto the SD card. If you have a Windows computer, the drive will likely appear as a new drive in Windows Explorer. If your computer is very new, it may have an SD card slot built in, allowing you to skip the external card reader.
3. Put your SD card back in your Treo.
4. Play the songs. Treo 650 phones come with RealPlayer pre-installed. Click on that application (you may need to change your menu?｢どｨび｢s display to ALL to find it). Treo 600 phones don?｢どｨび｢t have an MP3 player installed by default. If you don?｢どｨび｢t have one, check out Pocket Tunes.
5. Using Realplayer or Pocket Tunes (actual steps vary slightly for each program): Click Open, then select your SD card from the dropdown box on the upper-right hand corner of the screen. You should be able to see your songs. Click on the songs you?｢どｨび｢d like to play. Click OK.
6. Using headphones. While the Treo has a speaker, it?｢どｨび｢s not exactly Bose quality. Headphones will offer better quality, but there?｢どｨび｢s a catch: Treo?｢どｨび｢s do not have a normal headphone jack. You?｢どｨび｢ll need to pick up this 2.5mm to 3.5mm adapter:
Plug this into your Treo, and your favorite headphones into this.
7. Playing Treo tunes on your car stereo system. If you have a tape deck in your car you can use your car?｢どｨび｢s stereo to play the songs stored on your Treo. Just pick up a tape adapter like the one below:
If you have a tape adapter lying around your house from your portable CD player days, you?｢どｨび｢ll still need the jack adapter from step 6 to make it work with your Treo, but that?｢どｨび｢s cheaper than buying the entire adapter.
You?｢どｨび｢re done. You have now made your Treo even more useful and entertaining.
Post questions or comments below.
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.technologyevangelist.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.fcgi/10
2. Posted by: Ed Kohler on December 15, 2005 7:19 AM:
Are you syncing them to your SD card, or onto the Treo's internal memory?
If the latter, my problem with that is the limited storage on the Treo itself.
If you're syncing directly to the SD card through Hotsync, let us know how you're doing it.
3. Posted by: Vince on January 11, 2006 3:45 AM:
I've transferred mp3's to my Treo via Hotsync as well...
Just open up the palmOne Quick Install tool, then drag your mp3 files to the expansion card box and hotsync.
Admittedly, this might be slower than using a flash reader but it gets the job done.
4. Posted by: Daryl on February 16, 2006 1:18 AM:
My experiences with MP3s on my Treo 650 are somewhat erroneus.
1.) Hotsync
I'm able to Hotsync to my SD card, using the method as described by Vince. Sometimes the MP3s don't all sync over, even with plenty of space left on the SD card.
2.) Card reader
MP3s are copied to the folder named 'Audio' but the Treo seems to corrupt these files. Once the SD card is inserted into the Treo, the files are not detected by the Treo. Some are deleted and some are corrupted, no longer readable through the card reader.
I've contacted Palm about this. Their response is to check the folder I'm copying them to, but they have nothing useful to say apart from that.
I'm using 01.28 firmware and my Treo is GSM unlocked.
5. Posted by: Greg on February 19, 2006 6:30 PM:
I loaded some .mp3s to a folder on the SD card and popped it into my TREO 650. How do I get RealPlayer to recognize and play these songs. I open up RealPlayer and it says it can't find any songs. Please help.
6. Posted by: Ed Kohler on February 19, 2006 6:39 PM:
Greg, make sure the folder is called SD_Audio, RN_Audio, or AUDIO or put the files in the root directory of the SD card.
Find more info under Real Player Notes Tips and Tricks on the RealPlayer site.
7. Posted by: Jeff D on March 21, 2006 2:57 PM:
Card Export (a software package for Treo 650) allows your computer to recognize the Treo as a drive. You can then just click and drag any files you want to the card.
Costs as much as an SD reader.
8. Posted by: Ed Kohler on March 21, 2006 3:01 PM:
Thanks for the tip, Jeff. I'll check it out.
9. Posted by: Agasi on May 31, 2006 3:28 PM:
Can anyone help me? My treo 600 does not recognize any files on my SD card. It recognizes the card, but not the files.
Thank You
10. Posted by: David Watson on June 11, 2006 8:43 PM:
My Treo 650 will download to my SD card and you clearly see them on the phone itself , BUT when you go to play the song on RealPlayer on the phone, it says that it cannot share the license for the song with the computer. When I go to Real.com to install the device to Sync Licenses it does nothing therefore I cannot retrieve my music that I have legally paid for...............rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhh, frustrating!!!
Thanks for any help
11. Posted by: Courtney on February 6, 2007 6:55 PM:
Ok..I don't know if I'm just an idiot or what but I can't seem to get anything onto my treo 650 smartphone...I have a cord that goes from my phone to the computer but for some reason it won't create a connection...any suggestions?
12. Posted by: Scott Plumlee on April 24, 2007 8:06 PM:
I have a TREO 650 and I recently purchased a memory card to download music. I loaded the songs on the card, verified they were actually downloaded, and then put the card in my TREO. However I get a message telling me that there are are no playable songs found. To insert a memory card with playable songs. Well that is what I did! I even reformatted the memory card to make sure it was correct. I give up! I want to listen to my music and I don't know how to upload it onto my TREO!! Someone please help me!
13. Posted by: Kim on May 26, 2007 10:26 AM:
My Treo 650 also detects the card but when i go into real player it tells me no playable songs. I put the songs into the folder "PALM" on the sd card but they still do not open. Any help would be wonderful!
14. Posted by: kameon on June 3, 2007 1:20 AM:
I just got my Treo 650 and it has Real Audio on it. I'd like to turn my downloaded songs into ringtones...how do I do that? Is there a program?
15. Posted by: chris on June 11, 2007 4:11 AM:
kameon you can download a program called ringo to make ur songs ringtones
16. Posted by: veronika on June 13, 2007 4:07 PM:
what if i dont have an sd reader
17. Posted by: city on June 18, 2007 6:21 PM:
wen i first put my card in the treo it had to format it then wen i put it in my laptop the first folder was palm just put ur songs there dont click on "palm" just put it in the same directory "palm" is in and it should work
18. Posted by: Justin W on November 26, 2007 10:06 PM:
Thanks, for the help the adding all the files to SD_audio folder helped ALOT!!! Thanks!!
19. Posted by: Deerhunter on January 2, 2008 1:56 PM:
i can play the songs that i added to the SD Card, but when i go to the home directory and try and see what is on the card it shows nothing. i wanted to copy a couple of the songs over to make them ringtones ... is there a way to do this or is there a way to even see the files (mp3) that are on the card without seeing them in RealPlayer?
20. Posted by: sergio on April 1, 2008 6:39 PM:
hi sir ...or people out there...i need to put music on my palm1 treo 650 and i just dont know how to.....i bough the SD card and i did everything it said above me.....like making a folder that was called SD_audio and all the other things and my freaken awesome fone wont read the songs......can u help me?....if any one can, please send me an email to sergio_estrada1@yahoo.com....pliz....
21. Posted by: rebin on April 23, 2008 3:49 AM:
Can anyone help me? My treo 600 does not recognize any files on my SD card. It recognizes the card, but not the files.
tank you
22. Posted by: Trey on May 11, 2008 12:48 PM:
Well i have a treo600 or 650 and i downloaded some ringtones to my phone but it went to the real player how do i get them to be ringtones w/o using ringo bc ringo cost money
| 
1. Posted by: phil on December 14, 2005 7:18 PM:
palm desktop will sync your mp3's right on....
I do it every day!
No card reader / writer needed...