New: Some smartphones have only mono audio

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

MS said that it is a requirement that all smartphone support stereo audio.

We noticed that the Red-e smartphone has only a mono audio outout...

[Guest midnight]

seems like a faulty phone to me

[Guest Chris b.a.r.f.]

There's a bit of discussion about the red-e and it's mono audio in the MS NG at the mo'. Has anyone actually tried an SPV headset with the red-e? Stereo audio is certainly part of the spec for Smartphone 2002, so quite why the MS developer phone's only got mono is a bit of mystery...

[Guest spacemonkey]

I presume that from the operating system perspective it must be pretending to have stereo otherwise you'd get software errors... so the next question, is the sound hardware producing stereo or mono, or is it just that they've put the wrong type of connector on the outside of the phone.

The SPV connector is a 3 channel 2.5mm connector to allow stereo and microphone, it may be the red-e manufacturer just cocked up what they put on.

If you make a wav file that has very distinct stereo sound, like someone just saying "left" on the left channel and "right" on the right channel and play it on a red-e what do you hear? Is it flattening it so you hear both channels but in mono or is it just dropping one of them (which would be much worse)?

[Guest Chris b.a.r.f.]

spacemonkey: That sounds like as good an explanation as any - the red-e's not going to be distributed in especially big numbers so it may even have been a deliberate cost-cutting measure (?)