Newbie looking for help with Audiovox 5600

[lalibelle]

Hello all. I'm a newbie here and I'm apologizing in advance if I'm posting in the wrong place or asking questions that have been answered a hundred times already.

I bought an Audiovox 5600 about a month ago on ebay. I was looking for a phone that could "do it all" and this one seemed to be the best I could find without spending over $200. I've been using it with my sim card since I purchased it and it's been working great as a phone but now I'd like to learn how to tap into the bells and whistles

Basically, the phone is smarter than I am! This is my first smartphone and I have a whole lot of questions

*This phone came with WM 2003 second edition v4.21. Can I upgrade this to a later version? If so where and how?

*This is a Napster To Go approved device and I'm dying to use it as an mp3 player. I plugged it into Napster and started off trying to download just ONE song but it gave me an error reading saying that the device is already full. I used the spacemaker feature to clean out old messages and such but I can't figure out how to move my pictures off of the phone and onto the pc. I have a 1GB mini SD card installed.... should music be stored on the card or does it automatically just store on the phone?

*I wanna watch movies on the phone. From the research that I did, my understanding was that I should be able to store movies on the miniSD card and watch them on the phone with the mediaplayer. Anybody have any recommendations for an online movie vendor? Is there a better way to do it?

Okay, I know that I've revealed my terrible lack of knowledge but that's why I'm here....... thanks for any help at all and in the meantime, I'm still doing my own research to learn as much as I can.

Great site!

[Mike Temporale]

*This phone came with WM 2003 second edition v4.21. Can I upgrade this to a later version? If so where and how?

Unfortunately, No. Audiovox never released any upgrades for this phone. :(

*I wanna watch movies on the phone. From the research that I did, my understanding was that I should be able to store movies on the miniSD card and watch them on the phone with the mediaplayer. Anybody have any recommendations for an online movie vendor? Is there a better way to do it?

Check out this article that Rocco wrote a while ago. It's a good start for getting video onto your phone. http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8665

Great site!

Thanks! :mrgreen:

[onlydarksets]

*This is a Napster To Go approved device and I'm dying to use it as an mp3 player. I plugged it into Napster and started off trying to download just ONE song but it gave me an error reading saying that the device is already full. I used the spacemaker feature to clean out old messages and such but I can't figure out how to move my pictures off of the phone and onto the pc. I have a 1GB mini SD card installed.... should music be stored on the card or does it automatically just store on the phone?
Yes, songs should go on the miniSD card. I have used the 5600 with Yahoo Music with no problems. I don't know how Napster To Go works, but the Yahoo music app lists both the main memory of the phone and the storage card. Just make sure you drag your music to the storage card.

EDIT: I found a few sites that indicate it is supported, so it will probably just take some trial-and-error.

*I wanna watch movies on the phone. From the research that I did, my understanding was that I should be able to store movies on the miniSD card and watch them on the phone with the mediaplayer. Anybody have any recommendations for an online movie vendor? Is there a better way to do it?
I'm too lazy to click the link, but you can do it very easily (and freely) with DVD Decrypter (can't link, but just Google it) + PocketDivXEncoder (http://www.pocketdivxencoder.net/) (get version 0.3.96) + TCPMP (http://picard.exceed.hu/tcpmp/test/tcpmp.smartphone.0.72RC1.exe) w/ ffmpeg plug-in (http://picard.exceed.hu/tcpmp/test/ffmpeg.plugin.0.72RC1.zip).

[lalibelle]

Thanks for the links!

onlydarksets: I finally got it to work with Napster after a bit of trial-and-error like you said. Now I'm listening to my music from the phone and I love it. My husband (he still believes that cell phones are overrated) was quite impressed!

One more question. I'm currently a Cellular One subscriber and I can't access the internet at all on the phone. I called Cell One to find out what the problem was or if I just needed their isp/apn info and I was told that I would have to purchase their "smartphone plan" to the tune of an additional $45 a month. Is that normal? Does everybody require a special service plan for a smartphone? It sounds almost like the blackberry plans that you are required to buy and that was one of the main reasons that I opted NOT to go with a blackberry..... *sigh*

[subzerohf]

...One more question. I'm currently a Cellular One subscriber and I can't access the internet at all on the phone. I called Cell One to find out what the problem was or if I just needed their isp/apn info and I was told that I would have to purchase their "smartphone plan" to the tune of an additional $45 a month. Is that normal? Does everybody require a special service plan for a smartphone? It sounds almost like the blackberry plans that you are required to buy and that was one of the main reasons that I opted NOT to go with a blackberry..... *sigh*

Yep, welcome to the club. Unfortunately, we all need a data plan in order to access internet. I'm paying $40 for a measely 7mb a month. We are all slaves to our data, aren't we? :?

On the bright side, Blackberry plans are usually more expensive than a smartphone data plan, because RIM takes a cut of the fee.

[onlydarksets]

Thanks for the links!

onlydarksets: I finally got it to work with Napster after a bit of trial-and-error like you said. Now I'm listening to my music from the phone and I love it. My husband (he still believes that cell phones are overrated) was quite impressed!

One more question. I'm currently a Cellular One subscriber and I can't access the internet at all on the phone. I called Cell One to find out what the problem was or if I just needed their isp/apn info and I was told that I would have to purchase their "smartphone plan" to the tune of an additional $45 a month. Is that normal? Does everybody require a special service plan for a smartphone? It sounds almost like the blackberry plans that you are required to buy and that was one of the main reasons that I opted NOT to go with a blackberry..... *sigh*

It depends on where you are - CellOne doesn't have national rates, right? It would help to know which CellOne you are with. I know on Cingular I could get my 5600 on the internet for $20/month, or I could pay as I go.

[lalibelle]

Fabulous :roll: I should have known better than to think I could utilize technology without paying extra for the convenience. Oh well. I'm a little surprised that I didn't find anything in all of the research I did before I bought the phone but I guess that's nobody's fault but mine. I'm still happy with it. Dang raping cellular providers..... Cellular One is terrible, too.

onlydarksets: Cell One DOES have national rates but I think I'm switching carriers so I guess it doesn't matter at the moment. I'm in Alaska and we have only very limited carrier options up here but I'm going to give one of the other area carriers a try. I've had it with Cell One's customer service.