We recently made an article sharing many reasons why a dedicated digital voice recorder is the better option when compared to a smartphone for audio recording. So while we are a bit biased towards DVR’s in general, we thought it would be fun to see where smartphones actually excel when it comes to audio recording, and how they are in many ways better than their dedicated voice recording counterparts. So let’s jump right in.
Smartphones Vs Digital Voice Recorders. Where The Phone Beats Having A DVR.
1. You’ve Already Got Your Phone In Your Pocket.
Have you ever heard the saying that the best device you need to start a task is the one you already have in your hands? The same is true for smartphones versus digital voice recorders. If you haven’t got a digital voice recorder yet, then the best audio recording device for the job is your smartphone. You can start taking advantage of that while you look into improving your gear.
2. Your smartphone is always with you
Forgetting your smartphone at home might be a catastrophic event. Almost everyone puts their smartphone in their pockets before even putting their wallets or purses in their pocket. For this reason, because your smartphone is always nearby, it is the perfect device to quickly capture a recording session. One less device to remember to take with you whenever you walk out of your home.
3. Voice Recording Apps Of All Types And Features Available
The benefit of using your smartphone for recording is that you have access to many third-party voice recording apps, free or paid, that come with lots of features to take advantage of your phone’s computing power. Some of these applications are:
Voice recording apps for android:
- The built-in android voice recorder
- Easy Voice Recorder
- Smart Voice Recorder
- Regforge II
- ASRVoiceFor Apple
Voice recording apps for Apple:
- TheBuilt-In Apple Application for Voice Recording
- Awesome Voice Recorder — AVR
- Audio Note2
4. Huge memory space available.
Most new phones, especially in the Android world, come with many 10s of GBs of storage. This means that your recordings can go on for as long as your recording application allows you to. If they are not limited, then you can record for as long as your phone battery gives keeps powering up your device. Digital voice recorders come with a few GB of memory space internally, but most do come with the possibility to add external MicroSD cards to further expand the storage. Adding an external MicroSD card may slow down performance though, especially once you start filling up the storage capacity.
5. Discreet Audio Recorder, spy tool
The fact that the screen turns off while a recording is ongoing means you could simply start recording, lock the phone and place it on the table as everyone does. Then proceed with your normal conversation. The legality of secretely recording someone like this varies all around the world, so make sure you do this legally. A quick way to do this legally will be to ask the person you’re recording and for them to consent to it. The ability to record secretly may also come in handy if you feel like you’re in a compromising situation. Again, the legality of secret recording varies, so make sure you check your local laws out.
6. Super Easy File Transfer Via Cable or Wireless
This one is huge. A smartphone gives you ultra connectivity with other people and your other devices to share files. This means that once you have your recording file done, you can transfer it to other people or to your other devices either using a cable connection, or a miriad of wireless ways. You can transfer files via WIFI, over the internet via chat apps, via email, uploading to cloud storage or even Bluetooth come to mind. This is something most dedicated digital voice recorders fail at. Most of the mid range recorders still need you to carry legacy USB cables with you to offload recordings onto other devices.
7. Smartphone Apps Give You The Possibility To Record In Various Types Of Audio Formats
Unlike digital voice recorders that sometimes come with one or two formats like AAC or MP3, smartphones and the various types of applications can expand on that to give you a bigger list of output formats. The benefit of adding more formats is that you could choose a small file size format to be able to email audio quickly, due to the file size limit of attachments for emails. Recording in a big, uncompressed format like WAV also gives you access to a clearer and cleaner uncompressed sound that can be edited in postproduction.
Conclusion
We hope that this article helped share some points in which a smartphone excels in a digital voice recorder’s world. The things that it does well, it does really well. For this reason, if you have not yet bought a digital voice recorder yet and are looking to do some voice recording, you can start off using your phone. While it won’t be a dedicated device for this task, it is the best thing you currently have to start out.
We hope that this article helps to show some points in which a smartphone excels in the digital voice recorder’s world. As you can see from above, there are many ways in which the smartphone performs compared to a dedicated digital voice recorder. swift and wireless fast file transfer is one of the most important ones. Your recordings can be fired off via email to other devices or people. Uploaded to servers, sent to another device via Bluetooth ot WIFI. This means you can start getting work done with the file, even before you get back into the office or back to your computer setup.
If you have not yet bought a digital voice recorder and are looking to start doing some audio recording, you can start off using your phone. While it wouldn’t be a dedicated device for this task, it is the best thing you currently have to start out.
Best wishes.