Review: Pantech Jest
The music player on the Pantech Jest is a simple affair, though loading music can be somewhat complicated. The phone has a microUSB port, and you can connect to your desktop in a music sync or mass storage mode. The microSD card folder showed up on my Macbook Pro with no trouble, and I dragged my music to the card, but my files did not show up in the player. The Pantech Jest is not smart enough to look for your files, you have to place them in just the right spot. On this phone, the right spot is under a folder called "Root," then under a subfolder called "synched." If there is one piece of advice I've heard over and over in technology, it's not to mess with anything called "Root" if you don't know what you're doing. To hide the music folder two layers deep under a "Root" folder on the Jest is simply dumb.
Once my files were sideloaded, my music showed up fine in the onboard player. The Jest uses the same music player as other, basic V Cast Music phones, but since the phone lacks 3G networking, it also lacks the expensive V Cast Music Store. The player is very basic, though it does take advantage of the scrolling features on the navigation button, so you can hold to scroll up or down through your song list, or right and left to shuttle through an individual song.
You can play music in the background on the Jest, though a few apps, like Social Beat and the Web browser, will force the music to stop playing. If you need to silence your tunes in a hurry, you can jump back to the music player by pressing the dedicated music key next to the Send key. Pantech made a bad choice with the 2.5mm headphone jack. I could find a compatible headset or an adapter, but I'd obviously prefer a more standard 3.5mm port.