XenoAmp, Feature-packed Music Player with an Alien-Feeling Interface

We’re always on the lookout for apps made by active XDA community members! If you’ve made such an app, let us know by contacting any portal writer.

We’ve featured XenoAmp by XDA Senior Member ssuukk a couple of times before, in 2012 and 2013. It’s come a long way since then, going past the 1.0 release to mark its maturity.

The core is still pretty much the same compared to when it first came out. If you’re used to other music players, this player’s interface will probably feel alien at first (hence the name). While that may discourage you from testing it further, it’s one of the things that make it stand out (in a good way!) from the competition. Despite its differences, the learning curve is not a steep one, and using the app becomes a breeze after spending some time discovering how it works.

XenoAmp’s interface makes it easy to use with one thumb, which makes it possible to use quick actions (once you’ve set your playlist up) in an unobstructive manner. Need to pause? Just tap anywhere. Current song doesn’t suit your mood? Swipe on to the next one. Changing the volume and forwarding is also handled through gestures, to the point where I personally found XenoAmp to be my go-to choice for listening to music while driving: after picking or making a playlist, a quick gesture allows me to do any action I want — without looking at my phone’s screen.

Talking about making playlists, it’s one of the best experiences I’ve had on Android: you simply browse your library and tap what you want to queue. Double tapping an item directly starts playing it as the current playlist, which is a handy shortcut for playing whole albums or all songs by an artist. If you’re a fan of browsing your music by directories, XenoAmp can do that as well — just set your music directory as a favorite and use the “Files” screen.

Playlist management is also an easy task, letting you reorder or remove entries by dragging them up and down or swiping them away. Switching playlists or moving tracks between them is also a breeze, and you could use advanced search to quickly add music by tags, genres and more. The playlists pane and the XenoAmp sidebar are accessible from any screen, providing easy access to commonly accessed features (e.g. search or shuffling).

We’ve only covered the main features so far, though. XenoAmp has been under development for a long time, and not without a good reason. Acoustic correction, an equalizer with as many profiles as you need and automatic switching between the car, headphones or dock mode equalizers, support for multiple audio sources and many more features are all available. You can even stream your music from SMB shares or Subsonic servers, via DLNA/UPnP, or using your Google Play Music or 8Tracks account. The best part is that all your music is treated equally regardless of its source, with no artificially imposed separation.

That’s still not all. Want lyrics? You got it. Voice commands? XenoAmp has that as well. Widgets? Yup! Prefer a lighter/more material interface, or would you rather stick with the classic dark one? The choice is yours. Looking for a music player that can handle, manage and automatically download missing tags? You’ve found one. And even though XenoAmp is considered almost complete by now, the developer still has plans for it, such as SoundCloud support, visual tweaks and polishing, a nicer interface for streaming services and Xeno’s own radio station database.

If you’re interested, I would definitely recommend you take it out for a spin directly: just head over to the XenoAmp forum thread, install it and give it a try. The forum thread also lists some more features, if you can’t discover them all by yourself. You’ll also find a very active and helpful community and developer, so you’re welcome to ask for help or offer suggestions in the forum thread as well.

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The Best and Worst of 2015: XDA Edition

The year is almost at an end, but it doesn’t look like Android’s dominance will subside anytime soon. Although we all share the experience of running an Android device here at XDA, each and every one of us will have a unique Android experience based on his or her device, region, carrier, and more.

But there are some aspects to the Android experience that can result in a shared common experience. That’s why we asked you, our readers, your thoughts on the best and worst aspects of Android throughout the year. Let’s start off with the bad news first, shall we?

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The Worst

Heat map of various 2015 flagships

You guys voted, and the results were very clear. The Snapdragon 810 won the “worst of 2015” vote by a landslide. Some commenters were wondering how the Snapdragon 810 is related to Android. It’s a valid concern, given that the chipset is by no means exclusive to Android devices. Yet, the SoC has shown up in so many 2015 Android flagships that it’s hard to separate the “Android experience” with Snapdragon chipsets.

In particular, this beast of an SoC has been engulfed in controversy since the release of the LG G Flex 2 and the HTC One M9, both of which suffered from overheating issues. In addition, Sony’s Xperia Z3+ and Z4 were confirmed by the company to experience the same thermal problems. So what went wrong, and who’s to blame for the poor experience of early Snapdragon 810 devices? We’ve discussed the issue in depth before, and what it comes down to is an issue that both Qualcomm and the OEMs needed to fix.

It simply was not a good year for Qualcomm. In January, the announcement that Samsung was ditching the Snapdragon line in favor of its own Exynos chipset plummeted Qualcomm’s market value. Many in the Android tech scene claimed that the Snapdragon 810 was to blame for Qualcomm losing its biggest customer, but Qualcomm of course denied this allegation. The company released a statement featuring many of its partners showing their intent to continue implementing the 810 in their flagship devices. However, by this point many consumers saw Qualcomm’s defense of the 810 as simply damage control.

In Qualcomm’s defense, it really does seem that the performance issues of the 810 SoC were a bit overhyped (although the GPU performance still left a lot to be desired, particularly on high-resolution displays). Qualcomm’s third iteration of the 810 solved some of the thermal and performance issues plaguing the chipset. We’ve seen that devices such as the Sony Xperia Z5 and Google Nexus 6P were able to tame the 810 beast, while devices like the OnePlus 2 were unable to do the same. The variation in how the later 810 devices turned out gives some credence to the idea that OEMs were partially responsible for the poor performance of early 810 devices. In the end, what really killed the 810 was the marketing fiasco surrounding these early 810 devices that led consumers to lose trust in the company. Qualcomm desperately needs to nail the 820 chipset, especially with the looming threat of competitors such as Huawei’s Kirin and MediaTek entering the market once dominated by Snapdragon.

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The Best

Qualcomm might have disappointed many of us with the 810, but this year wasn’t all that bad. Many commenters noted that the mid-range market has been killing it lately.

2015 is the year where “cheap android phones became good and good android phones became cheap.” – user Aeonia.

If you’re a consumer looking to grab a new smartphone, then you no longer have to shell out top dollar for a high end smartphone. Devices such as the Moto G 2015 and OnePlus X offer decent Android experiences for users looking to upgrade their device at a low price. On the other hand, the prevalence of e-commerce is also driving down prices on the high end market. Long gone are the days when you had to go directly to a carrier to purchase a flagship phone. Instead, you can cut out the middle-man and save money by purchasing straight from the manufacturer.

Motorola, OnePlus, and Honor take advantage of this sales model to offer you great phones without the inflated in-store price. And if offerings from those manufacturers don’t interest you, thankfully deals and bundles are being offered at a fairly high rate these days, so tech savvy Android enthusiasts should have plenty of opportunities to grab even the most expensive smartphones at a discount. All in all, it’s a great time to be upgrading your smartphone given the plethora of available options.

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Here’s to a better 2016, one with many great deals and not plagued with overheating smartphones!

Let us know what you’re most looking forward to in the comments below.

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New Google Glass Stops By The FCC

A new version of Google Glass has stopped by the FCC for testing and has revealed a new folding design as well as a look at the device’s internals, the report shows that the device will support bluetooth, 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz WiFi which has not come as much of a surprise. Head on over for more pictures.

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Xposed Framework Makes Its Way To Samsung’s Marshmallow

A few days ago, Samsung has officially released a Marshmallow update for the Galaxy S6… well, kind of. It’s still a beta, but developers are already working hard to bring their greatest projects up-to-date.

No longer than yesterday we learned that XDA Senior Recognized Developer Chainfire has updated his great CF-Root. Samsung users may feel happy as yet another project is now available for their smartphones.

It’s hard to imagine our XDA world without the Xposed Framework. Thanks to efforts of a few developers, including XDA Senior Recognized Developer rovo89 and XDA Recognized Developers arter97 and wanam, the Xposed Framework is now available for Android 6.0 on the Samsung Galaxy S6. Here’s what wanam had to say:

Samsung did it in clean way this time, just a small changes to Art plus the Knox security ones of course.
I didn’t include xz support, it’s not required on the current M build, maybe planned for low space devices, i hope they will switch to gz since it’s supported on aosp.

Samsung’s strategy includes incorporating as many security patches as possible. It’s a good thing, but it brings many issues to users who would like to modify the operating system. Things like ART and Knox make developing for Samsung’s platform much more complicated, hence the delay in development. Luckily, development hasn’t stopped and keeps thriving.

Installation of this Xposed isn’t as easy as you may think. You need to flash a few things before you’ll finally get Xposed to work. Wanam provided detailed instructions and necessary downloads in his post here, so you don’t have to look for it by yourself.

If you are running a beta of Android 6.0 on a Samsung device, head over to this thread to get yourself a working Xposed installer. If you haven’t tried Marshmallow yet, find out how to install it on your device.

Are you happy to see Xposed on your Samsung Galaxy S6 again? Let us know in the comments below!

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What Has Your Experience Been Like with CyanogenMod?

CyanogenMod ROMs are popular amongst enthusiasts for their sheer availability, their feature set and the (relatively) AOSP-feel it gives skinned OEM devices. Yet these are not always optimized or stable, sometimes earning the ROM a bad reputation among those with high custom ROM standards or devices that haven’t seen stable ports. What has your personal experience been like?

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Huawei is Testing a Beta of Android 6.0 for the Honor 7 in India

By registering your IMEI number on a Google Drive form, users can apply to receive an OTA update of an Android 6.0 Marshmallow (and EMUI 4.0) beta that Huawei is currently testing in India. This is just a beta and the company has said they plan on rolling out the final version by January or early February.

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Apple Requests that Samsung Pays an Additional $180 Million in Patent Case

Apple just recently won a patent case against Samsung and a little over a week ago the South Korean tech giant paid a hefty $548 million in damages. Apple feels that it isn’t enough because they have just asked the courts to make Samsung pay $180 million more in “supplemental damages and interest”.

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