What Android lacks.

Dman001

When searching for a new phone a couple of months ago I was set on buying a HTC Hero. It looked cool, had a great UI and got great reviews. And it was cheaper than an iPhone.

But what the Hero (and every other Android phone lacks) is a decent Music and Video player. The iPhone does media playback brilliantly IMO, and better spec Android Phones should do it brilliantly too with High Resolution 3.7" OLED screens. But I've yet to see decent media player for an Android device and I think this is where Android is failing (of course Nokia, Samsung and the others are just as bad). Android devices have terrible internal memory too, but of course their memory is expandable.

I ended up purchasing a second hand iPhone and it has replaced my MP3 Player, and I haven't looked back TBH. I'd like to hear an Android owners thoughts on this.

Mr E

I use my phone to make phone calls?

Not trying to be smart, but I love my iPod Touch, and I have a 1st Gen Nano for the gym. Android's battery isn't great (until the official 2.1 release anyway), so I don't need to run it down any quicker by playing MP3s on it.

partyatmygaff

Dman001 wrote: »

When searching for a new phone a couple of months ago I was set on buying a HTC Hero. It looked cool, had a great UI and got great reviews. And it was cheaper than an iPhone.

But what the Hero (and every other Android phone lacks) is a decent Music and Video player. The iPhone does media playback brilliantly IMO, and better spec Android Phones should do it brilliantly too with High Resolution 3.7" OLED screens. But I've yet to see decent media player for an Android device and I think this is where Android is failing (of course Nokia, Samsung and the others are just as bad). Android devices have terrible internal memory too, but of course their memory is expandable.

I ended up purchasing a second hand iPhone and it has replaced my MP3 Player, and I haven't looked back TBH. I'd like to hear an Android owners thoughts on this.

TBH it depends on which Android phone you're talking about. The Desire for example shares the exact same audio DSP chip as the Xperia X10 and the sound quality is crystal clear compared to my iPod Nano which sounds muddied and distorts at high volume. The only thing lacking is an Equalizer which some people may want, personally I never use equalizers because they only add a ton of distortion to music.

How exactly does the iPhone do video playing better though? Last time I checked it only supports MPEG 4 and H.264 in either .MP4 or M4V or .mov which are essentially the exact same container just rebadged. Android supports all of that and coreplayer is being released fairly soon and that plays ANYTHING and absolutely anything like VLC player on the PC.

I wouldn't call Nokia's media playback as bad. My N95 8GB from 2 years ago played DivX from Day one provided the resolution wasn't too high. It also played anything once I installed coreplayer. The N900 for example plays almost any media format thanks to its OS. Truth be told video playback may look nicer on Android but it's far far more functional on Nokia.

Royale with Cheese

Iphones/Ipods are useless for video. They don't support divx playback and they never will. Main reason I've never bought one.

mooneyd

There are countless music & video player apps on the market for android.
The only thing the Android's are short of is an alphanumeric keypad.

Yes the X10 has one in its japanese keyboard but the curser doesnt mover right to the next character automaticly which is a pain but hey...

Inquitus

HTC are launching Divx for the Desire in an update in the next month or so. I eagerly await that.

Despite the higher resolution on my desire, my ipod touch handles video (mp4) much better than the Desire, I was very dissapointed when I first used the native Desire media player.

Coreplayer was the best I found on my old N95, but playing video media on that doesnt hold a candle to either the ipod or even the Desire.

Dman001

Mr E wrote: »

I use my phone to make phone calls?

Not trying to be smart, but I love my iPod Touch, and I have a 1st Gen Nano for the gym. Android's battery isn't great (until the official 2.1 release anyway), so I don't need to run it down any quicker by playing MP3s on it.

Sorry I should of clarified a bit better.

The iPhone is very user friendly when it comes to media playback, and it looks very sleek. It may not support many formats but it is very easy to use. Music and Video management on the phone is excellent. I've yet to see this on an Android phone, a sleek, easy to use UI for media playback.

It's a very easy feature to implement. And personally when i was after a phone I was looking for an all-in-one device; a phone, internet on the go and media player. While Android devices are usually great phones with a great internet experience. But they failed when it came to Media playback. I firmly believe more people are after an All-In-One device these days, and that is one of the reasons the iPhone triumphs. The iPhone is a very average phone, but offers a brilliant media and internet experience.

partyatmygaff

Dman001 wrote: »

Sorry I should of clarified a bit better.

The iPhone is very user friendly when it comes to media playback, and it looks very sleek. It may not support many formats but it is very easy to use. Music and Video management on the phone is excellent. I've yet to see this on an Android phone, a sleek, easy to use UI for media playback.

It's a very easy feature to implement. And personally when i was after a phone I was looking for an all-in-one device; a phone, internet on the go and media player. While Android devices are usually great phones with a great internet experience. But they failed when it came to Media playback. I firmly believe more people are after an All-In-One device these days, and that is one of the reasons the iPhone triumphs. The iPhone is a very average phone, but offers a brilliant media and internet experience.

Dunno what Android phones you've seen but the HTC Sense UI media gallery and Music player are very sleek.

M450

I'm quite impressed with the HTC music player, the widget is very useful and it seems you can control playback from the lock screen.

The one thing I'm really gonna miss though is genius playlists...

Now to sell on this nano!

artielange

The one thing I don't like is the inability to play audio files over a bluetooth headset witch I could with every other phone I have had.

niallb

My Desire plays audio through my car's bluetooth connection fine.
(First time I connected it, there were dropouts, but I think that was the bluetooth
connecting back to my old phone which was also in the car)

You might need to go into bluetooth settings and make your phone discoverable
for a bit to allow the headset to pair up properly with it.

Breezer

I've never had a problem with the way media is implemented on my Hero. The one thing that bugs me is the stuttering you sometimes get at the start of a track, which I've put down to the limited hardware trying to do too many things at once.

Now what Android is lacking is the ability to connect to WiFi through a proxy, and Bluetooth File Transfer in 1.5.