Syncing to a smartphone is driving me crazy.

[hal55]

Have very recently purchased my first smartphone, a Lenovo K3 Note running the Lenovo Vibe version of Android. It's a Chinese build, set to English language, and before you laugh it's a killer phone. Have worked everything out BUT this whole syncing thing is doing my head in. My music files are on two laptops, one a lenovo running Windows 10, the other an ex school laptop running Vista which actually works great as a media server to a DAC. NOTHING, though, will make any of the devices talk to each other, even a Samsung Galaxy Tab A won't connect to it although the smartphone seems to recognize the Tab A.
I've tried Windows Media player (which I've always hated) mediamonkey has been installed on both the laptops and the smartphone and still syncing won't work. Is there a dead simple app I can put on the phone and laptop to allow both to see each other and just transfer files direct to the phones SD card via cable? The whole wireless media transfer thing has never worked well in our house (don't get me started on Chromecast - useless thing can't handle a data rate higher than 240p which makes the picture look rubbish) and I'm very happy to just download or rip on a PC then transfer to the phone, which worked a treat with the Tab a but won't work with the smartphone since the thing's storage just isn't recognized by them.
Or maybe I should just root the phone (in Australia that expression has hilarious sexual overtones) and put stock Android on it without the Lenovo Vibe overlay?

help!!!!! (please)

Hal55

[struth]

Perhaps something like media server might do job. Sure there will be others

[Rothchild]

Android has a connection setting thing where you can tell it what you want it to do when you plug your phone in via usb (eg: charge only, use as drive, sync with app etc) perhaps that's just set to 'charge only' or something, so it's not releasing the sd card to be mounted by the PC. On my phone it's in 'settings / connect to pc'

[mikmas]

Presume you've already tried Samsung Kies ... It's fairly crap but I use it to sync my Samsung tab and transfer media files on a
PC, dunno if it would recognise the Lenovo though but worth a try if nothing else helps

[Mark Grant]

Android has a connection setting thing where you can tell it what you want it to do when you plug your phone in via usb (eg: charge only, use as drive, sync with app etc) perhaps that's just set to 'charge only' or something, so it's not releasing the sd card to be mounted by the PC. On my phone it's in 'settings / connect to pc'

That's what I was thinking, the SD card will be 'locked' until the correct mode is chosen on the phone settings, my HTC one asks each time I plug in it by USB.

[Mark Grant]

Or maybe I should just root the phone (in Australia that expression has hilarious sexual overtones)

help!!!!! (please)

Hal55

You need to mount the SD card ;) hopefully mounting is not as bad as rooting in Australia.:)

http://www.wikihow.com/Mount-an-SD-Card

http://www.digitaltrends.com/android/how-to-access-and-browse-an-android-sd-card-on-windows/

https://support.google.com/android-one/answer/6088895?hl=en-GB

You should be able to browse the card from your PC just the same as a hard drive in your PC if it is mounted correctly.

When you have finished don't forget to unmount :)

[hal55]

"Root" from the Australian Slang Dictionary:
"Root (verb and noun) : synonym for **** in nearly all its senses: "I feel rooted"; "this washing machine is rooted"; "(s)he's a good root". A very useful word in fairly polite company.
Root rat : somebody who is constantly looking for sex.
Wombat : somebody who eats, roots and leaves (see also root)"

Hence the hilarity when used in the context of a mobile phone. Back to the problem at hand, I've tried everything and have reached the stage where Mediamonkey actually reads the album titles on my laptop and displays them, but will still stubbornly not transfer the entire music file over, instead giving me, every time, the annoying message "everything is in sync". It was only this morning that Windows Firewall finally came up with the message that it was blocking access to the PC, but even then allowing access did nothing. I can't even use drag and drop into the phones SD card since the laptop just won't see it. It's as though the "Vibe" overlay Lenovo uses over Android is confusing everything.
I'm arranging to have the phone rooted, get rid of Vibe and put stock Android on. Hopefully this will finally solve problems and everything will start happily talking to each other. There is a forum here in Australia which has over 80 pages devoted to the K3 Note (not bad for a phone not even officially sold here) and the bulk of the postings refer to the lousy operating system and changing it. Great phone, but what lenovo were thinking putting Vibe on it I don't know.

Hal55

[WAD62]

Sounds like you need a windows usb driver for your phone, later versions of android won't expose the SD drive as was previously available...

The other option is to buy an OTG cable and use a USB stick to port music files to the phone, using a file manager app...

This is assuming that your phone has USB host capabilities, most recent ones should have this functionality

[hal55]

Thanks, sounds good advice. I'll see how everything goes after the phone is rooted next week.

Hal55

[hal55]

Well, everything is okay now but it took getting rid of the lousy malware, bloatware ridden operating system to do it. I now have a Frankenstein type phone, a lenovo that thinks it's a Nexus running a modified Nexus OP by "Dr Root". Despite all that it now runs like a dream, and plugging it into the laptop it installed a bunch of files automatically and the phone then appeared in the "Send To" drop down box. Music files transferred over to the SD card correctly and play without problem.
I have Onkyo's HF player installed but oddly, I'm battling to like it over the stock Nexus player. Very detailed sounding, but it just strikes me as being a bit mechanical sounding, not at all lyrical. Any recommendations for clean, detailed yet warm and lyrical player that I can download and try out? Happy to pay for a good player, but would prfer a free trial to start, and must be able to play FLAC files, not that very many will go on the player, they take up too much space.

Hal55

[dave2010]

Glad it seems to be sorted now. From the header I thought the thread was going to be about syncing other data, such as email, contacts, calendars, which for me is topical as a friend rang me yesterday wanting to do that with a new phone, linking via gmail to an apple iOS system, wo as to migrate a contact liste (large enough) from one system to another. When mrs d was faced with this some while back it took her a couple of days to figure it out, and I kept well clear.

Later on my friend emailed to say that he'd more or less given up (and hates apple kit, which I don't - most days) but had managed to get about 90% of the contact list transferred to the phone from an old PC which almost certainly was running Win XP - or maybe even MSDOS or NT or Win 2000 (remember those?) as he hates updating his kit and systems.

Also slightly topical, some solultions for syncing problems go via external cloud storage "solutions" - and seeing the fall out (or not) from the current TalkTalk debacle, I'm getting even less keen on sending out information about my/our activities, even if it is only what track of an album I'm currently listening to.

Obviously some people like to do "everything" with their mobile phontes, but last year having been given a Sony smartphone, and later a watch to go with it, I'm sorry to say that I more or less gave up on the smartphone idea. My particualr model has so little memory, and the android system is so badly constructred that although I put in a modest sized SDHC card, the **** thing doesn't use it, and the in built memory is too small. I did figure out how to transfer files from a Mac OS system, which enabled me to watch one TV film on holiday (which was OK), but then the thing didn't release memory properly - not that it really matters anyway. It took so much faffing about that it would have been easier to take a few books, or perhaps my old iPod to listen to music. I did in fact take an iPad on holiday for music.

The end result is that I still use the old Sony Ericsson phone I've had for maybe ten years now, and I don't try to listen to music on phones of any sort. Basically I never really liked any form of mobile phone, which obviously puts me in the oldie luddite category, and I can live reaonsbly well without worrying about systems which were never really intended for high quality sound anyway. However, I did get Bluetooth working, so I can play the very limited number of tracks which I put on the SDHC card via Bluetooth loudspeakers or Bluetooth headphones. That reminds me another question - "Is it possible to send Left and Right sound channels to two separate Bluetooth speakers from a device such as a mobile phone?" As far as I can see it's only possible to send both L and R to a so-called stereo loudspeaker, rather than sending the channels separately and simultaneously to two different Bluetooth loudspeakers.

Re the Smartwatch - it's quite nice, but the battery runs down every 2 days, and it has limited functionality. I can turn on the very few music tracks on the phone from the watch, and providing the phone is actually switched on and picking up a signal, I can even locate the phone from the watch if it gets lost. Note - this is more or less useless, as it won't work if the phone battery runs down, or if it switches off, or goes into some form of standby mode - which it almost always does within an hour or so, so you need to know where the phone is in order to make sure its battery is fully charged, and to make sure the wifi and Bluetooth connections are turned on. I'm not quite senile enough yet to always forget where these things are within an hour of last using them.

The nicest thing about the Smartwatch is the alarm clock, whcih mostly works independently of the phone. Sometimes they get out of sync, and the NFC feature may have to be invoked, or more frequently a brute force manual intervention involving turning all the comms links back on, and then trying to resync the phone and watch.

I have had other watches which have regular batteries which normally run for a year. Go on - call me Luddite - though I did just turn the phone on to find out what model it is - a Sony Xperia - the one with hardly any useful memory - and I did briefly glance at the BBC news! I save money by not using it most of the time.

[WAD62]

Well, everything is okay now but it took getting rid of the lousy malware, bloatware ridden operating system to do it. I now have a Frankenstein type phone, a lenovo that thinks it's a Nexus running a modified Nexus OP by "Dr Root". Despite all that it now runs like a dream, and plugging it into the laptop it installed a bunch of files automatically and the phone then appeared in the "Send To" drop down box. Music files transferred over to the SD card correctly and play without problem.
I have Onkyo's HF player installed but oddly, I'm battling to like it over the stock Nexus player. Very detailed sounding, but it just strikes me as being a bit mechanical sounding, not at all lyrical. Any recommendations for clean, detailed yet warm and lyrical player that I can download and try out? Happy to pay for a good player, but would prfer a free trial to start, and must be able to play FLAC files, not that very many will go on the player, they take up too much space.

Hal55
For Android try 'PowerAmp', plays FLAC, supports ReplayGain, both album and track, comes with a free trial, and is about £3...:)

[hal55]

Thanks, did in fact try Poweramp this evening and like it. Music has presence and impact instead of just detail and, well, more detail while managing to sound unmusical if that's a word. The lenovo is in fact a hell of a good music player, partnered with VJay headphones it's a delight to listen to, the Flac files played perfectly and I can see myself being very happy with it now that the wretched OS has been despatched and a capable music player installed.
It did however give me more than enough grief getting to this stage, I agree with Dave that it can indeed be all too much.

Thanks,

Hal55

[struth]

Glad it seems to be sorted now. From the header I thought the thread was going to be about syncing other data, such as email, contacts, calendars, which for me is topical as a friend rang me yesterday wanting to do that with a new phone, linking via gmail to an apple iOS system, wo as to migrate a contact liste (large enough) from one system to another. When mrs d was faced with this some while back it took her a couple of days to figure it out, and I kept well clear.

Later on my friend emailed to say that he'd more or less given up (and hates apple kit, which I don't - most days) but had managed to get about 90% of the contact list transferred to the phone from an old PC which almost certainly was running Win XP - or maybe even MSDOS or NT or Win 2000 (remember those?) as he hates updating his kit and systems.

Also slightly topical, some solultions for syncing problems go via external cloud storage "solutions" - and seeing the fall out (or not) from the current TalkTalk debacle, I'm getting even less keen on sending out information about my/our activities, even if it is only what track of an album I'm currently listening to.

Obviously some people like to do "everything" with their mobile phontes, but last year having been given a Sony smartphone, and later a watch to go with it, I'm sorry to say that I more or less gave up on the smartphone idea. My particualr model has so little memory, and the android system is so badly constructred that although I put in a modest sized SDHC card, the **** thing doesn't use it, and the in built memory is too small. I did figure out how to transfer files from a Mac OS system, which enabled me to watch one TV film on holiday (which was OK), but then the thing didn't release memory properly - not that it really matters anyway. It took so much faffing about that it would have been easier to take a few books, or perhaps my old iPod to listen to music. I did in fact take an iPad on holiday for music.

The end result is that I still use the old Sony Ericsson phone I've had for maybe ten years now, and I don't try to listen to music on phones of any sort. Basically I never really liked any form of mobile phone, which obviously puts me in the oldie luddite category, and I can live reaonsbly well without worrying about systems which were never really intended for high quality sound anyway. However, I did get Bluetooth working, so I can play the very limited number of tracks which I put on the SDHC card via Bluetooth loudspeakers or Bluetooth headphones. That reminds me another question - "Is it possible to send Left and Right sound channels to two separate Bluetooth speakers from a device such as a mobile phone?" As far as I can see it's only possible to send both L and R to a so-called stereo loudspeaker, rather than sending the channels separately and simultaneously to two different Bluetooth loudspeakers.

Re the Smartwatch - it's quite nice, but the battery runs down every 2 days, and it has limited functionality. I can turn on the very few music tracks on the phone from the watch, and providing the phone is actually switched on and picking up a signal, I can even locate the phone from the watch if it gets lost. Note - this is more or less useless, as it won't work if the phone battery runs down, or if it switches off, or goes into some form of standby mode - which it almost always does within an hour or so, so you need to know where the phone is in order to make sure its battery is fully charged, and to make sure the wifi and Bluetooth connections are turned on. I'm not quite senile enough yet to always forget where these things are within an hour of last using them.

The nicest thing about the Smartwatch is the alarm clock, whcih mostly works independently of the phone. Sometimes they get out of sync, and the NFC feature may have to be invoked, or more frequently a brute force manual intervention involving turning all the comms links back on, and then trying to resync the phone and watch.

I have had other watches which have regular batteries which normally run for a year. Go on - call me Luddite - though I did just turn the phone on to find out what model it is - a Sony Xperia - the one with hardly any useful memory - and I did briefly glance at the BBC news! I save money by not using it most of the time.

Yeah i dont do anything smart with mine either as it aint as smart as it thinks. Had a smartwatch too but it played up after a week and went back (a xmas pressie)
I use tapatalk and make calls..use the alarm and calander. Email and take pics as it has a decent camera. Thats about it.

Re poweramp you apparently can use it on a pc using an emulator too although not tried. I did use it for a while years ago but wasnt impressed..sure its improved though.

[Audio Advent]

Glad it seems to be sorted now. From the header I thought the thread was going to be about syncing other data, such as email, contacts, calendars, which for me is topical as a friend rang me yesterday wanting to do that with a new phone, linking via gmail to an apple iOS system, wo as to migrate a contact liste (large enough) from one system to another. When mrs d was faced with this some while back it took her a couple of days to figure it out, and I kept well clear.


I was going to be a pedant and point out in the same way that syncing means syncronising two things so they move/work in unison, like the english means e.g. syncronised swimming. So in a mobile phone context would mean that any file, email, message changes etc on one device would also make changes on the second device too.

This is just simply setting up a communication line to transfer files.

[WAD62]

Yeah i dont do anything smart with mine either as it aint as smart as it thinks. Had a smartwatch too but it played up after a week and went back (a xmas pressie)
I use tapatalk and make calls..use the alarm and calander. Email and take pics as it has a decent camera. Thats about it.

Re poweramp you apparently can use it on a pc using an emulator too although not tried. I did use it for a while years ago but wasnt impressed..sure its improved though.

Poweramp is much improved these days, the only drawback is that it doesn't support USB audio out...

If you want to use your android device with an android compatible USB DAC, try USB Audio Player PRO, which is about £5, and works perfectly with an OTG cable...providing your device has USB host capabilities. ;)

P.S. If you're going to get into FLAC on your mobile it's well worth investing in a 128GB micro SDHC card...I've got 353 FLAC albums held locally, with just under 18GB left :)

Using Orange Squeeze I control five Squeezebox clients (1 Touch, 1 SB3, 1 Boom, and 2 Pis), it can be defined as a squeezebox player itself, so access to my full FLAC catalogue, and I have Q-manager for my QNAP NAS...

[hal55]

have been using Poweramp for about 10 days and really like it. Music has a nice jaunty character to it, it plays Flac files perfectly and I like the tone controls since I like a little treble boost. The equalizer options seem useless but that's ok, I can just leave them switched out. Nice player.

Hal55