I know their time has passed.
Still, I wanted to use them again.
reTONE is an app that turns older Android phones into dedicated music players, with no root and no modding. It rebuilds the home screen, lock screen and player as one, and cares most about staying light and leaving the sound intact.This page is about why I decided to make it.
Tiny.
Bezel-less
before its time.
Obsessed
with sound.
I just love gadgets.
It started simply: I loved the phones of that era as gadgets. Many were smaller than today’s, and Japanese makers each pushed their own ideas. As hardware, there was a lot to like: phones that went bezel-less early, phones that took sound seriously. Phones that make you think “they actually made this?” now sit in secondhand stores for ten or twenty dollars.Cheap because nobody has a use for them. Still fascinating as objects.That is what drew me in.
Looking at them
wasn’t enough.
Even when you get one, today’s apps barely run, so in practice you can’t use it. But getting a phone I once wanted and only looking at it felt wrong. I tried custom ROMs too, but only some phones can take them, and even then the phone doesn’t become your main phone again. Within a week, I’d stopped using it.What if, instead of forcing it to be a modern phone, I gave it just one job?That is where the idea of a dedicated music player came from.
Music, because
I love audio.
Some phones from that era were sold on their DAC or their own sound settings. In audio, classic amplifiers and players stay in use for decades; age doesn’t make them worthless. Phones and Android DAPs deserve to be seen the same way.I want to enjoy how each one was conceived, and how it sounds.So reTONE converts the sample rate once at most, sends tracks to USB DACs as they are, and plays formats the phone itself can’t.
A music player
that actually works.
What matters most is that it runs smoothly and reliably, even on an old phone. On top of that, I want the whole phone to feel like one music device: not just the player, but the home screen, the lock screen and the way into the sound settings. A light launcher plus a music app can’t give you that, because they were made separately.Not a music app you open on a phone, but a DAP from the moment you turn it on. That’s the goal.
For people somewhere in between
Not because throwing them out feels wasteful.
Because they’re fun.
It’s hard to sort people into “old phone fans,” “audio fans” and “modders.” I made this for people who are a little of each: people who can’t walk past an old gadget, who enjoy hearing how different earphones and phones sound, and who like tuning their tools a bit, even if they never flash a ROM.I hope it reaches people like that.
The one you pick from the shelf.
I’d love for people to actually use it as a DAP. Not every day, but as the one you pick from the shelf on the way to an audio show: “this one today.” Swapping earphones, comparing it with another phone, talking about how it sounds and feels.If it gives you a reason to listen now and then, rather than being installed and forgotten, it has come back to life as a tool.Further on, I hope the finds and stories from each model add up to something like a field guide to music phones.
Why it’s free.
If you found a phone for ten dollars, would you pay ten dollars for an app to put on it? I would hesitate.Being able to just try it is a big part of the fun.So it’s free. If I ask for support, it won’t be to unlock features. It will be for building and maintaining a free app, and for collecting test phones to support more models.
From a phone you can’t use
to one you can’t put down.
I don’t want to make old phones keep up with new ones. I want their shapes, their feel and the care that went into their sound to be enjoyed again.reTONE isn’t the star. I hope it helps people rediscover the phones themselves.
Who makes it.
Ryohei IidaDirector and head of audio, Iida Piano Co., Ltd.+
I trained as a piano technician at Yamaha. My father is a tuner too, and founded our music store. Iida Piano got into audio when I took headphones I’d designed to shows abroad, under the KuraDa name. To learn from the past, I started collecting vintage headphones. The earlier the design, the more varied the approach, and you can see the makers working it out as they went. I saw old phones the same way. But unlike headphones, there was nothing to do with them except keep them on a shelf. reTONE is what I built to change that.
Iida Piano Co., Ltd.A company that began as a music store in Japan+
Through its own KuraDa headphones and the audio brands it carries from Japan and abroad, its audio business aims to find and share what makes audio fun, beyond sound quality alone.
About this project
Independent.
Not affiliated with any company.
reTONE is not affiliated with or endorsed by any phone maker, Google or music streaming service. It needs no root or modding and includes no software from phone makers. Company, product and service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
Credits
Third-party libraries
No other third-party libraries are used.
- dr_flac (FLAC decoding)
- David Reid
- Public domain or MIT-0
- Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC decoding)
- Apple Inc.
- Apache License 2.0