Sunday, May 29, 2011

Android Video Player - Best and Free App to Play AVI, WMV, MKV, MP4, FLV and Many Codecs with Subtitles

In this post I am presenting to you an Android Video Player which can play lot many codec formats like avi, mp3, rmvb, rm, 3gp, wmv, mp4, mov, mkv, flv, 3gpp, mpg, mlv, mpeg, m2v, vob, tp, ts, asf, ra, ram, hlv, ogg, f4v and m4v. Once you install this video player on your Android phone then you don't have to look for android video converter. This is one stop Android media player which would play for you the codec formats you want.

In one of the previous posts I have talked about Android Music Player and if you are looking for a Music Player then you can read : Best Android Music Player - App with Themes, Equalizer, Album Art and Lyrics

If you are looking for a good Movie App for Android then check this out : Best Android Movie App - With Player, Trailers, Showtimes, Tickets, Synopsis and News 

This is first Video Player App discussed here and if you want to read about second Android Video Player app then you can read it at : Video Player For Android - Best And Free App For Playing Movies, Music And Other Videos 

MoboPlayer : This is one of the best Android Video Player apps you can find in Google Android market or Android store of your choice. It is simple to use and feature packed. Best part is, it is absolutely free. It comes with it's own codec format package and can play a very big list of formats for you. It's user interface is so friendly that after using it once you may not look for any other video player again.

When you launch this Android video player first time then it asks you to download and install codec formats as shown in screenshot below.

Android Video Player - Install Codec Formats
Android Video Player - Install Codec Formats
You have three different choices here, either you can download and install codec format package from Android market or you can do it from Mobo site or you can do it using offline instructions provided for installation. When you tap DownloadFromMarket it launches Android market app and takes you to the codec download page. Just tap to install the package from there. Once installation is completed then you need to launch again the MoboPlayer by tapping it's icon. If the codec formats are installed properly then it would not display the previous screen above and take you to instructions screen as shown below.

Android Video Player - Instructions
Android Video Player - Instructions
This screen informs about the various user friendly interfaces provided with this Android media player. Double tapping anywhere on the screen pause or resume the video playing. When you slide at left hand side of the screen in verticle direction as shown in screenshot above then brightness of the video is adjusted. When you slide at right hand side of the screen in verticle direction as shown in screenshot above then volume of the video is adjusted. When you slide at top side of the screen in horizontal direction as shown in screenshot above then you can decide the play time to jump into video. You would find these features with example screenshots given below in a while.

When you go ahead from instruction screen to main screen of this Android video player then you would find  empty screen because no media directory is selected yet.

Android Video Player - Main Screen
Android Video Player - Main Screen 
There are two ways to go for selecting media directory here. Either you can tap the small folder icon at left hand bottom corner of the screen or you can tap the text message "There's no media directory, click here to set". This would open a Media Directory selection screen as shown below.

Android Video Player - Media Directory
Android Video Player - Media Directory
When you tap check box at any of the directories then it is checked ON or OFF. It would also display the menu shown in above screenshot. Pressing your Android phone's menu button would also display the above menu. When you tap Confirm menu then Video Player starts scanning media files as shown in screenshot below.

Android Video Player - Scanning Media Files
Android Video Player - Scanning Media Files
Android video player app displays the progress of the scanning and how many media files are found. Once the scanning is completed then "Cancel" button changes to "Close" and you can tap it to return back to main screen of video player.

Android Video Player - Main Screen
Android Video Player - Main Screen
Screenshot above displays the main screen with grid view of the videos. You can tap the icon at right hand top corner of the screen to change the view between grid and list. Tap the thumbnail of the video to start playing it and it would launch the player screen in landscape mode as shown in screenshot below.

Android Video Player - Controls
Android Video Player - Controls
You can change the zoom ratio by tapping the icon at left hand bottom corner of the screen. You can drag the progress bar to the location of your choice to fast forward or backward the video playing. You can tap the Pause icon displayed at bottom center of the screen to pause the video playing. Same icon changes to Play icon on pausing the video and you can tap it to resume the video playing.

Android Video Player - Volume Control
Android Video Player - Volume Control
As explained earlier there are user friendly gesture controls provided with this Android video player. Sliding your finger up or down vertically at right hand side of the screen displays the volume overlay on the screen and changes the volume. Play with it for some time to experience how convenient this feature is.

Android Video Player - Brightness Control
Android Video Player - Brightness Control
Like volume you can control the brightness of the video by sliding your finger vertically at left hand side of the screen. This would display the volume level as you slide. I have already explained earlier that you can tap twice anywhere on the video to pause or resume the playing.

Android Video Player - Jump to Location
Android Video Player - Jump to Location
Many times we want to jump to a specific location in the video and start playing video from that point. This Android video player makes it very convenient to precisely jump to specific location. Slide your finger horizontally at top side of the screen and it would display the "Jump to"  button at right hand top of the screen. Keep sliding your finger toward left or right to change the displayed location as you need. Once the required location is displayed then tap the "Jump to" button at top right hand corner of screen to execute it. This would start playing the video from that point onward.

Android Video Player - Coverflow View
Android Video Player - Coverflow View
When you are at main screen of the video player app where you are looking at all the available videos in grid view then you can rotate the phone and you can see the videos as shown in screenshot above. This view is called Coverflow or Pictureflow. Here you can see the Album Arts or Thumbnails of the videos as shown above. You can swipe the pictures by your finger to see the available videos. Tap the picture in front to start playing that video. Play with this to understand how user friendly this interface is.

Android Video Player - Context Menu
Android Video Player - Context Menu
You can long press the picture in front to display the menu as shown in above screenshot. One of the important menus here is "Add to play list". You can tap this menu to add the given video into playlist. By creating playlist you can group the videos by a particular theme and can play all the videos in playlist by just single tap.

Android Video Player - More Menu
Android Video Player - More Menu
On main screen of this Android video player app you can tap "..." (more) menu item at the right hand bottom of the screen to display the more menu as shown in above screenshot. Here you can change the Background of the app and can also goto the PlayList screen to start playing playlists. Settings menu launches the settings screen shown below.

Android Video Player - Settings
Android Video Player - Settings
Here you would find lot of settings to fine tune the behavior of this Android video player app. One of the options is "Choose the media directory". This feature we saw earlier in this post where you can select the media directories to scan the media files. One of the sections of settings are related to Subtitles. Where you can choose to show Subtitles by automatically loading subtitle file. You can also choose text size, color and character set for subtitles.

As mentioned at start of the post, this is first Video Player App discussed here and if you want to read about second Video Player app then you can read it at : Video Player For Android - Best And Free App For Playing Movies, Music And Other Videos 


Coby 7-Inch 1080p HD Video MP3 Player with 4 GB Flash Memory with HDMI Output (Black)
Coby 7-Inch 1080p HD Video MP3 Player with 4 GB Memory 


This brings us to end of this post. If you have enjoyed this post then you may like to read few more posts about cool, best and wonderful Android apps at popular posts area which is at right side. Keep checking back for reading about more exciting and coolest Android apps.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Android Game Alchemy - One of the Free, Exciting and Best Android Games

Alchemy game is one of the free, exciting and best Android games. It is very addictive and when you start playing it then you may not realize how much time is passed. In my earlier posts I have talked about Angry Birds and Solitaire games which are equally entertaining and exciting. If you have not read about those earlier then you can read now at : Ten Best Apps For Android : App 2 - Angry Birds and Ten Best Apps For Android : App 10 - Solitaire .

Alchemy Classic : There are many alchemy games published for Droid as well as PC. Some are online alchemy games and some alchemy games can be played offline as well. Alchemy Classic is one the best, free and entertaining of all these games around. If you have not played Alchemy game earlier or you could not understand how to play it then keep reading. I am going to explain you, how to play this game with example alchemy combinations and you would found this guide useful to start playing alchemy game without wasting any more time. When you start Alchemy Classic you would see the screen shown below.

Android Game Alchemy
Android Game - Alchemy
You may have noticed that there is one message at the bottom of the screen informing that Feint requires network connection. Feint functionality is required when you want to share your score online with others. But it is important to note that you can plan this Alchemy game without network connection as well. So without further wait let's tap Start Game menu item to launch new game.

Android Alchemy Game Table
Android Alchemy Game Table
As you can see in screenshot above when you start a new game you have only four basic elements, Air, Fire, Earth and Water. Alchemy game is all about discovering the alchemy combinations and combining these elements to create new substances. Now you may be wondering which element is Water and which one is Air. This may happen many times while playing game till you remember how a particular element or substance looks like. But it is easy to find the name of an element. Just long press (tap and hold down) an element and it's name is displayed at the top edge of the screen just below the statistics panel.

Alchemy - Element Name
Alchemy - Element Name
In above screenshot, one of the elements is long pressed and it's name, Water is displayed at top of the screen. You can discover the combinations by dragging one element and dropping it on another element. When you create a new element by mixing two or more elements then your score increases as shown in statistic panel in screenshot. Let's  try dragging and dropping elements and create few new elements.

Alchemy Game - Lightning
Alchemy Game - Lightning
Drag Fire element and drop it on Air element. This would create a new Lightning element with nice animation and sound effect. Screenshot above shows Lightning element created by mixing Fire and Air elements. Let's create one more new element.

Alchemy Game - Swamp
Alchemy Game - Swamp
Now drag Water element and drop it on Earth element. This would create Swamp element as shown in screenshot above. Your score would further increase because you have found one more Alchemy combination and created one more element. Now you have two new discoveries Lightning and Swamp. Let's discover few more combinations and create few more elements.

Alchemy Game - Amino Acids
Alchemy Game - Amino Acids
Now drag Lightning element and drop it on Swamp element. This would create Amino Acids element as shown in above screenshot. Your score would further increase with this new discovery.

Now allow me to inform you about the various icons in toolbar at top of the screen. The leftmost icon is used to share your score with world using FeintOpen. The next icon which looks like a cross is used to clear all the Alchemy table by removing all the substances from the table. Next icon is used to undo the last step you performed. The next icon which looks like "i" is used to launch Hint screen as shown in screenshot below.

Alchemy Android Game Hints
Alchemy Android Game Hints
At the top of the Hints screen are radio buttons which you can tap either to see All substances or only Not Opened substances. The list of "Not Opened" substances keep on growing as you discover more and more alchemy game combinations and create newer substances. You can find from Hints screen how many substances you need to mix to create a particular element. For example for creating Volcano you would need to mix two instances of one substance and one more substance which would be different from first one.

The last icon in toolbar looks like a plus sign and is used to add a new element. Tapping this icon invokes a following screen.

Alchemy Game - Add Element
You can tap a check box at the element to mark that element for addition to Alchemy table. Once you mark all elements which you want then tap Add Element button to add those elements to Alchemy table. This way you can add more elements to table and use those to mix for creating new substances. At the bottom of the screen are icons which are used to filter element list and see only specific type of elements namely Primary Substances, Chemicals, Plants, Basic Lifeforms etc.

When you press the menu button of your Android phone then you would see the menus of Alchemy game as shown in screenshot below.

Alchemy Game Menu
Alchemy Game Menu
Reset menu should be used with care because it reset all the progress you have done with Alchemy game so far and takes you back to start a new game with just four basic elements. Clear Game Space menu is same as tapping the cross icon in toolbar. Add Elements menu is also same as tapping add element icon in toolbar.

Alchemy game for Android is endless fun and you can use all your logical mind to create more new substances. Trust your logical mind and avoid using cheat sheets for Alchemy game to enjoy this game most.

One Deadly Sister (Sandy Reid Mystery Series)
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This bring to the end of this wonderful post. If you enjoy this Alchemy game post then you may want to read few more interesting posts about best and exciting Android apps in popular posts section. You may keep checking back here for more best apps for Android.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Best Android Radio App - With Over 50000 Free Online Internet Radio Stations

In last post I talked about wonderful app for playing and enjoying Android music. If you have not read it yet then you can find it at : Best Android Music Player - App with Themes, Equalizer, Album Art and Lyrics

In this post I am going to talk about another music and Android streaming audio source app, one of the best Android Radio which you can download and enjoy for free. This first of the radio apps I posted here about. You can read about second radio app at : Radio App For Android - Listen Music You Love Anywhere And Anytime

Best Apps For Android TuneIn Radio
TuneIn Radio App : This is one of the popular and cool Android Radio apps. It has list of over 50000 free FM, AM, ham radio and online internet radio stations from different countries and in different languages. User interface of the app is simple and effective. Being a internet radio app what it needs is only internet connectivity. Unlike default Android radio, it does not need head phone to be plugged in to act as antenna. Another best part is you can listen to your favorite radio station from any part of the world. When you start the TuneIn radio it displays the categories of radio stations as shown in image below.

Android Radio - TuneIn
As you see in android radio image shown above, radio stations are categorized in very useful categories namely Local Radio, Music, Talk, Sports, By Location, By Language and Podcasts. If you tap one of the categories say Music then app would display the next screen with sub categories as shown below.

Android Radio - Music Stations
Android Radio - Music Stations
As shown in image above radio stations are further categorized by type of music namely Adult Contemp, Alt.Rock, Best Bets, Children's, Classic Rock, Classical, Country and so on. Tapping any of these sub categories displays the list of radio stations in that category. For example if you tap Classical then it would display screen with following radio stations list.

Android Radio - Classical Music Stations
Android Radio - Classical Music Stations
Above image of android radio app is displaying all the classical music stations available with TuneIn online internet radio. You can tap any of the radio station from the list to display following screen and start playing it.

Android Radio - WETA station
Android Radio - WETA station
Screenshot above is showing the WETA radio station being played with TuneIn Android radio app. Immediately below the title bar of the app is displayed the name of the radio station, WETA in above case. Below the station name is displayed the remaining duration of current streaming audio content from this radio station. Progress bar shows the same information visually. Below the progress bar is "Add to Presets" button. You can tap this button to add the given radio station to presets list. Presets is equivalent to favorite option that we see in other apps. At bottom of the screen is buffering status of the radio stream and at right is a button which you can tap to stop playing this station.

The Radio stations list displayed in previous to previous screenshot can be scrolled down to find more stations. At the end of the list a "More Stations" item is displayed as shown in image below.

Android Radio - More Stations
This "More Stations" item is very useful feature. App displays only small list of stations from huge list and provides this option to tap for showing more entries. This improves the response time of the app drastically. App also displays the Shows just below the "More Stations" option entry. Scrolling down further on this screens provides few more useful choices as shown in image below.

Android Radio - Most Popular Stations
Android Radio - Most Popular Stations
As shown in above image, Explore Classical section is displayed at the end of the screen. This would vary depending on type of sub category you select. Here there are two useful choices, "Most Popular" and "By Location". You can further filter the Classical Music Radio stations by tapping "By Location" option to display the screen as shown below.

Android Radio - Stations By Locations
Android Radio - Stations By Locations
As you can see it allows you to filter the selected radio station category by locations like Africa, Asia,Australasia, Caribbean Islands, Central America, Europe, North America, South America and so on. Tap one of the areas to go on filtering the stations for specific region and you can find the stations of your interests as shown in example below.

Android Radio - Classical Music Stations in US
Android Radio - Classical Music Stations in US
Above screenshot shows the classical music radio stations filtered to display only from US. This way you can find the radio station of your interest. Once found add it to presets so that you can find it quickly next time. All the stations you add to presets can be seen quickly by tapping "My Presets" tab at just below the title and top of the screen. This displays the presets screen as shown below.

Android Radio - My Presets
Android Radio - My Presets
Stations displayed at My Presets tab can vary depending on which stations you have already added to presets. This list can be empty if you have not yet added any radio station to presets. It is possible to store all your presets stations at TuneIn server so that you can access it from any other device. For this you need to register for TuneIn account and use the account credentials with radio app. For entering the account credentials press the menu button of your Android phone and tap the settings menu. It would display the TuneIn settings screen as shown below.

Android Radio - TuneIn Settings
Android Radio - TuneIn Settings
The first option in settings screens above if tapped allows you to enter the TuneIn account credentials. One more important and useful feature of this app is search. You can find a magnifying glass icon at top right corner of the screen. You can tap this icon to start searching for a Radio station you are looking for. You can perform the search by Artist, Album and Song also to find the radio station that is playing it. Isn't it wonderful?

Sony ICF-S10MK2 Pocket AM/FM Radio, Silver
Advertisement - Sony ICF-S10MK2 Pocket AM/FM Radio

You can download apk of this app from your favorite Android market or store. Like other apps you can get update of the latest version of this Android radio app for free. Download and start using this free and wonderful Android radio app today.

As mentioned earlier, this first of the radio apps I posted here and you can read about second radio app at : Radio App For Android - Listen Music You Love Anywhere And Anytime

If you like this post then you may want to read few more interesting posts about best and exciting Android apps in popular posts section at right. Keep checking back for more best apps for Android.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Android Music Player - With Equalizer, Lyrics, Album Art and Themes

This is one of the best Android Music Players which has those required features which Android lovers would love to have. It has all exciting funtionalities which you may be looking for namely equalizer ( eq ), themes, album art, lyrics and more.

In last post I talked about one of the best apps for downloading Wallpapers and Ringtones. If you have not yet read about it then you can find it at : Three coolest apps to download free Wallpapers for Google Android phone - Zedge Ringtones & Wallpapers

This is first post on Android Music Player. If you have not read about the second Android Music Player here then you can read about it at Android Music Player 2.

If you are looking for an internet radio for listening hours of streaming music then you can checkout one at : Radio App For Android - Listen Music You Love Anywhere And Anytime

Best_Apps_For_Android_PowerAMP_Music_Player
PowerAMP : There are few great Android music players in market namely PowerAMP, PlayerPro and Audiogalaxy. PowerAMP is one of the best Android music apps that you can find in Android market. It has wonderful features like themes, equalizer, album art, lyrics and much more. It's user interface is amazing and cool. Just take a look at it once and you would fall in love with it. It is bit difficult to understand for first time users but if you read this article then you would get up to speed quickly and would be able to make most out of it in no time.

Android Music Player With Album Art : When you first time launch PowerAMP Music Player you would see following screen.

Android Music Player - PowerAMP
Android Music Player - PowerAMP
As shown in above screenshot, it displays the Album Art of the song if it is available. Immediately below the album art are buttons to play / pause the song and to navigate to next/previous song. Below the play buttons, at left, you can find Repeat button which you can tap to play the same song again and again. At right side, below the play buttons, you can see Shuffle button which you can tap to shuffle the songs in your playlist.

Android Music Player With Equalizer And Lyrics : At bottom left of the screen is EQU (Equalizer) button and you can tap it to switch it ON or Off. At bottom right corner of the screen is volume knob. This Music Player app also displays the Lyrics if those are available as shown in screenshot below.

Android Music Player - With Lyrics
Android Music Player - With Lyrics
You can read the lyrics of the song as it is being played. Above the EQU (Equalizer) button is progress bar of the player which you can drag to fast forward / backward the song to specific location that you want. Above it you can see the brief information of the song being played. Below the scroll bar and immediately to the left of the volume knob is the small display which shows you current Equalizer settings.

Android Music Player With Equalizer Presets : You can tap the PRE (Presets) button to set one of the predefined Equalizer settings. Tapping PRE button displays pop up shown in screen shot below.

Android Music Player - Equalizer Presets
Android Music Player - Equalizer Presets
There are plenty of preset equalizer settings which you can select, namely Classical, Dance, Rock, Pop and more. One of the presets called Phone Speaker (Loud) is especially useful. You can set this to play the songs with full volume with phone speakers. You can long press any of the preset to display context menu with buttons as shown in screenshot below.

Android Music Player - Preset Menu
Android Music Player - Preset Menu
The button at right, Delete button should be used with caution. It deletes the preset from the list. Tapping the Edit button launch the Preset Edit pop up as shown in screenshot below.

Android Music Player - Edit Preset
As shown in screenshot above you can edit the name of the preset using this screen. You can also assign the given preset to Speaker, Folder, Wired Headset, Current song or Bluetooth.

There were two buttons in  previous to above screenshot, Assign and Unassign which I have not explained yet. The Assign button provides you same Assign to functionality that we saw in Edit Preset screen above. Unasssign button allows you to remove all the assignments done for selected preset.

Android Music Player Playlist : On the first screen of the of the PowerAMP player, when you press menu button of your Android phone you can see the menus as shown in screenshot below.

Android Music Player - Menu
Android Music Player - Menu
Add To FL menu allows you to add a given song to playlist. Ringtone menu allows you to set the given song as your phone ringtone. Info menu displays a pop up as shown in screenshot below.

Android Music Player - Song Information
Android Music Player - Song Information
Apart from the song information displayed on this pop up, three more very useful functions are available here. Tapping Search button launches the internet browser and displays the Google search result for given song. Lyrics button would be enabled if Lyrics for the given song are available and tapping the Lyrics button displays the lyrics of the song.

Android Music Player As Music Manager : Edit Tags button is very handy feature and tapping this button displays the pop up as shown below.

Android Music Player - Edit Tags
Android Music Player - Edit Tags
You must have guessed how useful this feature can be for editing tags as you want and managing your songs in better way. This is one of the features which makes this app the best Android music manager as well.

Lets go back to app menus which we saw in one of the previous screenshots. I have to explain yet the remaining menus namely Delete, Folders/Lib, Equalizer, Settings and Help. Delete menu should be used with care as it can delete the song from your SD card. Folders/Lib menu displays Android Music Folder screen as shown in screenshot below.

Android Music Player - Music Folders
Folders displayed in this screen could be different on your phone. You can select which folders should be displayed here by using settings menu and we would see how to do it in a short while. Notice the two buttons Folders button and Library button at the bottom of the screen. You can tap these buttons to switch from Folders and Library screen. Tapping Library button displays the screen as shown below.

Android Music Player - System Library
Android Music Player - System Library
As you can see in screenshot above it displays the Android system library where all the Android music categories are displayed. You can quickly browse and select the songs using these various categories.

Android Music Player Equalizer : Lets go back to remaining app menus which I have not explained yet, Equalizer, Settings and Help. Help menu displays help of the PowerAMP Music Player app. I am going to explain Settings menu in a short while.   Before that lets see Equalizer menu. When you tap Equalizer menu or tap volume knob or tap equalizer display on main player screen then it launches a Equalizer screen as shown below.

Android Music Player - Equalizer
Android Music Player - Equalizer
You can drag Vol, Treble and Bass knobs on this screen to modify those settings of equalizer. You can tap Tone button to switch it ON or OFF. Similarly you can tap EQU (Equalizer) button to switch it ON or OFF. PRE button launches Preset screen which we saw earlier. Save button allows you to save your Equalizer settings. Reset would reset all changes. Above these buttons Equalizer wave form is displayed. If you notice, there are two small arrows on this wave form. That part of the wave form is sliding window and you can drag it to display remaining wave form. It also scrolls the sliders in top area of the screen. You can drag the various slider knobs as you want for creating your equalizer setting.

Android Music Player App Settings : Now lets see last and remaining settings menu. When you tap the settings menu it displays the settings screen as shown below.

Android Music Player - PowerAMP Settings
Android Music Player - PowerAMP Settings
There are lot many useful and powerful settings provided by PowerAMP app and you can see those all in leisure. I want to talk about two of the settings which are useful and interesting. First is Theme settings option. You can tap Theme settings option to change the theme of your PowerAMP Android Music Player app to Matte Metal, Aluminium, White Plastic or Black Neon. Second interesting and useful option is Music Folders which is not displayed in above screenshot and can be seen by scrolling down. You can tap Music Folders option to launch the pop up as shown below.

Android Music Player - Music Folders
Android Music Player - Music Folders
You can mark the check boxes ON for the folders that contains MP3 files or other music files and you want  those to be shown in Music folders screen. We saw the Music screen earlier when I talked about Folders/Lib menu.

You can download PowerAMP Music Player app from Android market or Android store of your choice and start playing Android MP3 songs.

If you find this app interesting then you may like to read a post on second such wonderful Android Music Player app at Android Music Player 2.

If you are a true music lover and want to create your own music library beyond storage space of your Android device. And if you want to never worry about deleting old songs to store new ones then you should seriously look at the innovative "Amazon MP3 Store, Cloud Player & Cloud Drive". Check out this video to know about it right away.


Learn how to use cloud player from your Android phone in video below.



Find out more about Cloud Storage and Cloud player.