Exploring playback and recording of web-based audio media on low-end feature phones

Web-based audio information systems have the potential to bring the full promise of the Internet to the developing world. However, these systems run into a practical difficulty - insufficient support for playback and recording of web-based multimedia from feature phones. At the moment, feature phones constitute more than 90% of all phone shipments in emerging markets like India, and will continue to form a significant fraction (>50%) several years from now. In this paper we explore the practical challenges associated with audio playback and audio recording on feature phones. We present a systematic evaluation of the options to play and record audio media in a range of feature phones, and highlight problems stemming from a lack of memory, slow processor speeds and no support for progressive streaming downloads. In summary, the players in these phones are usually designed to handle audio files of short durations (a few minutes). Anything longer results in frequent breaks in playback (of up to 300msecs), and a very poor experience for the end-users. We investigate various solution approaches that may overcome these issues, and present an implementation and evaluation that achieves a seamless user experience on any audio stream.