New Nugget

I got a new music nugget last week. For those who don’t know I like to listen to music separate from my phone. This is due to all the spam calls and notifications I get on my main device that make listening to music or podcasts difficult with all the constant interrupts.

During the pandemic I picked up a couple of broken Zunes and fixed them up to listen to offline music.

I still download music from musicians on Bandcamp and have been buying cassettes and vinyl from others, but for discovering music I still use - the internet, and streaming. As much fun as it is to have a dedicated mp3 player for high fidelity songs, moving podcast mp3’s is a chore and none of the cars we have now like to read from an aux source.

I love the Zune, but its proprietary cable is a crunchy mess and adding songs to it is no longer easy. Last year I bought a used iPod Classic and used that for a while until the audio jack went haywire on me and now gives static. Then I won a free nugget from a music discord group which was an old android Go Phone that still had a phone jack. It’s great for streaming songs but eats the battery in a few hours and the android OS is extremely laggy and frustrating to use.

So that brings me to the new nugget, the iPhone SE (2016 model). Why the iPhone SE? Well, it is the LAST iPhone to be shipped with a phone jack. Another bonus is that it’s got the normal lightning cable (no giant pin cable) and I can access the old battery with screws instead of ungluing things when the battery does eventually get spicy.

I bought this one for $50 off a used phone store called Swappy. YMMV.

It’s also so much smaller than the android that I can throw it in my pocket without problems. The android is nearly as big as my 13 max which is like a micro tablet more than a phone. This SE has a 4 inch screen and is exactly what you need to quickly tap around and open the podcast app or Bandcamp or whatever without the lag. It’s not as light and simple as the Zune but nothing is ever going to be. Even the Sandisk Clips we have are a smadge heavier than my Zune.

The cable on my PortaPro’s has gone and messed itself up, they were kinda weak but it cuts out now when trying to listen to stuff so I’m back to using my Sony EX155AP earbuds. For $20 they are good enough and don’t hurt my ears. (Don’t bother suggesting AirPods Pro, I had those, they hurt.) I’ll probably save up for some Sennheiser somethings but until then these Sony buds will do fine.