I have been continuing my investigations into using the Wileyfox Swift as a
Media Device suitable for a deaf blind person.
I am not an Android expert but perhaps because of that some of these early
reflections will help other people exploring the system.
In general there is no doubt now that the Wileyfox Swift is a significant
upgrade in functionality compared to my old Nexus 7. Using Talkback is far less
frustrating than before. Challenges still arise but I am learning strategies
for most of them.
This review focusses on my early impressions of the capabilities of the Device
to play radio.
Over the last few days I have tried
1. BBC iPlayer app
2. Talksport Radio App
3. My Tuner Radio
4 Simple Radio App
5. The inbuilt Wileyfox Swift FM Radio App.
In general the device performed well in terms of both volume and sound quality
in all the applications I used. It is by some way the loudest radio device I
possess. Fairly extraordinarily for me I found myself actually turning the
device down tonight.
1. BBC iPlayer Radio App
I did not investigate the listen again service for this review but focussed on
the ability of the app to play live content.
I was anticipating problems given the difficulties some reported on the list in
recent days. I also installed the BBC Media Player plugin to make sure that
there was no problem there.
In the event I had no difficulty locating the stations I needed to play. The
method the app uses to switch from station to station is slightly unusual but
actually I quite like it once I got use to it.
Basically once you open the stations section of the app you are on a page with
a single link to the BBC 1 Extra station.
However doing a two finger swipe sideways quickly and easily turned pages
until you find the BBC Station you require.
After that double tapping on the link to the station should review a play
button and live playback should then start. Locking the screen does not
stop station playback and from the lock screen you can find a pause button to
stop playback.
This is an early and shallow review of the app but based on my use in the last
few days I think I prefer the Android layout to the iOS version but as I say
early days.
2. Talksport
As listening to sport is an important for me I needed to supplement the
avaiability of Five Live Sports and Sports Extra with the Talksport radio
service. Talksport seem to be trying to deliver their service as far as
possible through their own app. I could not find the service available, for
example, on the generic simple radio app.
The good news that there are accessible, clearly labelled buttons to start
Talksport and talk Sport 2 playing immediately at the top of their app. If you
keep the app open talksport will inform you about adverst in the main app but
these announcements disappear as soon as you lock the screen.
Effectively this means that you can start Talksport with OK Google. Ask Google
to open the app and then double tap eiter the first or second element to start
talksport or Talksport 2 playing. Just lock your Swift and stick it in your
pocket to keep listening.
Unfortunately the Talksport app does not provide a pause playing button on the
lock screen that I could find. Instead a button to open the main app is
provided. I think the developers want the opportunity to wave visual adverts
in front of you.
Despite this there are no serious challenges to having good access to Talksport
football commentaries for example.
My Tuner Free
I am afraid I did not like this app despite it recommendation by some talkback
users. I found it cluttered and awkward to use. I did manage to get stations
playing but it seemed a lot of work to get this outcome. I am sure I could
have persevered but I decided to move on to test Simple radio
Simple Radio
In contrast to My tuner I really like this app and found myself instantly a
fan. The app starts with a list of recommended stations for you to try. Double
tapping on any of these stations will start them playing. Beneath each station
there is an add to Favourites button which switches to a remove from favourites
button once the favourite is added. pausing the station is easy .
The main annoyance on using the main app is the need to swipe pass adverts
to get to the main recommended station list.
I fairly soon decided to purchase this app to remove adverts and gain extra
features.
to upgrade you need to go to your favourites screen where you will see a button
offering the chance to remove adverts and gain a sleep timer for £2.64. I have
not used the sleep timer so cannot comment on this.
There is a slight problem when listening to the app whilst the screen is
locked. On the locked screen the play pause button is unlabelled. Happily it is
the only unlabelled button so is easy to spot and I brought up the Talkback
context menu and used the custom label feature to rename the button play/
Pause.
The result is very slick. On the lock screen you will see Simple Radio, under
that will be the name of the station and under that the program information
including song names. For example I was able to discover I was listening to a
program on unpaid interns from a US station.
Under that you will have your hopefully re-labelled play / pause button. The
re-labelled button persists no matter what station is playing so it is a one
time fix.
I think this Simple Radio tuner lives up to its name and is probably my
favourite Radio app now.
FM Radio App
The Swift comes with an FM Radio app. I did notg have high expectations for
this but I was extremely pleasantly surprised.
The app is completely accessible.
On launching the app you will be instantly placed on a playing FM Station. The
station name is readable by Talkback, with a pause play button at the top of
the screen. Folowing the station information are a number of buttons. These
are previous station, reduce frequency, then an Add to Favourites Button and
and then increase Frequency and Next Station buttons. It is a simple taks to
simply keep on using either the next or previous buttons to locate and add to
favourites all the stations you need.
These favourit stations are then arranged in a list below the currently playing
buttons.
There is a more options button and opening this revealed the option to record
output from the playing station. I did not test this.
The main downside to this app is that from the locked screen I could find only
the name of the station, double tapping the station brought the message touch
again to open but this failed. I found that I had to unlock the screen and
return to the main application to pause the playback or change a station.
General
There may well be options for Radio app install which I have not pursued but
even from these early indications the Swift is a viable radio device. It may
not have the ease of use of a bespoke radio with physical buttons but the
functionality is good for a multi-use device. It should certainly provide an
option for those anxious to avoid radios with low volume output.
David Griffith
am by no means an Android expert as I think has been shown by my ignorance of
how to change Seek Bars in Android
Sent from Mail for Windows 10
