Before you start I must remind the reader that I think that Android is better than every other Operating System out there so this isn’t a hate article. Am sorry to offend Android fans like me specially those who are down with the music player they unboxed with their Android OS loaded phone. But music lovers who are presently considering switching to Android devices from say Apple iOS or music lovers who are simply managing the Android default music player will all find this article very useful. Yesterday I bought and unboxed an Android 4.0 5 inch device and I yet saw little improvement compared to my Galaxy phone loaded with Gingerbread (2.3.6)
In order to be fair to Google and their music player, I must first say that Android audio player is just what an every day music surfer needs. The player has nice User Interface, produces good sound quality and is simply easy to use. But those Music lovers who need something more from their Music Box will definitely be disappointed with what Android offers.
Here are the main reasons:
1. Poor sound Equaliser:
True, Android music player comes with some pre-installed equalisers about 12 of them but unfortunately they are all preset and can’t be customised in the popular 2.3.6 and below but Android 4.0 and 4.1 has what I call a very simple equaliser. Worst still most of the sound effects like Bass booster can only be activated when the Headset is plugged which means music played from the external speaker can largely be improved!. This is bad đ
Tell me Android, why don’t you give some of us the right to customise our own sound effect choice and what is so unspecial about phone external speaker?
2. Lack of WMA audio codec support: Music lovers know what it means to have a versatile music player, I mean a player that can interpret various audio formats, sadly Android Music player is not just that. Back in the days when I used the then popular Windows Mobile 2002 and WM 2003 SE respectively, I remember how I always sought for a replacement of the default Windows Media Player. Infact the world’s most popular audio formats remains Mp3 and WMA. Mainly music rippers still prefer to rip audio music using PC Windows Media Player and their ripped files sometimes end up in the WMA format. Many Music players I know support at least these two formats except those who have something against Microsoft.
We ask Google: Are you guys also both anti-Apple and anti-Windows that you refused to support their popular audio format, weren’t you and Windows lead partners among those who sought for iOS downfall?
I recently tested the brand new VLC Player for Android It is nice though it is still in it’s beta version so I don’t recommend it for now but you can read my article elsewhere: A better Android music player
3. Poor Music ordering:
I must confess that it is so shameful for Android Music player to be categorised under this filing. Permit me to say that Android Music player is a failure. What else can I say? In case you don’t know, users of this player can only play songs under Artists, Album, All Songs and Playlists. So bad that there is no Genre with Android MP :/
This means you can not play in one auto playlist all songs under one genre say Gospel, County, Afro pop, Rap, Reggae, Blues and the rest of them.
As if this is not enough, there is no Open file/folder support in this player. This means that one can not open an audio file from perhaps a hidden folder especially when that audio file was not automatically found by the player.
4. Visualisation and Album art:
I know some of my readers here in Mobility readers will think what I’m about to say is irrelevant but believe me it does not only count but it counts so much! Isn’t it bad that the prestigious Android player has no single visualisation at all and the ogbonge player displays only the Album art in your phone storage? Album art is the album cover image that displays in the Now playing of your digital player. This makes playing a song without an Album art sound fairly nice but look uninteresting! I have another audio player that automatically downloads Album arts from the online Vault.
You can now see why I will not prefer the default Music player of Android. Other features that this player should boast of but is no where to be found includes Tag editor -ability to edit the sound tags like Artist, album, etc., Headset plug auto play -this means that music interrupted when Headset is unplugged should restart automatically when ear piece is re-plugged in (optional).
These are just some of the main points that I can list here, others may be insignificant. Ironically another tiny 3rd party Android Music player app does literally all these things that the default player can’t do and more! I wrote a review on that player titled A better Android music player app published else where.
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