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[wig]

I love my Android phone. It's my music source whenever I'm out of the house, my constant companion at work and in the car.

I use a 3rd party music player as the default music player my phone; I'm quite pleased with. However, I've been a fan of Gizmo since it was first introduced and I've always hoped to migrate to full-time use at some point.

Several weeks ago, I decided to try the switch. I started using Gizmo as the primary music player on my phone, and decided share my thoughts on the experience.

Technical details first: I have an HTC Evo 4G, running Cyanogenmod 7.1.  My JRiver server runs on a dedicated Acer AspireRevo AR3700 htpc, and I have a cable broadband connection.

The Interface
Let's get this out of the way; the interface is not terribly phone friendly. On the positive side, the menu buttons are large and well labelled. Gizmo now uses the Android media volume control, a definite upgrade over previous versions. The playback controls (play, pause, etc) are responsive. The interface is simple and functional, and works fine if used in portrait mode, or with a larger device like a tablet.

The situation changes when I use my phone in landscape mode, which is 99% of the time. Now only one row of menu buttons is clearly visible, and multiple scrolls are needed to reach a smartlist or playlist. The album artwork display area is also negatively affected, shrinking to the size of a dime (as seen below). The playlist mode (the left-most button in playing now) is also hamstrung in landscape mode, as only 1 track is visible at a time.

The Playing Now interface. Functional, but lots of wasted space

Accessibility is the other major issue with the Gizmo interface. Thanks to Notification Power Widget, I can start playback on my default Android music player in 2 steps; open the notification bar and click play. In contrast, To start Gizmo playback, I open the app, wait for connection, click Playlists, scroll several times to my smartlist then press and hold it, choosing play from the menu. In short, it's a pain to get Gizmo started, at least compared to what I'm used to.

This wouldn't be such a problem except that Gizmo 'forgets' my playlist session after it has been paused for 30 minutes or so, and Resume Playback stops working. At that point I'm 'on the bus' and I have to start a new session (Is this is Kesey reference? I consider being on the bus a bad thing; it might be better underneath it  ). If Gizmo would remember my playlist from previous sessions, I could cut the start time in half.

I just can't wait to get off the bus again

Gizmo would also benefit from a notification icon, a standard feature of every other local and streaming music player I've used. It's absence makes multi-tasking Gizmo with other apps (such as GPS) more difficult, especially in the car.

Functionality
I forgive the interface issues because of what Gizmo does delivers; my entire music and smartlist collection! Recent updates have fixed the smartlist refresh issue and added volume leveling. I can now listen to my favorite smartlists (and Play Doctor) without synching or converting my files, a tremendous feature! 

Smartlist Nirvana

Gizmo also supports Last.fm scrobbling and updates the playcounts in the JRiver library. The playcount feature is doubly important; it allows me to use the Recently Played playlist on the desktop client to rate and tag the music I've been listening to through Gizmo.

I couldn't review Gizmo without discussing it's streaming-only status. It's unfortunate that Gizmo use is limited by data availability, but living in West Virginia I've been pleased with Gizmo's ability to deliver music in low data areas. I'd still like Gizmo to play local media (since I do travel to data free areas on a regular basis), but I'm very happy with the streaming performance in town and on the major roads.

Nothing's perfect, but Gizmo's functional issues are minor; the search feature needs improved (no drill down from artist or albums results) and there is no auto-pause feature when the headphone jack state changes.

Conclusion
After a solid month of use, I've weighed the pros and cons and decided to switch to Gizmo full-time. I'm willing to put up with the interface issues in order to take advantage of the full catalog access and playcount updates. Gizmo allows me to duplicate my home listening habits on my phone, which is why it has claimed the crown as the most frequently used app on my phone.

I still keep a healthy selection of music on my phone, but I only use my default music player when I don't have data, or I'm in a hurry and don't want to deal with starting Gizmo.

I hope this review has been useful to some of you. Thanks for reading.

[joetiii]

Interesting read... I am trying to figure out how to stream my library as well. I have 30 days of Gizmo experience and find the interface not up to par of other players.

Curious if I can access my library on a DLNA, or whether i must have MC running on a PC to access?

 ?

[csimon]

If you want to use Gizmo then you need your MC running on the PC.  Gizmo is a remote control for MC and needs MC to connect to and control!

If you mean that you have a NAS which is accessible via DLNA then yes you could probably use a DLNA controller like Plugplayer to access your NAS over the internet, but your NAS will need a DLNA server running on it.

[dtc]

How many Gigabytes did you use in a month? I finally just downloaded a lot of my library to a SD card on my phone and use a stock player, rather than burn up my allotment, but I also tend to listen more to albums than to playlists.

[marko]

Using Gizmo approx. 25 hours/month, data usage is around 1½ to 2Gb. These are rough estimates, but will not be miles out. This is just streaming music, no video or photos.

Having an unlimited data plan for just £20 per month is a great thing. If you're in the UK and a Virgin Media customer, you should check it out. I switched to them 3 months ago and have had no issues so far.

-marko

[dtc]

Thanks Marko. In the US on my plan an extra 2GB is $20 a month - no awful, but real money. That is on top of $60 a month for a 2GB base plan, shared by 2 people. I would love to have unlimited GB for your price, but I am paying much more than that. Thanks for the info. I think I will stay with  local storage on my phone for now.