Android

Although Spotify has over 10 million songs, there are sometimes bands I’d like to listen who aren’t on there yet: The Beatles, Rammstein, Arcade Fire, Oasis and some of these bands too. Spotify also lacks audiobooks and audio-drama (such as the excellent Big Finish Doctor Who range), so there are occasions when you’re forced to listen to those things your grandparents talk about: MP3 files. Since I listen to music on my [...]

Here’s a quick video demonstrating Spotify’s voice commands. The search works perfectly, but Spotify is supposed to be launchable using voice commands too but I can’t get it to work. Sorry about the focus and glare in this clip, it’s my first attempt at a video :p

Here’s a short video demonstrating how to select a band name from a webpage on your PC then launch some tunes on Spotify for Android. I use this at work where I can’t run Spotify on the desktop, but can listen to it on my Android smartphone instead. The video shows the Google Chrome web browser, the Spotify Chome extension, and the Google Chrome to Phone extension.    

Managing Spotify playlists has always been tricky whenever you have more than a few dozen playlists to keep track of: you soon end up with a big long list of albums and playlists that’s difficult to search through. As a workaround, I  used the Firefox Bookmark Manager to store my “overspill” of playlists (where a playlist is usually an album or custom list of songs). I had folders named as genre tags and kept it all synced [...]

It’s been a while since we posted an Android update, so here’s what I reckon are the current Top 10 Essential Android Apps. Everyone will have their own personal favourites, but these ten apps are what I recommend any new Android user should check out first.

Android smartphones were made for music: with their fully-enabled multitasking feature, expandable memories and unrestricted choice, an Android phone makes iPods and mp3 players obsolete. Factor in Spotify and you have access to million upon millions of high-quality streaming music tracks. As well as the official Spotify Mobile app, an increasing number of Spotify-related apps have appeared for Android. Here’s a look at what’s [...]

I recently “side-graded” from the Motorola Milestone to another Android 2.1 smartphone: the HTC Desire. My contract with T-Mobile was up for renewal, the quirks of the Milestone were beginning to frustrate me, and I’d had a go on a friend’s Desire and instantly… well, desired one. There’s loads of great Desire reviews around the web, so here’s a post about how it rates against the Milestone.

Spotify for Android was recently updated to version 0.4.04. This update included the new social and local file features found on the desktop and iPhone versions, as well as Last.fm scrobbling and a few other goodies. Here’s a look at the changes.

UPDATE:: a revised version of this page is here.. Here’s a graphic showing the different features available on Spotify for iPhone (v0.4.5), Android (v0.3.37), and Symbian. Feature-wise, the iPhone version is now pulling well ahead of the pack, having had two major updates in the past couple of months. Spotify for iPad is also expected as the next mobile release from the company. Meanwhile the Android and Symbian versions are falling [...]

Things I did with my Android smartphone today: Morning Got woken up by the recurring alarm Checked the notification bar and read five emails that came in overnight Read three Twitter mentions and my Twitter stream (using Twitter for Android) Checked my Facebook News feed; “liked” a couple and commented on a friend’s status Read today’s newspaper on the bus (using Guardian Anywhere) Read some RSS news feeds (using [...]