Poking around the Nokia BetaLabs site recently, I learned about Nokia Audiobooks, which is pretty much just what you'd expect: Recorded books that you can listen to on your Nokia S60 phone.

The description points out that MP3 compression isn't really suited for voice, and that using the AMR-WB codec* makes for way smaller files — 5 to 10 times smaller — that still have "excellent speech quality"

So you take any audiobook, convert it to the speech-optimal format with Nokia's free Audiobook Manager software, and listen to it with Nokia's Audiobook Player on the S60.

Why bother? Well, why waste space? "A typical 400-page novel translates into 10-20 hour long audiobook, which would traditionally take more than dozen CDs or hundreds of megabytes of low-quality MP3 files." Transfer times are faster and storage needs lower.

Maybe MP3 players will become MP3/AMR-WB players, handling this new format for on-the-go listening. But, honestly, I'd rather listen to an audiobook on my internet tablet than my phone.

Me, I don't like headphones or earbuds, so I really like the NIT's speakers. I wonder, Why doesn't Nokia port the Audiobook Player to the tablet? Or adapt the built-in media player to handle AMR-WB?

It makes a lot of sense to me. And, well, that's what I'd like to hear.

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* "AMR-WB codec: Nokia Audiobooks uses standardized Adaptive Multi Rate-WideBand speech encoder (3GPP 26.190 / ITU-T G.722.2 See www.3GPP.org / www.itu.ch) for audio data compression in order to keep memory requirement for a book very small while maintaining excellent speech quality."

Originally Posted by schmots

I would rather have a better full featured ebook.

Originally Posted by schmots

and with FBreader sometimes when I click to the next page it starts going through multiple pages till I hit the page back button.. then I have to find my place again.... Sorry got kinda off topic there.

Originally Posted by RogerS

Read the full article.

Originally Posted by brecklundin

Until they add support for Audible I see little value in this feature as my whole library of audiobooks is from Audible. I am not going to spend the time ripping a set of CD/DVD's and then re-encode them to whatever the fickle NIT is willing to support.

And I am not going to repurchase my content just for the NIT...it makes more sense to just use an MP3 player that already supports Audible as well as MP3 or other formats.