Pocket Tunes 4.0: Even Better Music On Your Treo

As I’ve stated many times in the past my iPod has gathered dust since I much prefer listening to music directly on my Treo –  an activity that is quite possibly one my most frequently used particularly as I now use multiple 4GB SD cards and will soon also receive my first two 8GB cards.

For this there is no doubt that I have to thank the fantastic Pocket Tunes application without which I very much doubt that I would have made the Treo my preferred portable music player nor so enjoyed listening to my music while on the go.

A few days ago the long anticipated new Pocket Tunes 4.0 was finally released and while it brings some much appreciated improvements and new functionalities it disappointingly and somewhat upsettingly falls very much short of the expectations that I had for this latest full release.  The six major changes in version 4.0 include:

1. Brand New User Interface
The developers of Pocket Tunes excitedly and with much fanfare promote the arrival of their “sleek new user interface” but this leaves _much_ to be desired.  Considering that the entire new UI consists of just ONE screen you would have thought that a smart usability designer could have achieved near perfection here but it’s simply not the case.

For starters there is the mindnumbingly annoying Pocket Tunes splash screen (above right) which appears for a few seconds_every time_ you start the application – I guess that someone might be suffering from logo depravation.  Next are details such as the fact that the clock at the top right of the screen is too small as well as the Repeat and Shuffle buttons and importantly the new Album Art – an entirely new feature in v4.0.  Additionally buttons that previously existed in the very good “High Fidelity” UI from version 3.0 such as Playlist and Equalizer are no longer available.

I wish that I had the capabilities to design my own Pocket Tunes skins as with just 10 minutes in Photoshop I was able to at least somewhat improve the standard “Sleek Blue” that it now includes.  Here above left I have increased the Album Art size by over 50%, increased the size of the clock, reduced the size of the volume bar so as to accomodate two more buttons on that line and finally simply marginally shrink the main Play bar at the bottom.  Given a little more time I am sure that I could come up with something even better which again begs me to ask why Pocket Tunes has not come up with a ‘great’ new UI to start with.

Moreover, I really have to ask why Pocket Tunes only has the ‘one’ screen when clearly there could be three or four at least.  The first would give you access to all the buttons, the second would display mostly all the song list for your album(s) while the third would provide you with a large Album Art view such as my draft version above right.  You should be able to easily cycle across all the screens with just one additional button – I’ll be waiting for someone to actually design some working skins…

Finally, whoever was responsible for Pocket Tunes’ new UI intervention has completely missed to make any changes to the Menu options with Prefs, Actions, Tools and Help unfortunately remaining virtually the same.  For example after using Pocket Tunes for nearly three years I have yet to figure out exactly what “Copy from PC Prefs…” is about (since they don’t include an “i” information button for every preference).  Other issues include the fact that the “Stop playing after … minutes” still resets to zero every time I disable it instead of remembering my previous selection (I typically leave PTunes playing for 20 minutes when going to sleep).  The fact is that Pocket Tunes’ entire menu screens are still a complete mess and need an urgent revamp.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough PTunes has also failed to make much needed small improvements to its “Choose Songs” screens above.  For starters the “All” selection still searches for music across your entire SD card (taking up to 15 seconds to do so) instead of just speeding the process by only looking for files in your Audio folder (above right).  The other thing is that if for example you have a specific ‘Classical’ folder which contains multiple albums and click “Select All” PTunes does not understand that you would like to play all the albums in that folder and instead does nothing – you can frustratingly only play one album folder at a time.  I could go on and on about small faults like this that still plague PTunes.

Having said all this there are some ‘minor’ improvements in this new UI that are better such as the easy large one button direct access to “Choose Songs” (bottom left of the screen) and “Internet Radio Catalog” (bottom right) as well as the new display of ‘time elapsed’ and ‘total song duration’.  I also like the fact that the previous separate Play + Pause + Stop buttons have now been cleverly combined into just one button – saving precious screen space in the process – and that they are still within easy thumb reach at the bottom of the screen.

Finally, as before Pocket Tunes provides extremely good one hand interface navigation using the 5-way control on your Treo – Up/Down to control volume, Click Left/Right to skip songs backwards or forwards and Press+Hold Left/Right to fast forward.

2. Album Art
When your music includes album art images, Pocket Tunes will now display them beside the song's title.  Tap on the album art to enlarge it to take up the whole screen (below left), or tap on the song title to see the album art along with information about that song (below right).  For maximum compatibility with your album art, Pocket Tunes displays JPEG album art that's embedded in the song file or included as a separate file in the same folder. 

3. Internet Radio Catalog
You can now choose from the hundreds of Internet radio stations pre-populated in the new catalog and easily accessible via the “Internet Radio” button at the bottom right of the screen.  Select from dozens of categories including Pop/Rock, Talk, Hip-Hop/Rap, Jazz, Classical, and many more.  Also included are high-fidelity aacPlus stations that sound wonderful on any wireless network.   

You can add your own stations manually (as I did above for Energy 92.7) or by browsing the web using your phone's built-in web browser.  You can even share your favorite stations with friends using Bluetooth, infrared, or email.  The radio catalog is updated often, so select the Get Updates menu item regularly to download the latest and greatest stations to your phone.  The new Internet Radio Catalog is without a doubt a very welcome addition to Pocket Tunes.

4. Improved Internet Radio Playback
Pocket Tunes already offered the best way to listen to Internet Radio on your Treo and in 4.0 you can enjoy many additional enhancements.  Pocket Tunes now collapses "cluster" stations into one entry on the screen.  If one of the servers for that station isn't working, simply expand the list and select another one.  In addition, 4.0 improves compatibility with software that makes your home music collection available on your phone.  PTunes has also added numerous other under-the-cover improvements such as improved detection of the streaming format, better synchronization when displaying the current song name from a radio station, improved buffering and skip prevention, and lots more.  However, here again the UI does not for example show you the kbps data for the stream…

5. Playback of AAC and aacPlus Files
Pocket Tunes now natively supports AAC and aacPlus formatted files and streaming audio.  AAC and aacPlus enable smaller files and better quality, allowing you to fit more music on your device.  If you've copied your music collection from your CDs using iTunes or WinAmp, you will appreciate the ability to play those files on your phone without converting them like other music players require.

6. Even Better Audio Quality
The audio quality on Pocket Tunes 3.0 was undoubtedly extremely good but this has now been further improved with drastic improvements to the volume boost feature with which you can now enjoy louder, virtually distortion-free playback in the loudest environments.  Also, with the new support for aacPlus you can enjoy crystal-clear CD-quality radio on your existing cell phone data connection.  Or use software like WinAmp to rip your CDs to aacPlus for maximum fidelity. 

Standard Pocket Tunes Features
Version 4.0 builds on an already packed set of features and functionalities that Pocket Tunes 3.0 offered including:

• Access millions of songs and audio books from popular online music stores: Pocket Tunes Deluxe supports all music stores that use Microsoft's Janus technology such as Napster, Real Rhapsody, Yahoo! Music Engine with support for both subscription and purchased content.  (I will review this separately soon but you can read my previous post Yahoo! Music Unlimited On Your Treo for more information).
• Listen to all your tunes on your phone: Easily play music stored on your device's storage card, internal memory, or hard disk.
• Keep your music synchronized with what's on your PC: Pocket Tunes integrates with Windows Media Player, Real Rhapsody, and many other music players on your PC to allow you to quickly and easily copy music to your device.  Just plug it in, start Pocket Tunes, and you’re ready to go.
• Find music quickly, auto-sorted by album, artist, and genre: Pocket Tunes sorts your music by album, artist, genre, and playlist to allow you to quickly find what you're in the mood for.
• Broad range of supported music files: Pocket Tunes plays MP3, AAC, aacPlus, WMA*, WMDRM (Janus), PCM WAV, and Ogg Vorbis files.
• Use your Palm device normally while music is playing: with “background playback” you're free to run any other application on your device while playing music or listening to Internet radio.
• Integrated with your phone: Pause you rmusic or change the volume using the buttons on the side of your Treo.  When calls come in, Pocket Tunes automatically pauses the music until you hang up.
• Control your music playback while using other phone functions: Access the popup console while using other applications or phone functions to play, pause, change tracks, adjust the volume, and more.
• Mix, shuffle, then repeat: Quickly create playlists or pick songs one-by-one.  Turn on the shuffle and repeat options to combine your music in ways you had not expected.
• Personalize Pocket Tunes: Choose from dozens of skins (many of them are free) at www.pocket-tunes.com/skins/ to make Pocket Tunes your own.
• Fine tune your music: With features like crossfade, gapless playback, a high-fidelity equalizer, high quality volume boost, and many more, Pocket Tunes allows you unprecedented control over your music listening experience.
• Listen to audio books: Pocket Tunes provides unique features (like bookmarks and auto-bookmarks) to make it a powerful companion when listening to books on the go.
• Support for StyleTap on Treo 700: Owners of the StyleTap Platform can now run Pocket Tunes on their Palm Treo 700w smartphone (Requires StyleTap v0.9.126 or greater).
• Tons of playback options: Not everyone uses their audio player in the same way.  Configure Pocket Tunes to start playing on startup, stop playing after a certain period of inactivity, stop playing on low battery, and more.
• Ringtones, alarm clocks and more: Pocket Tunes integrates with dozens of third-part applications to enable great capabilities such as custom ringtones, alarm clocks (such as with my preferred great MobileClock) and much more.

Conclusion
The developers of Pocket Tunes claim that it is “the most feature-rich audio player for your Treo smartphone” and I am very happy to continue to support this since I have yet to find another player that comes close to its feature set.  I envisage Pocket Tunes 4.0 to remain my preferred Treo audio player for some time and I will likely encourage others to use it.

Having said this however I expected quite a bit more from this new full version 4.0.  I am rather disappointed and annoyed feeling that the people at Pocket Tunes have been somewhat resting on their laurels instead of truly further pushing the unique digital music boundaries that I believe that the Treo offers.  I honestly feel that they are slowly beginning to squander a golden opportunity and I will unfortunately now more readily look at competing offerings.

For example, I still cannot understand how no company has exploited the option to transform the Treo into what could likely become the single best “portable music discovery device” in the world.  With up to 8GB of SD storage, unlimited wireless data capabilities, full PC synchronisation and significant on-device processing capabilities there is no reason why I could not periodically download a couple of gigabytes of music (DRM protected even) and conveniently listen + rate (or even buy) them while on the go.  As far as I know nobody has even attempted to turn this into a standalone business or add-on service yet.

I hope that future Pocket Tunes updates in 2007 may bring some more meaningful improvements as this application may currently still be the best-of-breed on Planet Treonauts but it certainly has a way to go before it can achieve real success.  The day that people specifically express a preference to buy a Treo because Pocket Tunes is installed on it will be the day that its developer can pop the champagne.  In the meantime they should concentrate their efforts on ensuring that it delivers more than just ‘cosmetic’ improvements.

[Note: If you already listen to music on your Treo or are considering doing so you may also want to read my previous post about Music Listening Options Roundup.]

Treonauts always play to a different tune…