pTunes for Windows Mobile review

Hear ye! Hear ye! I’m just going to repeat again the announcement that Sammy has posted before here at PA, about the new pTunes v4.1 which is released by NormSoft few days ago and specially made for Windows Mobile devices.

The award winning and everybody’s favorite music player has finally make its way into one of the most used mobile platform today, from the original version first made for the now old Palm OS Garnet. I believe it’s only natural for NormSoft to do so, since Palm is leaving its old OS and goes for major make-over with new Linux-based OS named Nova in next year 2009. To fill-in the gap in between those time frame, NormSoft eventually provide pTunes available for the other OS that Palm phones used: Windows Mobile 5 and 6.

Just exactly what Tim Norman, Founder of NormSoft has said in his press release of pTunes for WinMob: “Bringing Pocket Tunes to the Windows Mobile platform gives existing and new customers more choices about the phones and carrier services they use with our product. Our goal is to provide the best audio playback experience for the broadest range of audio content on mobile phones.”

Back then in

April, I was lucky enough to participate in the beta version of pTunes for WinMob; provided by the kindness from Mark Bellievuae, NormSoft’s Vice President & Marketing and Business Development. When the official final release at last becomes available, I quickly try it out on my Treo 750v.

I’m truly impressed with pTunes clean and easy user interface, and I came to understand why it has become the most used music player on Palm devices and many times has been voted as the best MP3 player by Palm addicts/users.

Unfortunately, I have never use the pTunes on any Palm devices. But from some of the reviews I’ve read, it looks like pTunes for WinMob works exactly the same like pTunes on Palm OS. So it’ll be no surprise for you who have been using pTunes with your Palm devices to read my review, but there’s a new bombshell for you from the maker of pTunes. Included in the new release of pTunes v4.1, is an additional new app called Pocket Tunes Sync, which I’m going to discuss it lastly on this review (so keep on reading my dear friends).

I’m not gonna bored you with the already abundant reviews that are available out there, or what you can read on NormSoft’s

pTunes User Guide. I highly recommend you to read that User Guide first if this is the first time you use pTunes, or if you’re not so adventurous type of person. ;-p Therefore, what I’m going to go through only the few main parts and save you from the long reviews.

The player screen

This is the primary screen whenever you fire-up your pTunes, the default fresh “Sleek Blue” skin will greet you in the most simplest but efficient user interface I’ve encountered in many WinMob music players. And I’m astonished with pTunes compatibility with Treo 750’s square screen (240x240 resolution), which often proof to be the drawback of new apps nowadays.

From the top, the pTunes logo and name is your gateway to open more options and advanced settings. At the right side of this title bar also includes a clock and battery meter of your device, so you know when you have to stop because you’ve drained the battery juice from playing too many times those tunes you love so much.

Under the title bar you’ll find every informations available on the song you’re currently playing, the more infos you had put inside the song files (like song’s title, artist, album name and album art) will be displayed here. I really love the way pTunes smoothly scroll on the long text, making it enjoyable to have pristine songs inside your Treo. ;-D

Going more below, there’s a playlist panel to show the current songs you’ve chosen, and simply by clicking on one of the song names will play it instantly. If you’ve set the crossfading settings from the “Prefs” menu, it’ll allow you to seamlessly fade from one song to the next; another nice touch from pTunes.

At the most bottom, it’s the navigational buttons reference to the D-pad and the left & right of Treo’s buttons. I know you’ll easily figure out the play, pause, previous and next track buttons. As for the left button: “Choose Songs” is also is self-explanatory, on the right side: “Internet Radio” is to open the internet radio catalog and choose a radio station to play.

Distinguishable settings and advanced options

Let’s begin at the General Preferences, in here you can set how much of amount the pTunes to boost volume in overall usage. One thing you have to keep in mind is that any amount of volume boost will likely to degrade the audio quality.

There’s a good option that I recommend you to set it on, it’s the “Check for updates every 30 days”. Where pTunes will be reminded to check for program updates in interval of 30 days after you set it, it can only perform its duty if you have a network data connection available.

At the Advanced Preferences, you can set many useful options such as start playing musics on the last playlist whenever you startup pTunes or stop playing if your device is on low battery.

And if you’re an easy sleeper once hearing your lullaby songs (for instance: Van Hallen’s Big Fat Money ~LOL~), then the “Stop playing after X minutes” is right for you. After this time limit is reached based on your setting, the pTunes will pause the current played song and will tell the device to go to sleep as normal.

Don’t forget to select the “System volume limits pTunes volume” option, because pTunes will use the device system volume setting to maximize its own volume. If this option is selected, you’ll have louder volume and won’t be needing the “Volume Boost” option above.

Moving on to Tools menu, you may use the Equalizer provided inside the pTunes to enhance the overall bass in the musics played by selecting “Bass Boost” in Equalizer option drop-down. As long as your musics have good/high quality wave length, you’ll also get better bass sounds. I enjoyed this feature so much, especially when I enjoy playing Duffy’s Mercy song on ‘DunproofinsThankfulMix’ remix. ;-)

Head on to pTunes’ next unique feature is Bookmark; this feature allows you to create (automatically and manually) bookmarks for audiobooks, podcasts or recorded radio broadcasts. And with “Go to a Bookmark”, you can fast jump to any bookmarks previously created.

Speaking of “Go to” feature, there’s another niche feature built-inside that make pTunes stands out in the crowd of mobile music players. While playing a song, you can click the “Go To…” option from the Actions menu. From there you can choose to jump to certain position, length, hour, minute and even seconds of the song that’s currently playing.

Pocket Tunes Sync
Copying files from your computer to your mobile device can cause quite a lot of trouble, and maybe headache too for un-experienced newbie users. That’s why NormSoft has included an amazingly easy to use sync app for Windows OS; called pTunes Sync. For now, the pTunes Sync is only available for Windows platform and can only sync with the famous Apple’s iTunes media player.

To install pTunes Sync, simply select the “Install iTunes Sync” option when you install pTunes-Windows installer on your PC. Afterwards, connect your WinMob device and just launch the new installed iTunesSync from Windows Start Menu; click on the ”Synchronize Now” to start synchronization session.

Special note from NormSoft, that only unprotected files within your iTunes library can be played within Pocket Tunes. The "Pocket Tunes Sync for iTunes" PC client will skip any protected files that you attempt to synchronize to your device.

Conclusion

pTunes for WindMob is definitely one of the best music and audio player offered, it already supported many music files (MP3, WMA, AAC & aacPlus). With so many features I’ve mentioned above and the bundled new Pocket Tunes Sync, you’ll get an ultimate music player for your Treo 750 and possibly the future

Treo 8.xx.

Although you must pay a quite premium price tagged at

$37.95 after 15 days of trial, but you’ll receive every new updates release on the version you’ve purchased (v4.xx) forever; known as pay once and use forever term. Plus you’ll be entitled for a fine customer support from NormSoft.

Wish list for next version

Even though pTunes is very good, as a new app for Windows Mobile; it still lacks few features that I think should be included to make it more perfect. Here are some of the features I can think of:

• Song lyrics, a dedicated screen specially to show the song lyrics.
• Edit the song’s infos; like adding or changing the song’s name, artist, album, genre, cover art / picture, etc.
• Change the Left & Right menu, into other shortcuts to pTunes features. Like changing shortcuts into equalizer, skins, settings, etc.
• Automatic screen dimmer, an option to automatically lets pTunes to turn off the screen after a peculiar time frame; for reserving the battery live.

Oh, one more thing. The screenshots you seen here is pTunes wearing a special skin made for this new version for Windows Mobile, if you’re interested then head on to the

pTunes skins library web page to get them. Go get ‘em, while they’re hot!! ;-D

[blogged with my Treo 750v]