Android App Review: bTunes

Many of us have used Apple's iPod UI at some point, namely the interface supplied with Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch. Being a former (and proudly rehabilitated) iPhone junkie, one of the things that I wasn't necessarily impressed with in Android's OS from the beginning was the music player. Sure, it did the job, but finding certain songs in a thousands-deep library wasn't always easy. Enter bTunes.

bTunes is an iPod look-alike application for Android. The entire UI is designed after the iPhone / iPod Touch application, which is one thing Apple is most famous for. From the look and feel of the touch interface to the graphics and functionality, bTunes does leaps and bounds over the stock music player.

It's easy to build playlists on the go, rearrange the track order within them, add and remove songs at will, and shuffle the entire mix. When the phone is in sleep mode with the screen off, bTunes has a lock-screen overlay that gives easy access to "Next Track", "Pause" and "Previous Track" buttons, while displaying downloaded album artwork in the background. Nice.

Each time you launch the app, bTunes searches your memory card for new media files automatically, so you're always up to date with new additions to your music collection. Use the "Recently Added" queue to then take those songs and insert them into your existing playlists.

For advanced users, the Preferences list is a dream. It allows you to control all aspects of bTunes; from Last.fm scrobbling to shortcut key functions to search options.

Summary and screen shots after the jump.



Pros:

• Familiar and fully functional user interface
• Modified lock screen with quick shortcuts for track selection
• Fully bluetooth compatible (with 'Mute' function when using voice dial / voice search
• Great homescreen widget; similar to Pandora

Would benefit from:

• Cover flow browsing in landscape mode
• Less active memory usage (approximately 30mb as opposed to stock music app's 22mb)

Download bTunes from the Android market today. At $1.99 with lifetime updates, that's cheaper than a cup of coffee from Starbucks -- and it'll last longer too! You'll never go back to the stock music player again.

Reviewed on Motorola Droid running Android 2.1.