Streaming radio on Nokia N95 (And other S60 devices)

Traditional radio is slowly dying as internet radio stations are catching up fast - the obvious advantage being location independence. You can tune into any radio station irrespective of your geographical location. With new mobile devices offering you 3G and Wi-Fi data connectivity, many mobile radio players have started appearing on the internet.

If you are using Nokia N95, N95 8GB or the newer handsets like N78, you will find the Nokia Internet Radio application preinstalled, assuming you have the latest firmware running. Once you launch this application, you can browse a huge list of radio stations by going through the station directory. Unfortunately, you cannot add a custom radio stream with the help of this application.

There is an excellent third party application called Tunin.FM, which is a nice little digital radio for your S60 device. You can easily install it by visiting http://wap.tunin.fm on your S60 browser. Once you download and install the client, you can go back to the wap site to select the radio stations of your choice. When launched, the radio client also provides you an option to play one of the top 10 stations.

Another digital radio is from Spodtronic. It is the most professional and beautiful looking among all these three applications. Spodtronic also offers a huge collection of radio stations to tune into. (When I tried, I never got the confirmation SMS from them, which is required for activation. Your mileage may vary).

You can pick any one of these (or all the three!) to enjoy streaming digital music on your S60 phone. Just make sure that you use a free Wi-Fi connection or an unlimited data plan from your operator. You may run into huge monthly bills otherwise.