Here’s something I thought of, and wanted to share with you in case it helps: Put your older smartphone to use by making it an audiobook device.
Here’s why that’s helpful:
- Phone storage. Audiobooks actually take up hundreds of megabytes of space. It’s very easy to fill up your phone’s memory, and a hassle to start shifting things around. If you’re like me, who listens to 2-3 audiobooks alternatively depending on the mood, you’ll need about 1 gigabyte of space reserved for them.
- Phone battery. The playback draws quite a bit of battery. Instead of draining your phone overnight and wearing the battery life, just push your old phone to its very limits.
- Audible syncs your listens and library across all devices. You can still use your own phone or tablet as normal, and the listening points will sync if you have WiFi on. Simple as that.
- Separate car device for playback. If your car lacks smartdevice capabilities, you can just use an old phone and plug it in. Here’s Audible’s own advice for car listening.
In this time and age, there’s no way you can’t get your hands on an older smartphone that’s sitting unused in a shelf somewhere. You can use it without a SIM card, load Audible on it and connect to your account. There’s no limit to how many devices you can connect to one Amazon account, though you might get a security warning.
For example, I’m using my perfectly capable Nokia Lumia, which I discarded because I got fed up with the Windows Phone app ecosystem. Audible’s app is available on Windows Phones, so there’s no problem with playback and syncing. You can put the sleep timer to use and have the audiobook playback stop at a reasonable point:
Also, here are two more accessories you might need for audiobook listening:
Noise cancelling earbuds, for outside listening.
A bus or a train ride can become noisy enough to prevent you from listening in to your book. Especially train rides, their decibel levels are shocking when you pay attention to them. You could use active noise cancelling, but those are more expensive and I honestly don’t like the separation from the environment while being outside. It’s one thing making an hour-long commute bearable by listening to a few pages, and quite another to completely shut yourself out of the world. The passive earbuds are good enough to let you listen in noisy environments.
A flexible, spider grip holder for your phone.
This is one of the more useful things you can shop for. you can adjust the grip so it holds up your phone on the desk, ties around a night-stand lamp or sits nicely on your car dashboard.
What’s that? You have nothing to listen to?
You’re in luck! Get on our Audiobooks page and request a free copy now. (Available while supplies last)
