I recently switched to the Samsung BlackJack after a two year relationship with my Audiovox SMT 5600, which was subsequently given to my 6 yo for a photo/game device...and then immediately ran over by a car. <sniff> I loved that thing…

One of the interesting applications that Cingular loaded onto the device was a little program called MusicID, with the assertion that you can hold the device up to a speaker and have the songs title and artist identified. At that point you can download it as a ringtone or get more information on it. Interesting, and perhaps a quite useful application if ever in dire need to know who the artist is. It comes with a 3 day trial, so while waiting in traffic, I gave it a shot. Below is a screenshot of some of the successful identifications.

Here are my observations and thoughts:

• There was a 65% success rate
• It appeared to work better with Satellite radio versus FM/AM
• AM identification was horrible
• Rock had the best success rate, followed by main stream hip-hop. Independent artists had no chance.
• It took nearly 60 seconds at a time to identify the song, even on the 3G network
• Could there actually be a human sitting at the other end listening?

Bottom-line: While the concept is pretty cool, no way would I pay $0.99/song to have an application tell me who the artist/song is...just to have to pay yet again for the ringtone. If they tied it into the ringtone purchase, then maybe! You might as well just hit the record button, capture the lyrics and search for the song later. Possibly buying it through Zune for only $0.79 which can be used as the ringtone.

Enjoy,
-luke