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Music app hell! Info on Sony Xperia, Galaxy S4 Mini esp. requested


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Old 05-12-2013, 14:45
Chris Simon
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Join Date: Mar 2000
Location: Snowdonia
Posts: 2,725

I'm trying to find my ideal portable music player, mainly for use in the car but basically anywhere that's not at home. I don't know how many apps I've downloaded for my iPad and generic Android tablet, there's always something wrong with them, with respect to usability, sorting and grouping orders etc. Even Apple seem to have screwed up their staple iPod music app.

I'm currently looking in particular at the Sony Xperia SP and the Samsung Galaxy S4 mini as possible new smartphones to double-up as music players, but trying to find out what their built-in music apps do without actually buying one is very difficult. The Sony because of the highly-lauded Walkman app and the Galaxy because it might have its own player rather than the stock Android player (which actually is the best I've found so far, but still not quite perfect...).

So could anyone with one of these devices answer the following basic questions for me. Or indeed if you have any recommendations for other hardware and/or software that might do what I want then that would also be appreciated. I'm not averse to buying a separate music player device, such as a standalone MP3 player or an iPod as opposed to a phone, so fire away!

First of all, it must have a capacitive touch display. And then...

1. Does the Artists menu group items by Artist or Album Artist? (Album Artist is a must, I will discount anything that can only see Track Artist)
2. On displaying Albums after selecting an artist, does it sort albums chronologically or alphabetically? (I would prefer chronologically by year)
3. On displaying Albums after selecting an artist, does it display tracks sorted by album (which is terrible! Lots of scrolling to do) or does it display a list of albums first?
4. Is there a Genres menu? (I would prefer to have a Genres menu, but not all players have one)
5. If there is a Genres menu, what is displayed next after selecting a genre: Tracks, Albums, or Artists? (Albums and Album Artists preferably switchable, but a Genres menu that can only display tracks is useless)
6. Is there an on the go, ad-hoc queue/playlist and is it possible to queue individual tracks? And is it possible to reorder tracks in the queue?
7. Is Disc # respected within an album, i.e. if it's a multi-disc album are the tracks sorted by Disc # first and then Track #?
8. Are compilation (multi-artist) albums recognised in any way?
9. Does it allow you to place playlist files onto its storage from elsewhere?
10. Does it have at least 64GB music storage, or at least allow you to plug in a 64GB SD card?
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