What Can Nokia Learn From The iPhone Music Interface

[Ewan]

In previous articles, I've been more than happy to praise the S60 Music player. Unfortunately, it has just not kept up with the changing pace of technology. On the N95 and N95 8GB vintage devices, the music app was far better than the leading MP3 players of the time, notably the iPod Nano. But the iPhone music app has vaulted over the S60 app.... what could the Espoo Engineers learn from Cupertino Coders?

Read on in the full article.

[mattrad]

Excellent comparison Ewan. One quibble though - you can now download podcasts from within the Music app on the iPhone - within "Podcasts" there's a "Get More Episodes..." link. This hands off to the iTunes app on the device, from where you can add new podcast episodes or feeds.

Also, I'd say that the iPod app on the iPhone wasn't always as good as it is now. It's become noticeably better since the iPhone came out, one example being that it didn't originally show artists & album along with song title - much as the 5800's interface is now.

There are some excellent improvements to the iPod app coming in iPhone OS 3.0 as well, but there's no reason why Nokia can't provide an equivalent interface IMHO.

Cheers
Matt

I really don't care about the app and the interface. They just play music, even the most basic mp3 player does it well enough for anyone. What matters is the they produce, and neither of these devices are good enough.

I've started writing a custom Audio Player for 5th edition (J2ME using eSWT for gfx) a few weeks ago. 5th edition brings some extended audio/media apis for Java. Right now it's at a very early stage but I've got kinetic scrolling working already.
I wouldn't put too much effort in it if I was planning to be the only one to use it (or to spread it for free).

So my question is: What chances do you think a good audio player that's making much use of touch capabilities and gestures would have as a commercial application considering the launch of ovi store and the expected projected number of devices out there in some months (all 5800 and in future n97's)?
Thanks!

i feel your audio player could be a hit or miss. It depends on what extra functionality you could provide in your audio player, may be support more extensions? kinetic scrolling would add a lot of attention to the audio player too! that's one thing i feel nokia just do not want to provide on 5800, why?? whereas add it on n97!!
what nokia do not understand is they have a great product in their hands to compete with rivals but it seems that they are just competing within themselves e.g. n97 vs 5800!!

[morpheus2702]

I think the main picture shows it all really: a scroll bar on a touchscreen device?

Doesn't just apply to the 5800's music app but to its UI in general.

It's reported that the N97 will have kinetic scrolling (and may appear in future firmware for the 5800) so does this mean the scoll bars can be done away with?

Here's hoping.

The v5 interface is a mess that's why the scrollbar. Happens when you just slap a touch layer on a softkey based fossil. Btw, what about gapless playback?

[Diane]

Excellent article. Perhaps no other cell phone in history has been as anticipated as Apple's iPhone

I'm so sick of hearing about the iPhone. Apple makes one phone, running one OS, with one App Store. Therefore, the eco-system is completely controlled by them, which makes it much easier to dictate the iPhone's direction. And, for all of the iPhone's GUI goodness - yes, that's a pun - it's a severe letdown in other areas.

If I wanted to be tied to one vendor, one device, and one carrier, I'd jump on the iPhone. However, I don't, so I choose an unlocked Symbian phone.

Let's get back to Symbian, and how we can improve it, and leave the iPhone to all the iWankers that drooll over everything that Apples does.

Yes the iPhone OS is a fossil from the early 60s, and the touch interface is embedded deep in the linux kernel right?

Mobile Observer is clueless and continues to make a fool of himself. Keep going please MO, it's quite funny now!

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Yes the iPhone OS is a fossil from the early 60s, and the touch interface is embedded deep in the linux kernel right?

Mobile Observer is clueless and continues to make a fool of himself. Keep going please MO, it's quite funny now!

Typo, should have said unix. It's all the same rubbish.

I don't really understand what some of you guys have against scrollbar. I think it's just good that UI has a scrollbar. Scrollbar is not just a widget which allows you to scroll the list, it's also an indicator which shows the position of the list. It also allows user to quickly jump from one position of the list to the another position.

Just look at that main picture which shows iPhone and Nokia 5800. iPhone has no scrollbar at all, so user has no way to know the position of the list. If you have eg. long list of the mp3 files then that really sucks. I think good UI needs scrollbar and it's wery bad if UI does not use it.

[Chrisp7]

The Music player is so unintuitive and clunky, I cant believe it hasnt been radically overhauled for S60 5th.

One very small thing that really bugs me is the track number displayed on the screen eg.
11/234
meaning track 11 of 234 tracks is playing. Who really cares which track number is playing!?? Its totally irrelevant. Now the ipod displays the number of tracks played in the album/selection - which makes perfect sense, especially if you are shuffling through all your tracks.
(I hope this makes sense for 12:30am!)

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Let's get back to Symbian, and how we can improve it, and leave the iPhone to all the iWankers that drooll over everything that Apples does.

Isnt that exactly what this article is addressing!?