3 feature requests + 1 possible bug

[stevederocher]

First off I must say that Poweramp is by FAR the most advanced, thoroughly updated app available on the Market in it's class. I used it for the first time yesterday evening and was absolutely elated.

I have a few feature requests that I believe may improve the app's usability:

1. Downloaded album art should be available to be saved directly to the id3 tag file. Additionally, more id3 tag editing functionality would be very nice indeed.

2. Play/pause and track forward/back buttons should be added to system pull-down menu. (presently, users may only open the app when the Android pull-down menu is visible instead of control the music being played.)

3. BATCH OPERATIONS: similar to the iPod Touch and the iPhone music players, this feature would allow the manipulation of more than one file at a time or less than a whole group of files at a time rather than only being able to, for example, add one file at a time to a playlist, or an entire folder or search results. These batch operations would be a simple check-box interface and could be used for deletions, playlist creation, moving music from folder to folder, etc.

Were these features added, I would have no problem paying twice as much for this app! (:

Now for the one bug I found that may be a local problem on my device: I am running Froyo (2.2.1) on my Verizon Samsung Fascinate. In the "Lock Screen Options" settings menu, I can't seem to get the "Direct Unlock" option to work right for me (even after reloading the application, rebooting my device, and some other troubleshooting). I would love to unlock directly to the home screen, but every time my device is lock and I attempt unlocking, I have to go through the system unlock even though the "Direct Unlock" setting is checked. Is this something that other users are having trouble with too? I think this is a great feature that would definitely put the app ahead of others, but it seems to work the same as the rest.

[admin]

Thanks for the feedback!

1. it won't work for automatic album art download (as image writing to tag will require playback stop or can cause skips on phones with slow flash, like SGS), it could work for manual downloading, though, it's not user friendly this way.

2. if you mean status bar pull down notifications window, Android will close this window each time any button is pressed inside it, and also, the size of the notification "block" is fixed. This is why it's not implemented for Androids 2.x, for Android 3.x it's possible and will be implemented.

3. PowerAMP can add multiple files to playlists (either complete list or filtered songs), but yes, separate item selection is also planned (at least for deletion/adding to playlist and tag editing).

Re: direct unlock - lock screen functionality in Android is not standard, it basically means every phone/ROM/OEM does it differently, thus, it works on some phones (mostly the phones I have locally for testing) and can fail others. Though it should work on almost all phones from Samsung Galaxy series, I wonder why it doesn't work for your Fascinate, it can be also caused by some other app with lock screen replacement, of by, for example, android secure lock screen/pin enabled.

Thanks!

[stevederocher]

Thank you for your thorough reply! Just a couple follow-up questions:

When do you anticipate integration of the separate item selection into a release?

Specifically, I have the Fascinate I-500, which I understand may be quite different than the other versions of the Fascinate. Could you look in to fixing this bug for this version specifically? It would be greatly appreciated (:

Also, unrelated to my previous questions: I noticed this application supports headset controls/buttons, but I'm not quite clear on which headset is necessary for this functionality. I searched the internet quite thoroughly a couple weeks ago for an "android" headset with such controls, but only came up with either a) ipod headset controls or 1 or 2 generic models of low-grade android headset controls only "compatible" with specific models. Can you tell me if all headset controls work with the android or there is a list of android-compatible models that you have access to? I'd imagine you had to do some testing when the headset button support was added.

Thanks again for your thorough reply and such a great app!

[pxh]

For what it's worth, I can confirm that Zagg Smartbuds work fine with my Motorola Defy.

There is a button to start/pause or answer phone calls when pressed once. Twice for next track, thrice for previous track, as well as a microphone for phone calls. There is also a slider volume which works independently of the phone's volume.

From what I read, they should be compatible with the majority of Android phones.