Initially, we were all in awe that smartphones now allow us the decadent pleasure of watching videos on our smartphones. But then we discovered that doing so involved downloading bulky (and sometimes buggy) third-party apps that cost more, which are a compatible file converter (or transcoder) and media player.
Fortunately, many smartphone manufacturers (and their operating system developers) quickly realized that smartphone users weren’t happy with this inconvenient (and expensive) methodology, and began devising ways to let their customers get what they wanted. they wanted without any additional hassle or expense.
BlackBerry operating system: If you own a recently released Blackberry, such as a Blackberry 8800, Blackberry 8300, Blackberry Curve, or Blackberry Pearl, you’ll find that it has Roxio Media Manager built in. This application allows you to transcode and sync video files (and music files) as well as burn them to CD. Whenever you transfer a file in this way, Roxio Media Manager will present you with the option to convert the file to a format that can be viewed correctly on your Blackberry through the built-in Media Player application. At that point, you can choose to sync the file via USB or a PC compatible microSD card reader to copy it to a microSD card which you can then simply insert into your Blackberry for easy viewing.
Symbian: If you own a Nokia smartphone, you can download a free and simple plug-in for your Nokia PC Suite called Nokia Video Manager and convert and transfer video files to your Nokia smartphone, be it Nokia N75, Nokia N95 or any other. . The N95, Nokia E90 Communicator and other smarter Nokia devices have a mobile version of RealPlayer built in that can play RealPlayer, 3GP and MPEG-4 files without any additional steps.
Windows-Mobile: As long as the PC you’re using with your mobile device is running Windows XP or Windows Vista, watching videos on your smartphone is a piece of cake. Just run Windows Media Player 11, insert a memory card into your handheld, and connect it to your PC with a USB cable. Then press ‘Sync’ and start dragging the video files you want to the Device panel located on the right of your viewing screen. Once you’re done with that, just click ‘Start Sync’. When you’re done, go to the Start menu on your Windows Mobile smartphone and click Media Player. Go to ‘Storage Card’, then ‘Menu’, then ‘Update Library’ and you’re good to go. Now you can easily watch any of the video files you just transferred.
Unfortunately, iPhone and devices running Palm OS still require the use of a third-party video conversion app so that you can transfer and convert your own video files so they can be viewed on your smartphone. Hopefully its creators are already working diligently to remedy this shortcoming. In the meantime, there are still plenty of suitable third-party apps out there that allow you to watch your own video files on these devices, but unlike the solutions mentioned above, they are not free.