Let’s face it. While functional, Windows Media Player for Windows Mobile isn’t exactly the most finger friendly piece of software around is it? After searching for a decent replacement music player to go alongside my new Sony Bluetooth headphones on my XDA Mini S (HTC Wizard) I came across Conduits Pocket Player. In the last few weeks I have come to use this software every day. As version 3.6 has just been released, I thought it was time to write a review.
Read on for my findings…
Features
Conduits is one of the few companies I have seen who truly listen to their customers and actively encourage feedback, good or bad. Browsing their forum you can see that almost all of the features requested have either been implemented or are in the stages of being added. If only more companies would listen to their customers like this the world of gadgetry would be a much nicer place.
Beyond the standard ability to play music, below are the details for the other features.
UPnP - Pocket Player supposedly supports UPnP, which would allow you to stream media from any UPnP compatible device, including a Vista laptop or some storage devices on your home network via WiFi. You can even use Orb to stream through the Internet to anywhere you have a connection. Built in Orb support sounds really cool, but unfortunately I couldn’t get any UPnP services to work on my phone. Apparently this is isolated to version 3.6 and Conduits knows about this issue and are currently trying to fix it.
Visualisations - Pocket Player has a handful of built in visualisations available. But why have them? People just want either a current song list or album art! It’s annoying to have to cycle through them or turn them off in the menu. Although if, so for some reason, you decide that you want to see an annoying bar graph or swirly shapes, the option is there.
Video playback - While, to me at least, music is the main reason for using this software, the inclusion of video playback support is a nice bonus. Testing out a couple of video files (mp4 and avi) resulted in some good quality playback with the video filling the screen of my device when tapped on. My copy of the Simpsons movie played back smoother in Pocket Player than it did in CorePlayer, which was nice.
Video playing
Full screen video works nicely
Podcasts and web radio - I’ll be honest. I had never looked at these features before I came to write this review as I have never been into podcasts or web radio before. But I’m glad I did! Built into the web guide of the player is a huge list of audio and video podcasts and Internet radio stations. These are populated using various online directories.
The web guide
I spent ages looking through all the content and was amazed at how many things there were that I could see myself listening to. One of the great things is the ability to add any of the items you find to the top level menu of the web guide, kind of like storing a bookmark. Doing this is simple, just slide your finger across the item and the menu will come up giving you the option.
Slide from left to right on an item to get the menu
My favourite podcast now on the home of the web guide.
Some podcasts even have their own album art style logos.
You are also, of course, able to add your own podcast feeds if they’re not in the guide. There is a massive amount of content here. I’ll be sure to spend more time exploring and finding my favourites. In all, an excellent feature that I’m sure many will make good use of.
Unfortunately some of the video content had a little problem playing (this is probably due to the age of my device) and due to the long titles of many of the podcast names it’s difficult to see which episode you are about to select. Also it would have been nice if I was able to download the podcasts to my device while I have an Internet connection and be able to play them whilst roaming.
Plugins - The plugin architecture of Pocket Player makes it easy for Conduits (or anyone else) to add new functionality to the software without having to update the whole system. All that is required is to drop the plugin file into the Pocket Player folder on the device.
There are a variety of plugins available at the moment, including decoders for new file types, new functionality, visualisations and DSP effects.
Crossfade between tracks - I found this feature made skipping tracks take too longs as it had to buffer some of the next track before fading between them. I quickly turned this feature off.
Skins - Pocket Player includes support for skins, including those for Windows Media player. This is important because the default skin the comes with the software is a little messy. There are a few currently available on the Conduits website, my favourite being the wonderfully simple simpliQVGA.
The default Pocket Player skin
simpliQVGA by Hieu Nguyen
A2DP/AVRCP Bluetooth stereo - To be able to use the AVRCP controls on my Sony Bluetooth headphones I had to download a plugin and install it in the Pocket Player folder. Once this simple process had been completed I was able to play, pause and skip tracks using the buttons on my headset. A very handy feature.
Microsoft Voice Command - While not technically a feature of this software, I found it rather useful to be able to set Pocket Player to accept commands from Microsoft Voice Command. All I had to do was go into the file associations settings and tick the box next to “ASX”. Then, when issuing voice commands to the software, the .asx files it would automatically open would open in Pocket Player. You can find out more about this here.
Today screen plugin - Conduits have been kind enough to include a today screen plugin for Pocket Player. It’s pretty much what you’d expect; it shows what’s playing, has playback controls and a seek bar. I have no use for it, buy you might.
The today plugin
Usability
Obviously all these great features would be useless if they are not easy to access. Luckily Conduits have paid a lot of attention to this in recent releases.
The first thing you’ll notice about Pocket Player’s media browser (which politely scans and updates itself on startup) is it’s nice big list of items to select from.
The complete main menu (photoshopped)
There’s no need to get the stylus out to make your selection from this menu, it’s obviously built from the ground up to be controlled with a finger or thumb. In a similar fashion to the iPhone software, to scroll you simply need to tap and drag a finger and the list will scroll up or down smoothly. If you’re worried that this will be a poor implementation of touch scrolling as seen in the HTC Touch then you’ll be pleasantly surprised. The speed of scrolling is variable depending on how fast you push the list, and it will slow down over time until it comes to a stop. Push softly and slowly and it will glide slowly a little way, give it a good hard push and you’ll likely hit the bottom of the list with ease. It’s intuitive and works very well.
Once you’ve got the item you were after showing on the screen, a quick tap is enough to select it. This will go down a level into the browser with a nice sliding animation. In version 3.6 Conduits listened to customer feedback and added a software back button to go back up a level. This is a welcome addition and makes navigating to different parts of the menu quick and easy.
As stated earlier in this review, sliding your finger across an item will bring up a “right click” style context menu, allowing you to enqueue an item (song, whole album, artist etc), jump to the main menu, return to the player or play an item. This is a nice touch.
The “right click” menu
Once you’ve found your media and it’s started playing, controlling it and getting back to the library is simple and intuitive. The left soft button labelled “browse” will take you back to the library menu, the right contains the more complex options. Tapping on the visualisation/album art will cycle through the various display options that you have select in the options.
The browse button takes you back to the library
You can maximise the album art and rely on the hardware buttons for control
The top and bottom toolbars can even be hidden for a nice full screen effect, including reflection
In day to day use, Pocket Player is by far the best player I have had the pleasure to use. Everything about it is intuitive, from navigating the library to controlling the playback. In particular the album list display is great, showing mini versions of the album art next to each album. This is something I noticed I missed a lot while having to use HTC Audio Manager for a couple of days.
Value for money
Pocket Player is priced at $19.95 for the stand alone version or $9.95 to upgrade if you already own an older version. Annoyingly, once I got to the checkout (through Yahoo) it had added on tax at $3.49 to make the total amount $23.44. This price is roughly on par with offerings from other companies.
A free 30 day trial is available, and provides all the features of the full version. I recommend grabbing a copy to try it out before buying, just to check it works OK on your device.
What I’d like to see in future releases
Photo viewer - Conduits have done such a good job on the interface, one thing that springs to mind is using these skills to include a photo viewer as part of the software. This would really give the software a “media player” feel, and would make viewing photos on Windows Mobile a pleasure rather than a chore.
Podcast downloading - I was really impressed with the podcast features, but can’t help but feel that for a mobile device that won’t always be able to access the web it would be nice to be able to synchronize the content when at home to take with me on a trip.
Integrated YouTube - CorePlayer has just been updated to add this feature, so there is no technical reason that Pocket Player cannot do the same. This would be an awesome addition to the feature list.
The competition
Pocket Player is up against a few other popular pieces of software. Notably PocketMusic, Windows Media Player and CorePlayer. Having used all of the above at some point I can say that none of them can compare in terms of usability.
Conclusion
Conduits have come up with undoubtedly the best music player available for any mobile device, let alone Windows Mobile. It’s supremely quick and easy to find what you want to play from the browser, has a nice player interface (especially with a good skin) and has outstanding support from it’s makers in the form of regular updates, plugins and communication with it’s customers. The feature list is extensive, and for the most part really useful, especially the web guide.
Is it perfect? No, not yet. It’s a little resource hungry and slow to start up, and hung occasionally at the end of songs. There are still bugs that pop up on certain hardware and features that need to be ironed out. The options menu, while comprehensive, still needs a stylus or careful finger prodding to get around. And the visualisations options/defaults need some work (does anyone really actually want graphical animations on a smartphone?). Real “+” and “-” buttons a la HTC audio manager would have been nice for changing the volume using the touch screen instead of the fiddly, almost impossible to use with a finger slider.
Final words?
I can’t wait for version 4!
