Conduits Pocket Player 3.5

I fell in love with the prior version of Pocket Player back when I started using the Sprint Mogul, and wanted to write a review, but the folks at Conduits Technologies asked me to hold off until this version was released. That hasn't stopped me from enjoying the product in the mean time, but the good has gotten even better with the latest release... adding a little polish and a few more bells and whistles. In this review, I will cover what I like about the product (the old and the new), and also what has been added in this release. So even if you've used it before, there should be new information for you in the review.

I want to start at the obvious beginning question... why add software to your PDAPhone to play media when Microsoft has already given us Media Player... which unlike much of the pre-loaded software has seen many updates over the years. In my case, my quest for an alternative began when I bought a Sprint Mogul and found that it was running out of available RAM every time I used Media Player. The Mogul is very limited on RAM to begin with, and Media Player pretty much kills it. I also found that on that device, video playback was choppy with Media Player, and its feature set was a bit lacking. So I looked at 3 or 4 alternative players... tried them for a short period of time, and then moved on. The one that stuck with me was Pocket Player. To give you an idea how much more efficient Pocket Player is vs. Microsoft's Media Player... I did a little test on my AT&T Tilt, which has twice the RAM capacity of the Mogul. After a soft reset, if I start Media Player and load a playlist of all my loaded music (about 10 CDs worth of songs, hardly excessive), I find that I have less than 10M of available RAM remaining. If I do the exact same exercise with Pocket Player, I have over 60M of available RAM remaining. So the answer for me is, "Just say NO to Media Player". But if that isn't enough, Pocket Player does so much more than Media Player, and now we'll get to that.

Out of the box, when you start Pocket Player you get the following screen, loaded with your last selected music. Optionally, you can have it automatically begin playing when it loads, but I like to control the start of playback.



But the initial screen is quite functional, but kind of boring. But Pocket Player has a number of display options including various skins and visualizations. The default visualization is "album art", which ironically doesn't show in its default configuration above. A quick tap of the screen, however, cycles through the visualization choices. The one shown below gives an image of the album art for the playing music, and a small "spectrum analyzer" visualization up top that is active. You should note that the album is missing the guys head... that isn't anything that Pocket Player did.



While that last view is pretty cool... I like to see the album cover... that was available in the last version of Pocket Player. New in version 3.5 is this next choice which is my favorite visualization, a full screen album cover view. It is adaptable to all devices and display configurations (portrait, square and landscape), and now displays the artwork as well as the current position in the track. The song, artist and album name are prominently displayed, as well as the current rating of the track.



[break=The Library View]
Version 3.5 updates the library system with a fault-tolerant database backend, and is scalable for devices with thousands of tracks. The library can be stored on a memory card and, unlike previous versions of Pocket Player, does not need to rescan all the tracks in Pocket Player if the system is reset or if Pocket Player quits unexpectedly.

I've always liked the iPod-like navigation in the Library view of Pocket Player. By using the the up/down and left/right motions of the 5 way switch, you can navigate around in the Library. New to version 3.5 are gestures which I will cover in a moment. You can, by the way, have Pocket Player load to the Library view if you wish, rather than the standard player mode. From the Library, you have many choices for how to view your music and find your selection(s). I usually go with Album view.



New to version 3.5 is the addition of album art thumbnails in the Library. I like this addition. This view is completely redesigned, to not only include the artwork, but also an alphabetical index on the right to allow you to quickly move through large libraries. You can either use the 5-way switch, the jog-dial (if your device has one), or the new "gestures". By just dragging you finger from top to bottom, you can scroll up and down... and it works kind of like a slot machine in that it starts quick and then slowly grinds down to a stop. The faster you gesture, the faster it spins. You can also drag from right to left to navigate back through the menu tree. Alternatively, on non-touchscreen devices with a keyboard (such as the Motorola Q or Samsung BlackJack), you can type in the first few letters of the item, and it will jump to the item.



Depending on how you navigate into the list of selections, eventually you come to a list as shown in the next screen capture. The same navigation with switch, jog-dial, or gestures exists on this screen as well. Also, the alphabetical index is on the right as in the Album view. New to version 3.5 is a "Shuffle All" choice that will let you start playing the full list displayed, but in shuffled order. In prior versions, this could only be initiated through a system-wide setting.



The new library system also sports new features. User ratings, from one to five stars, are now supported for tracks. You can rate tracks, and use Pocket Player's smart playlists to queue up all noted 4-star tracks. Ratings can be imported from the desktop Windows Media Player using the new WM Adapter plugin. Play Counts are also supported. Pocket Player keeps track of what items have been played, and can also use this feature in smart playlists to queue up tracks. You can queue up your "Most Played" favorites, or use this feature with Windows Media Player to sync podcasts to the device, and auto-delete podcasts once finished with them. I don't actually use desktop Media Player to sync with Pocket Player... I prefer the simplicity of simply loading my tracks directly to my memory card through a card reader.

[break=More Library Choices]
The new Library view lets you find your media in many different ways. The traditional choices of Album, Artist, and Genre existed in prior versions. One new choice with the new version is to view your media by Release Date. When you pick this option, you get a selection of years to pick from.



You can also pick by saved playlists that were created either with Pocket Player, or loaded from your desktop software.



There is also a library search option that allows you to search for words that are in the name of the selection. Notice that the screens support landscape mode as well. On the Tilt, when you extend the keyboard, the system switches to this landscape oriented view so that your search criteria may be entered.



Once a selection is made, you are taken back to player mode. Notice that there are landscape skins as well as portrait.



[break=Streaming with Pocket Player]
A feature of Pocket Player that I have used frequently is its ability to find and listen to audio streams over a data connection. Note that to do this well, you need an EVDO or 3G connection, or of course WiFi. I have not had good results using EDGE with it. To listen to a streamed radio channel, first pick Shoutcast Radio Genres.



This will present you with a long list of genres to pick from. Scroll through this list using the 5-way switch, jogdial, or gestures to find the genre that you'd like to pick from.



Most of the genres have many, many channels to pick from and its difficult to know what each channel will provide for you. What I did was pick some channels from the list that I liked while in my office. I would look at the entry in Pocket Player, then go onto the web with my desktop computer and look at their programming. Once I found a station that I thought I'd like, I loaded it from Pocket Player and listened. Assuming the quality was good and it was the programming I expected, I went back and added the station to my Favorites list making it easier to quickly get back to stations you frequently listen to. Note that if you listen to streaming music over a Bluetooth headset, it will put a pretty heavily load on your battery.



Pocket Player 3.5 can now browse popular MP3 Blogs, such as Stereogum and Said The Gramophone. Featured in the Web Guide, MP3 blogs link to new and upcoming artists, and are a great resource for discovering new music. There is also the option to listen to podcasts from directories as well.



This works similarly to the other options where you are presented with a list of Podcasts available.


[break=Configuration of Pocket Player]
The Menu softkey brings up a menu of playback options, and a More option that brings you to configuration options.



First we'll look at the Equalizer which is accessed from that menu. Selecting it brings up a meny of Equalizer quick paths to load or save settings. We will go into the Adjust option.



We have 10 bands of frequency that can be adjusted up or down, as well as a Preamp setting. It is important not to over power the Preamp or it can distort and clip the audio.



Going back to the menu and selecting More, we get a number of options that we can pick to effect playback mode. By selecting Visualization, it will cycle through the different modes of visualization. In this version, you can also do that by simply tapping the screen during playback. There are also other on/off selectors here for Mute, DSP, Crossfade, and Screen Off. I have not used the "Use BT Headset" choice and I'm not sure what it does. If you have a headset, it uses it automatically.



We will not go into Options which allows for configuration of the whole Pocket Player system. There are many, many different configuration choices presented in standard Windows Mobile style.



If we select the Skins tab at the bottom, we will be able to select any of the loaded skins. Additional skins are available at the Conduits website.



Included as a standard skin now is the iPod-look skin.



There is also a Media Player looking skin.


[break=Conclusion]
Pocket Player now checks for plugin updates from the device directly. By selecting "Update now" in the options, Pocket Player checks the Pocket Player website for new versions of plugins you have installed, and can download and install them automatically. It also includes some plugins automatically that were not included by default before... in particular the one that supports Bluetooth controls. A new Bluetooth headset plugin has been added: users can now redirect all music to a connected Bluetooth mono headset. This is useful for listening to podcasts wirelessly, voicemails, and audio books.

Pocket Player now interacts with the phone properly; it will automatically pause playback during a phone call, and unpause and fade in the music after a phone call. Pocket Player 3.5 also has smoother interaction with Bluetooth A2DP headphones. When connecting or disconnecting headphones, Pocket Player will automatically reroute the audio to the headphones, or back to the speakers. Previous versions required exiting the player.



A Today Screen plug-in is included that allows you to start Pocket Player, and also control playback. The plug-in shows you the track being played and is compatible with tabs in Spb Mobile Shell, which is the way that I use it.

In conclusion, I highly recommend Conduit's Pocket Player. I would include a Pros and Cons chart, except that I can't think of any Cons at this point. I've been using the prior version 3.2 for several months and love it. Here is a list of the key features that I love the most about Pocket Player.

• Good use of RAM
• Robust feature set
• iPod like library browsing
• Streaming of radio stations
• Great sound quality

You can download a trial version or purchase it at our PDAPhoneHome software store HERE.