Comments on: RANT! Why Can’t We Have A GOOD MP3 Player?

By: CybaCowboy

CybaCowboy — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 03:48:21 +0000

• “No dedicated next and previous track buttons outside of the MP3 player”

I hear ya - it drives me nuts having to switch to the media player to change tracks, and the “N”/”P” (next and previous) short-cuts ONLY work whilst the media player is in the foreground!

They don’t need dedicated keys, but they do need some sort of short-cut outside of the media player…

For example, if you have the media player running in the background on a Sony Ericsson phone, you can press-and-hold one of the volume keys to skip forwards/backwards!

• “NO EQUALIZER!!! or audio normalization”

Yeah, what’s the deal here?

As I understand it, the BlackBerry Pearl series has an equalizer… But they leave it out of every other series???

Uh huh, THAT makes sense.

• “Can’t edit the song title of a song – we have a full keyboard why not make use of it…”

Whilst this is not a “standard” feature on phone-based digital audio players, you have a very good point - we have the PERFECT physical solution for doing this, so why not implement it?

It wouldn’t take that much effort to implment such a feature, and it’s only logical to do this…

I would also like to see a “music recognition” feature - on Sony Ericsson phones, you can record ten seconds of a song, which is then sent to the third-party Gracenote, who identify the song by album, artist and track!

I believe certain North American carriers also offer the same feature on their devices, some of which are BlackBerrys.

~ Posted wirelessly from my BlackBerry 8800 ~

By: Ronen Halevy

Ronen Halevy — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:32:00 +0000

Arte,
I dont remember which but I think either the dollar5 or xplayer mp3 player offered a feature like gapless playback. Never tried it myself but its worth a shot

By: Artem

Artem — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:19:27 +0000

Hey guys, i see you’ve looked into this problem a bit more than i have..

My biggest concern was the lack of continuous playback - the annoying SILENT GAP between songs really ruins some albums, and is a pain on the more sensitive headphones.

I havent tried any alternative players yet.. Suggestions?

By: Ronen Halevy

Ronen Halevy — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 04:33:13 +0000

Hagay I totally agree. I hate the fact that it does not remember the last shuffle. Maybe we need to petition RIM to create a more RANDOM shuffle. I really wish it would just remember where you were in a song or podcast when you close the application. Its a real pain to lose your place and try to find it again with the trackball and alt.

BTW has anybody figured out what the hell the “device memory limit” is? Im curious…

By: Hagay

Hagay — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:43:19 +0000

One of my own:

When the shuffle music is played the device should remember the song that played in the previous shuffle session and play other songs.

Hagay.

By: Luciano

Luciano — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:44:07 +0000

I know that trick. It doesn’t help. There’s only so much you can really go back. Eventually the attempt is ignored, the program decides how much you can seek. Anyway, skipping back with the trackball is horrible. And holding a key at the same time? Ugh!

By: BlackberryBeard

BlackberryBeard — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 16:09:45 +0000

Luciano - you can go back a few seconds. Just use the undocumented feature of holding down the Alt key as you scroll back.

By: Luciano

Luciano — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 11:00:01 +0000

“Volume control is horrendous.” I think you exaggerate in that point. 10 options should be enough for anybody.
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“you get a call while listening to music and answer the call you cannot use the headphones to hear” - I have no idea what you’re talking about. That happens to me in other players, like the one that dollars5 sells, that I really like but never use precisely because of that problem. But I never have that problem with the stock Blackberry player, which is what you seem to be referring to.
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My biggest complain is not being able to rewind a few seconds. I mean, no more than 5 or 10 AT MOST. That is awful. When I listen to podcasts, sometimes I don’t quite get something they’ve said and I want to rewind… and the Blackberry player forces me to go back TWO MINUTES and listen to them all over again. I have simply given up on listening to podcasts in my Blackberry. I’ve gone back to my Palm and now carry TWO DEVICES around like an idiot. Some convergence.
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The lack of playlists is also a shame. At least that Artists/Albums/Genres scheme could work decently. My ID3 tags are all kept in order, but the Blackberry media player still fails to detect a huge number of tracks way too often. Consequently, I use that folder browsing shortcut and listen to one folder at a time. The Artists/Albums/Genres browsing thing is rendered useless. The dollars5 player handles playlists pretty well, but then it won’t let me answer calls properly.
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OK, so we all agree that playing media in a Blackberry phone kind of sucks.

By: BlackBerry Beard

BlackBerry Beard — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 10:46:48 +0000

FYI. The blackberry does have dedicated Previous and Next keys…while in the music player. Press “N” to go to the next song and “P” to go to the previous song. Granted this isn’t as dedicated as having completey seperate keys but it does work.

One additional rant. Why, sometimes at the end of a song, does the music player just stop and not advance to the next song? The other issues are less of an issue for me than this because a music player, in the most basic sense, is supposed to play music. Unfortunately this is how I stumbled upon the “N” key to kickstart the player. Sigh.

By: JEF

JEF — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 03:29:20 +0000

All I want is the option to save my current place in a podcast if I switch for to a different song and then come back. Don’t know if this as part of your “podcast support”

Everything else I can deal with.

By: BerryZilla

BerryZilla — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 01:20:03 +0000

I think all BB’s should share the same enhancements. My 8820 is strictly personal use. I don’t think any BB is just buisness oriented only anymore. IMHO the 8820 was the best looking and I didn’t really care about the lack of a camera.