The Music App, my view after one week

Firstly my most important issue – Sound quality. The Jolla does not disappoint, well at least not to my ears. There is no equaliser or any other sound enhancements such as Dolby headphone. The sound can go to very high levels compared to may music players although there are warnings that you have to click through top get to the high levels. Generally I find the sound warm with good bass. Of course much also depend on headphones and there are none supplied.

Hands free headphones that worked on the N9 will not work on the Jolla. This pin arrangement must be quite different and I suspect now follows the android phone convention,

The Application Usability

The good

With the app minimised there is the ability to pause or skip tracks without having to maximise the app. The gesture need to be quite accurate, especially of the minimized app is in small mode. However once mastered they are very useful.

When the app is maximised and in play queue mode you can advance forward or back by pressing the button or sweeping the artist name and song playing bar.

In the play list view the song playing and forward and back button show at the bottom of the screen. This is also a pulley menu area and there are toggle switches for shuffle and repeat plus a + button to add playing song to play lists

In the all songs view you can long press and add the song to the current play queue or playlist. You can add and arrange your playlists without interrupting the song that is playing.


The not so good

There are no options that you can change in the music player at present.

Album art shows clearly in the minimised view and in the list view for albums artists etc. But when the song is playing there is just the play queue list with no sigh of album art anywhere. The Jolla ambience controls the look and feel of this area

No idea on the home screen that the app is running, would be nice to have buttons on the page in the same manner as per the N9

The bad

In all songs view there are MP4 videos showing in the list! These do not show in the gallery section, in fact the Media and Gallery terms are misleading. I would expect video to be in media not gallery. At present we have the worst of both worlds

To make matters worse any video media will not play in the media app. This means that in “shuffle all” mode the music will stop.

In all list songs show according to artist name rather than song name. Not very helpful as there is also no search function within music or the phone in general.

Album view again lists by artist name and not album name. Not very useful at all.

Then the application shows hours and minutes of media , why not stick to convention and have the number of albums and songs? This is confusing and this information adds nothing. Within an album view or all songs view the time makes sense but not elsewhere.

A glaring issue is Albums with the same name. This is best explained by the following example:-

I have an album by the group called the Jam. However if I view the songs in this album I get a load of songs by other artists that have an album called greatest hits. Then in Album view the album Greatest Hits is listed under the artist “Multiple Artists” There is no album listed Greatest Hits by The Jam.

The ugly

Now for the worst part of the UI. This is no way to quick scroll. That means if like me you have 200 plus albums it is a mare to scroll to what you want. Getting back to the top is easier if you gesture back to the Media home screen and then back to the view you want. Tedious and terrible

If I have a track playing and go to the Media home screen and use the top pulley menu (there is one at the bottom too) pulling down shows the artist and track playing. Selecting this from the pulley menus cause the app to hang for a while and sometime just close down/crash with an associated error message.


Summary

I would consider the Media App to be essentially work in progress with major issues.

Sent the key points to care@jolla.com