Microfi Nitrogen 1.1 – one of the better audio player for Windows Mobile
I must admit – while starting off on this product I was not very impressed with the whole package. The default skins that came with the player just did not have ‘the feel’ for me – the colours were lame, the buttons dull and it just did not have the WOW factor. Just goes to prove how important UI is to the first impression you form about a product. Also goes to prove how looks can be deceptive!!
Microfi Nitrogen - Main Screen
The question of “Why another player?” was answered quite simply in the creator’s FAQ as yet another “option” for us users and that works out fine for me. As players go this one is pretty feature-rich and also offers a lot of eye-candy. There are a few glitches but none too great to really hamper the experience.
The Look
The base skin that comes with the player has got clearly laid out buttons for play, next and previous. The next and previous buttons double up as fast forward and rewind buttons when pressed and held. The other buttons include a dedicated button to turn off the screen to save power and a playlist/media button. The player has a large album art window that works with the ID3 tag. The shuffle and repeat buttons are placed at the top corners.
Microfi Nitrogen – Playlists and Media Browser
Microfi Nitrogen Playlists and Media Browser
The player basically works on the principal or organized folders and uses them as playlists similar to HDD players that we know. There is no need to sync up your music and you can just copy them onto your card and play them immediately. We liked the media browser and current playlist mode on this player – it basically displays either the list of currently playing songs or your folder list – intuitively showing what you chose to view last. It’s a pretty nifty feature as I am sure there is a good number of us that operate in either way (by folder or by playlist). On each of the modes, there are two sets of option menu items – one that you get by clicking the left “Options” item and another context sensitive one that you get by clicking and holding on any item in the view. Good options but maybe a little bit of overkill if you consider the usage of the application.
Microfi Nitrogen Menu
One cannot save a playlist on this player (save playlist)- though it does remember the list last playing even if you restart your player. On the playlist window we were not able to delete a song from the playlist using the “option” menu but we could do it from the context sensitive one. The options menu lets you clear the playlist, go to a song, select all/none etc – the usual. There is also an option to go back to the player (this isn’t something we have seen on any player). Btw the Ok button does not work on the version we have – quite the user nightmare
). On the context sensitive menu in addition to the usual move up/ down, set as next we also have an option to reorder a song after or before a particular song using the “Move to..” option – took us a while to figure out how that worked though!
On the media browser options we can play/ append the song selection or folder. The append starts playing the appended folder/ file immediately while we thought it would continue playing the current song and just append to the list. (Can we combine item and folder since they do the same?). There is also a recursive search option to include sub-folders while searching. There is an “Enqueue Item” option on the context sensitive media browser options which actually does the “enqueuing that we assumed the append would be doing. The “append and play” and “append current folder” basically do the same thing and we don’t think that appending a folder should immediately start playing the folder.
Microfi Nitrogen Sleep Mode
Sleep Mode! Yeah!
One thing that really worked for us was the sleep mode! About time! Users can set a time after which the player should stop playing or close the application (this setting can be found under the settings>general settings on the player. The mode goes all the way up to 120 minutes and we could choose to activate the mode through a simple button click. This is a MUCH appreciated feature that could be very useful if you tend to doze off while reading a book in bed.
Microfi Nitrogen – Supported Files Type
Nitrogen supports a wide variety of file formats ranging from MP3 / OGG / WMA / WAV / AAC / MP4 / M4U. The app also supports album art for your music.
Microfi Nitrogen Skins and languages
Microfi Nitrogen Skins
Yummy eye candy is readily available in neatly sorted lists on the wmskins website – http://nitrogen.wmskins.com/. Though there aren’t a lot of skins, there were a few that looked very interesting like the glossy blue, driving, hero and even an Ipod black lookalike!! These can be downloaded free from the website and applied using the skin selector on the settings menu. The player comes shipped with Portuguese along with English and many more languages can be found on the website.
Microfi Nitrogen Equalizer
Equalizer
The player has an equalizer with 8 predefined presets and the option to save any custom presets. The difference in sound between the predefined presets was not something that impressed us a lot and seemed normal at the most.
This is a player that has several good features that can be built upon to make it truly phenomenal. It is definitely several steps in the right direction and has some features that are truly adding to user delight (sleep mode is my favorite!). Yes, it has a few glitches but nothing to truly deter anyone from using it. Considering that the developer is a college grad who is building this in spare time (wow talk about multi-tasking!) I am sure future versions will have several “Cool” new features that would be the talk of the town!! We are definitely looking forward to it!
Tested On :
- HTC Hermes
Pros
- Finger friendly UI
- Skins support with dedicated website for skins
- Sleep mode to help the dozers
- Equalizer support
- Treats folders as playlists
- Extensive playlist and media view support
- Ability to play a wide variety of file types
- Customizability through settings and options
Cons
- Few glitches exist with the append function
- Features and options hidden behind multiple levels of user-clicks
- Takes some learning to use this effectively
- Small menu items make it less finger friendly
- No option to save playlists
Possible Improvements
- Support to navigate songs through finger gestures (like S2P)
- Ability to play even when power button is switched off
- More flexible album art support. I found a few other players recognizing album art when this one didn’t
- Better utilization on screen real-estate – maybe the album art can become a background rather than use up so much of screen space?
Screenshots:
Are u a fan of Microfi Nitrogen ? Do you use another music player ? Let us know in the comments..
9 Responses to “Microfi Nitrogen 1.1 – one of the better audio player for Windows Mobile”
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When does it stop….hopefully never ever
Great review!
I'll try this one!
C ya!
It is a mush have, another option is S2P. But I like this one better
It is a mush have, another option is S2P. But I like this one better
Awesome Player, but the deal breaker for me is the lack of native windows playlist support. After syncing with WMP.. it wont just pickup your premade playlists. You have to create new ones from scratch on the device.
That is teriffic and very well thought out.Normally I don’t make comments on on the internet, but I’ve to say that this site really forced me to do so. Really top notch bit of material
I use windows mobile but 1st time I read about microfi nitrogen 1.1