Full Tablet Support

[Ottoman]

While Poweramp is compatible with Tablet at OS level, the GUI is just not designed for this form factor. Some (unintended?) improvements have been made on Beta 3, but I am wondering whether Poweramp will be fully supported. For illustrative purposes, I have uploaded some actual screenshots from a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

Lost of space is wasted and button and title are just tiny for such a big screen; it looks beautiful on Galaxy S II phone, bit not on its elder brother!

In landscape mode, things are not much better; buttons are still tiny and the title near-unreadable. The equalizer option could be bigger!

Tone, Volume knobs, not quite how you would expect them on a Tablet.

There have been some "improvements", as well, but still not quite there yet.

BEFORE (Pre-Beta 3)

AFTER (Beta 3), not perfect, but more Tablet-friendly.

Hopefully, Poweramp will look good both on phones and tablets on release; half support is just not good.

Thanks,

[andrewilley]

I assume all this is just skin controlled, so I assume it must be possible to alter later.

The one thing I really don't like is the layout of the fwd/rev buttons in landscape above each other rather than side-by-side, and even though there is much more space in landscape rather than portrait anyway, the folder next/back buttons are missing completely.

Andre

[Ottoman]

André,

I totally agree with you, this is indeed a "skin" issue, I wanted to include this word on my original post...in any case, as I said this is not a functionality issue, rather an/a aesthetic/cosmetic one. Nevertheless, it has some impact on the usability aspect of the app on a tablet, as you have pointed out the fwrd/back buttons are so closed to each other that attention to detail is required!

Many apps are Tablet-aware, such these ones, many of which are free, like the Wordsearch (not listed), which was updated just 24 hours after I (and problable more people) contacted the developer...before that, the app would apepear as a tiny rectangle on a tablet, with letters the same size as on a phone!

Flightboard on mobile

Flightboard on a Tablet

There are no much difference between landscape and portrait on mobile...

Pulse on mobile

Pulse on tablet

YouTube on mobile

YouTube on tablet

I am sure Poweramp can do better...just don't want Max to leave it down to third-party skins: this should be so out of the box.

[maxmp]

PowerAMP HD is planned. I'm not sure for the moment, that HD theme can be done with skin(s) only. This will be certainly a separate (free) build/update.

Thanks!

[Ottoman]

Thanks for confirming the next availability of Poweramp HD. However, it would have been better to all in one package. Currently, there are too many installation packages: even the unlock key is a separate package and has led to many issues (order of download, accidental launch of this component (now it can be removed from the list of app)). Poweramp should automatically detect the device type through a universal installation package. What are the challenges?

[maxmp]

You're right about keeping it as single package (apk) as the best goal, still, there are HUGE differences between still-supported-by-PowerAMP Android 2.1, and Android 3.0+. Also, full skin (included rescaled icons, etc.) takes ~1mb, and you don't want to have about 2mb (app size grows 2x on installation) just wasted on the phone by skin which can't be used by the phone. (It's less pressing on tablets as they usually have a lot of storage capacity for apps).

Thanks!

[Ottoman]

I don't think many people care about the size of the app on their device, if the app pleases them; plus, there is the option to move it to external storage albeit some limitations, mainly widget support. I appreciate the problem resulting from the OS fragmentation....

Thanks for the explanation and details!

[haddy]

In this Youtube video:

...Briefly shows Poweramp v1.xx outputted from Samsung Galaxy S2 to a bigger TV screen, I wonder how different this is to a 'HD' Tablet version of Poweramp planned..Still nice to hear a 'HD' version though.

[haddy]

Poweramp HD is planned. I'm not sure for the moment, that HD theme can be done with skin(s) only. This will be certainly a separate (free) build/update.

Thanks!

Poweramp HD is really needed as of today. I just got myself a Galaxy S3 phone that has 720p screen and Poweramp 2.0.6 icons on interface have a depreciated look to them.

I think that Poweramp HD should be full 1080p based with icons sourced directly from scallable vector. Heck, you could even consider a "HD" skin for 4K resolution to really future-proff Poweramp in the coming years to come.

Please Max!

[Ottoman]

The latest release notes mention "some" support for tablet: what is the status of this matter?

Before Nexus Tablets and other begin flooding, could you please clarify this aspect of your app?

Thank you,

Otto

[Catman51]

Just got a Transformer Prime, and it's really not designed for a Tablet, hopefully soon?

[Ottoman]

Just got a Transformer Prime, and it's really not designed for a Tablet, hopefully soon?

I have uninstalled completely from my tablet and I am considering upgrading it to Assus Pad Infinity. I just cannot imagine how horrible Poweramp would look on higher-resolution tablet.

This situation is just unacceptable! It will soon be a year since I reported this issue! In fact, now they will be heading to the beach for the holiday season; some may even come here to London for the Olympics. Utterly disgusting!

Other developer on other platforms,mainly iOS upgrade their application swiftly. WHy Poweramp have to treat their users differently? I mean the new iPad now sports retina screen resolution and most developers have ported their apps to support this new resolution, too while still supporting lower. Yet, here we are told 2Mb app dat increase is at fault! Maybe Poweramp staff should compare the app data increase from iPad 2 to iPad "3".

What next, "Wait for Poweramp 4.0 for full-tablet support", since this is not even in the to-do list for the next "major" release, which is merely a renaming of it?

A very disappointed user/customer,

Otto

[andrewilley]

It plays OK on my tablet, OK, as we said before, the UI is not especially pretty - but it's an AUDIO player, so I spend most of my time listening to it rather than looking at it....

It's certainly not going to halt the Olympics, prevent holidays, or bring down rest of the civilised world though.

Andre

[haddy]

I want a "HD" default Poweramp skin (with HD icons) for the Samsung Galaxy S3....

...A single APK package would be the best seeing as some Android app apk's these days exceed 10mb+, so it's ok.

[andrewilley]

I'm using the default skin on my Galaxy S3 and it seems to be working fine so far - what sort of things are not right for you?

Andre

[Ottoman]

It plays OK on my tablet, OK, as we said before, the UI is not especially pretty - but it's an AUDIO player, so I spend most of my time listening to it rather than looking at it....

It's certainly not going to halt the Olympics, prevent holidays, or bring down rest of the civilised world though.

Andre

André,

I know it plays OK,but it just doesn't look OK. I appreciate you listen the music only, but some people,among them myself, like to choose and that means I have to relay on the App (UI=) quite extensively (which is still not as user-friendly as one would want), to change tracks, look for an album and so forth. The point is how much more time they need...during this time, Google has released ICS and now Jelly Bean. All the features we were promised back them have been removed!

OK, I got the Bluetooth track info, but there is so much more than that and the app has a lot of potential if only development was progressing.

Regards,

Otto

[haddy]

I'm using the default skin on my Galaxy S3 and it seems to be working fine so far - what sort of things are not right for you?

Andre

Yes but I notice some icons, especially the 'Library' view icons for artist, album etc could do with some quality upscaling for a HD screen. At present, It's mainly the GUI icons of Poweramp that could have a quality sharpening. Thanks Andre.

[@Poweramp2]

I have uninstalled completely from my tablet and I am considering upgrading it to Assus Pad Infinity. I just cannot imagine how horrible Poweramp would look on higher-resolution tablet.

This situation is just unacceptable! It will soon be a year since I reported this issue! In fact, now they will be heading to the beach for the holiday season; some may even come here to London for the Olympics. Utterly disgusting!

Other developer on other platforms,mainly iOS upgrade their application swiftly. WHy Poweramp have to treat their users differently? I mean the new iPad now sports retina screen resolution and most developers have ported their apps to support this new resolution, too while still supporting lower. Yet, here we are told 2Mb app dat increase is at fault! Maybe Poweramp staff should compare the app data increase from iPad 2 to iPad "3".

What next, "Wait for Poweramp 4.0 for full-tablet support", since this is not even in the to-do list for the next "major" release, which is merely a renaming of it?

A very disappointed user/customer,

Otto

Morning Sir...

Yeah, you are right about some of the points and a bit wrong about others. Comparing making apps for Android and iOS is something no one should really do... it's a whole different ball game. I can imagine how much easier life for us, and probable you guys, would be if we didn't have to test every new change with over 60 different devices before putting it as a beta then making it an official update. iPhone and iPad are just two devices... People that make apps for those devices are only working with 2! devices. We have to make sure our app works with all devices (100+) and then we get issues with ROMs (1000+ different once out there).... So making iOS apps vs Android apps can never be the same.

Now as far as HD themes, Poweramp's documents for theme designing is getting finished by Max soon and that means there will be a lot more 3rd party themes coming your way. That means you'll probably get the HD look you've wanted from a 3rd party theme designer, before we give you one with update 3.0.

So many new devices are being added to the Android world everyday, and we have to stop whatever we are doing, improving the application and added new features, to make sure these new devices work perfectly... and that really does slow us down.

Nevertheless, do know we appreciate you guys and am working the best we can to do whatever we need to make you completely satisfied with Poweramp. Sorry it's taking us so long.

It plays OK on my tablet, OK, as we said before, the UI is not especially pretty - but it's an AUDIO player, so I spend most of my time listening to it rather than looking at it....

It's certainly not going to halt the Olympics, prevent holidays, or bring down rest of the civilised world though.

Andre

We agree with you on that too. But it is nice to have a good looking music player to show off though.

I want a "HD" default Poweramp skin (with HD icons) for the Samsung Galaxy S3....

...A single APK package would be the best seeing as some Android app apk's these days exceed 10mb+, so it's ok.

Okay, we'll see what we can do.

[Catman51]

This is the best available player on the market, I've tried a few others, ugh. Just a Tablet HD skin is all it needs. Thanks

[Ottoman]

Morning Sir...

Yeah, you are right about some of the points and a bit wrong about others. Comparing making apps for Android and iOS is something no one should really do... it's a whole different ball game. I can imagine how much easier life for us, and probable you guys, would be if we didn't have to test every new change with over 60 different devices before putting it as a beta then making it an official update. iPhone and iPad are just two devices... People that make apps for those devices are only working with 2! devices. We have to make sure our app works with all devices (100+) and then we get issues with ROMs (1000+ different once out there).... So making iOS apps vs Android apps can never be the same.

Now as far as HD themes, Poweramp's documents for theme designing is getting finished by Max soon and that means there will be a lot more 3rd party themes coming your way. That means you'll probably get the HD look you've wanted from a 3rd party theme designer, before we give you one with update 3.0.

So many new devices are being added to the Android world everyday, and we have to stop whatever we are doing, improving the application and added new features, to make sure these new devices work perfectly... and that really does slow us down.

Nevertheless, do know we appreciate you guys and am working the best we can to do whatever we need to make you completely satisfied with Poweramp. Sorry it's taking us so long.

Dear Sir,

While the analogy may be overstated and I fully understand that, but it is mainly as a result frustration. In previous posting from within this thread, I showed other developers from of the Android ecosystem, for instance Pulse, but of course on that occasion, no comment was made on your part.

Most people who are registered with software forum appreciate the challenges that you mention. This is why most of us are eagerly willing to be your (free) Beta Testers (effectively). Of course, one would expect something in return (not quite financial gain) primarily the incorporation of their feedback into the application; this may be a bug fix or feature request. However, when you report bugs or submit feature requests and these are not been implemented (ignored) without a valid reason, this is simply unacceptable.

Regarding the QA and other validation and acceptance testing, all Android developers face these challenges. It is about effectively making use of available resources at your disposal and those from your forum.

I am familiar with software testing processes and this is not limited to Android or iOS, even desktop-based OSs face the same complexities. There is no point in creating a Win32 application and testing on all operating system locales as I have witnessed. One should be pragmatic and do it in smaller sets, based on character sets or other variables. Apart from hardware differentiation and the fragmented nature of Android owed to vendors chiefly, not all apps are necessarily incompatible across these variations. The testing is, aside the case mentioned earlier, merely for quality assurance purposes and necessarily implies incompatibility.

Even here I recall Max asking for feedback as to how the first Android devices with external microSD as some users were reporting Poweramp being unable to read track on this storage. The problem was eventually resolved through feedback without the need of procurement of the said device.

Yours faithfully,

Otto

[@Poweramp2]

Dear Sir,

While the analogy may be overstated and I fully understand that, but it is mainly as a result frustration. In previous posting from within this thread, I showed other developers from of the Android ecosystem, for instance Pulse, but of course on that occasion, no comment was made on your part.

Most people who are registered with software forum appreciate the challenges that you mention. This is why most of us are eagerly willing to be your (free) Beta Testers (effectively). Of course, one would expect something in return (not quite financial gain) primarily the incorporation of their feedback into the application; this may be a bug fix or feature request. However, when you report bugs or submit feature requests and these are not been implemented (ignored) without a valid reason, this is simply unacceptable.

Regarding the QA and other validation and acceptance testing, all Android developers face these challenges. It is about effectively making use of available resources at your disposal and those from your forum.

I am familiar with software testing processes and this is not limited to Android or iOS, even desktop-based OSs face the same complexities. There is no point in creating a Win32 application and testing on all operating system locales as I have witnessed. One should be pragmatic and do it in smaller sets, based on character sets or other variables. Apart from hardware differentiation and the fragmented nature of Android owed to vendors chiefly, not all apps are necessarily incompatible across these variations. The testing is, aside the case mentioned earlier, merely for quality assurance purposes and necessarily implies incompatibility.

Even here I recall Max asking for feedback as to how the first Android devices with external microSD as some users were reporting Poweramp being unable to read track on this storage. The problem was eventually resolved through feedback without the need of procurement of the said device.

Yours faithfully,

Otto

To be fair, Pulse and companies like those have 10 or more developer teams... while we have 1 developer, and myself doing the other work. On top of that, Pulse is a news app, nothing more than that. Poweramp uses a lot of coding, resources, and goes deeper into Android than Pulse does... so again, cannot be compared.

We get a lot of feature request, just because they have not been added yet... does not mean they have been ignored. Adding a nice design, on a crappy player is not something we are interested in. Rather, we felt more compelled to make bug fixes, improve Poweramp (which means adding other features that make it better, features others have requested) and then when the time is right, make a design/new theme that makes use of the new, better, and minimal-bugged version. So point of our story is that feature requests are never really ignored, they are just planned for the right time... unless they are not possible.

Nevertheless, we are planning a more tablet friendly design for Poweramp, so that's a sure thing.

[Ottoman]

I am sorry but I am utterly unimpressed with this response; you know very well Pulse was an example and for you claim that Pulse have "10 or more developer teams" not even members, but teams, beggars belief . This account seems like from an insider. Anyhow, I do not want to get involved in argument here, however, please provide a definite timetable for tablet support: this request date from 29 October 2011 and as said before, it is way too long and again your timeframe at best can be considered too vague. You should not be "planning a more tablet friendly design" now,this should already be under development at least and nearing completion and it would be still be way behind schedule..

I sincerely hope for a btter response next time you reply....thanks!

[@Poweramp2]

I am sorry but I am utterly unimpressed with this response; you know very well Pulse was an example and for you claim that Pulse have "10 or more developer teams" not even members, but teams, beggars belief . This account seems like from an insider. Anyhow, I do not want to get involved in argument here, however, please provide a definite timetable for tablet support: this request date from 29 October 2011 and as said before, it is way too long and again your timeframe at best can be considered too vague. You should not be "planning a more tablet friendly design" now,this should already be under development at least and nearing completion and it would be still be way behind schedule..

I sincerely hope for a btter response next time you reply....thanks!

The best time frame I can give you is that it will be coming with the 3.0 update.

Sorry for the some-what rude reply earlier, that was uncalled for and I appologize. We really are doing the best we can to make all the requested features possible, fix all the bugs, and add the new features we have in mind to Poweramp as quickly as possible. Yes, we are not the fastest at doing that, but we know our users appreciate all the current features we offer and don't mind waiting for great updates, not just "okay, they added what I wanted" updates.

Thanks for being a user!

[Ottoman]

I accept your apologies, as this avoids potential confrontations.

Regarding your response, you must appreciate that this does not seem very reliable as it is baseless: in fact, the up-to-date release notes, as per below, do not mention this feature. If this is the case, please amend it accordingly.

Planned features for Poweramp v3.0 (2.1 renamed to 3.0)

- support for album grabbing apps via system library album art support

- google music song info

- system library playlists support

- settings export/import (to/from sd card, including equ/tone presets)

- advanced tag editing

- rating sync'ing from/to tags

- optional (enabled by default) support for standard android .nomedia files

Thank you,

Otto

[haddy]

As I've said before (and I will again reiterate) a separate "HD" version of Poweramp is needed. It would be exactly the same apk/code of Poweramp, except that it would be a larger apk due to having high-definition skin, icons etc contained in it's package.

I just recently managed to download and install Poweramp v2.06-build-508 on the Nexus 7 in a shop and apart from the fact that it runs smoothly on the Nexus 7, I certainly did notice that the player UI icons looked downgraded look.

I do think that a HD version of Poweramp UI icons should support 4k resolution.