About two months ago I was fully assimilated into all things Google with the purchase of an Android phone, specifically a Samsung Moment. Overall the upgrade has been very smooth, opening up a whole new (to me) world of mobile communication options. One thing that was initially elusive to track down, was how to sync podcasts and music from a PC to the phone. This post contains the key elements of making it work, to maybe save others some time.
Initially, connecting the phone to a PC produced absolutely no action no the PC side. All my home PC's are various Linux distros so I thought that might be a problem, but attempting on a WinXP box produced the same results. While the following steps defy logic at some level, they are the only known - and repeatable - solution I've discovered:
- Select: Menu / Settings / Application settings / Development / USB debugging
- Toggle USB debugging on, then back to off. Reboot the phone. Connect the phone to the PC.
- The notification bar will show "USB Connected". Select the notice, then choose "Mount"
- The phone will now be available as a 2GB removable drive on the PC
At this point the SD card is mounted, but no music player (Rythmbox, Banshee, Windows Media Player, etc.) will recognize the device. The final puzzle piece is to place the a file named .is_audio_file at the root of the mounted drive. I found a site with documentation on the file format, and using it as a guide, created the following configuration which seems to work well.
audio_folders=music/,media/
folder_depth=2
output_formats=audio/mpeg,audio/ogg,audio/x-ms-wma,audio/wav,audio/x-aac
cover_art_file_type=bmp
cover_art_file_name=cover.bmp
cover_art_size=100
The music/ directory was created just to keep it separate from the media/ directory which was present already. Sync will only use the first directory in the list. Additional entries will allow the PC side player to search all supported media on the SD card. One last tech note - make sure to do a software eject / unmount before on the PC, then turn off USB storage on the phone, before disconnecting your phone when all sync'ing is done!
A few caveats though. Rythmbox shows the device simply as "2.0 GB Filesystem" while Banshee identifies it as "SAMSUNG_Android". Also, the cover_art settings above are effectively ignored as cover art transfer is a known problem with Android. There seems to be some online consensus that a paid app named "Album Art Grabber" will correct the problem, but I haven't tried it personally. Lastly playlists will not transfer as such, but must be recreated on the phone itself - not so good.
That sounds like a substantial list, but to stay current with a few podcast subscriptions and have a relatively small music collection for use during commutes, it works well enough. Those wanting to sync a more substantial collection or that would prefer a more complete experience may disagree.
As stated at the start, there is relatively little info available on this specific phone regarding sync features. The tech support for the carrier wasn't particularly helpful either. If anyone has a better configuration or complete solution for the Samsung Moment, particularly in Linux, feel free to post a comment.
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