After a few weeks, I’m finding the Samsung Galaxy Player 3.6 to be a decent music player, and if dedicated to music, it solves the battery life problem. As a test, I used it as a dumb music player for a few days, about eight hours, and there wasn’t even a dent in the power meter. It could very well get the 30 hours advertised, but I wasn’t going to wait and see. It’s an Android, and cost 150 bucks, and it doesn’t make sense not to use its other features. But in doing this, the battery plummets, maybe five or six hours mixing WiFi with music. This is just text and images, no video, and not for long periods, maybe 15 to 20 minutes at a time, or an hour or two between charges. Androids are known to be power hogs, but I wouldn’t have expected this.
It’s still nice to have. What it does, beyond music, is impressive. My smartphone is a cheap LG 840GS, with a proprietary OS. There are no apps for it, and most networks and websites have limited or no support for non-Android/iOS devices. Android is a step up. Network connections don’t fail. Websites are presented in a styled, crisp, readable display, with more eye candy. I haven’t installed many apps yet, but the Amazon Cloud Player is great to have, as nearly my entire music library is uploaded there and there are no storage limitations.
Music playback is excellent. Organization is by songs, playlists, artists or albums, but not by genre. I like to shuffle through the blues sometimes, so this is too bad. Another minor annoyance is in the scrolling, which only starts from the top of the list. It can take a little time to reach your favorite track or artist. As mentioned before, if dedicated to music it has a very long battery life.
The Galaxy has 8GB internal memory, although the OS leaves about 5GB for music and data. The expansion slot supports a micro SDHC card of up to 32GB. The slot is internal, so if you change cards often, this can be a setback. The player mounts as a mass storage device, but can be synced with Windows Media Player or Banshee on Linux if you prefer. It includes a built-in 2MP camera. The screen is 3.65″, the main body 4.5″ x 2.5″. This is about right for me, but if you want something bigger, the Galaxy 5 is available with a 5″ display.
In tandem with my LG, the Galaxy is a fine device to have. Switching back and forth stretches the power limits, and together they give me a complete mobile system. The Galaxy might seem like overkill for a music player, but I’m finding the other features useful and nice to have.
Winamp is hands-down the easiest among the top three music players to get up and running, particularly if you’ve used Winamp for Windows before (for the syncing side of things, that is). It’s also the only app on the list that straddles the fence between streaming and pure local playback, via its Wi-Fi Sync utility. Winamp won’t download tracks from your home computer’s library unless it’s connected via Wi-Fi and the library is visible on your network – something a lot of people may not be comfortable with.
Thanks, Raymond. I’ll have to try it.
I’ve used Amazon Cloud Player as the primary music player on my Android phone since its inception at the end of March, so I’ve become quite familiar with how it works. The service has its pros and cons (like any service, I suppose), but overall I am a big fan. Now that I have had a day or so to play with Google Music, though, I thought it would be appropriate to put these two in the ring together to see who would rise as the victor. Journey with me in this head-to-head deathmatch between Google Music Beta and Amazon Cloud Player.