Usability

[AlexV]

So, my shiny new i7 just arrived! I'm mostly pretty pleased with it, although it still takes longer than I would like to start up. 10 seconds is still about 7-8 seconds too long!

I think the buttons could use a little improvement, to be honest. You can configure the Menu and Rec buttons Long Press action, but there's no option for "None" or "Default" as the action. Particularly with the Rec button, I'd rather it just did it's normal action, even if my finger does rest on it a moment too long. Similarly with the Play/Pause button, it would be nice if it could be set just to do the play/pause thing, without popping up the menu on hold.

Speaking of the Rec button, given that it goes "1-up" almost everywhere in the player UI, why is it that it doesn't do that in the Playing screen? Instead I have to hit the Menu button to go up from the playing track to the track list, then Rec to go up to the next folder up. At the Playing screen, the Rec button does A-B repeat. I'd like to be able to configure it to go to the tracklist instead, as I don't think I've ever used A-B repeat. (does anyone?)

I don't want to sound too negative, for the most part I find the controls fairly intuitive and easy to use, but that does tend to show up the places where it's gone wrong a little more strongly.

Also, can anyone offer a suggestion of where I could get hold of some sort of neat cap or insert to (reversibly) block off the Line In socket? This will be used only very rarely, if at all, and it is very easy to accidentally plug the headphones into that instead.

[martyn7]

regarding A-B i have lots of long trance tracks and use A-B a lot, Im not going to buy the i7 dont like the slider navigation system

[AlexV]

After another day's worth of use, I'm beginning to wonder about the Dynamic Play List. Sure, it's easy to add stuff to it, but then if I want to play it, I have to go all the way up through the whole folder structure, and choose it at the root. Then, to go back to normal, I have to go back and pick a file under the Music folder again?

Seems to me that could do with some improvement. It would work very nicely as a Queue, with a couple of small tweaks:


After a track finishes, that is not in the DPL, if the DPL is not empty, start playing the first entry in the DPL.
After a track finishes, that is in the DPL, remove that track from the DPL.
If there are no further tracks in the DPL, play the next track that would have been played had the DPL not been used.


That way, if you're listening to something, and think of another track (or few) that you would like to hear next, you can add them to the DPL, then as soon as the track you are listening finishes, you hear the tracks you queued up. While you're listening to those, you can queue up more, if you like - they are added to the end of the queue. When they've all been played, you are returned to where you were, and continue with the track that would have been played next had you not used the DPL at all.

That would rock :-)