Kinoma Play without Soft Keys = Misery

borntochill · #1 (**permalink**) 11-01-2009, 12:03 PM

Kinoma Play may be my favorite WM app, but the developers have designed it with the assumption that every WM phone has hardware soft keys. The Touch Pro 2 doesn't.

When you're in the Kinoma's Music app, returning to the Kinoma home screen is a huge pain in the a** without the soft keys, requiring multiple touches of the Kinoma on-screen back button to get there. And if your timing isn't just right, Kinoma will restart the paused music and require the same multiple touches all over again.

I'm sure there are workarounds, maybe involving HD Tweak or similar. Has anybody else using Kinoma come up with an elegant remapping solution for the Touch Pro 2 that doesn't create new usability issues with other Touch Pro 2 apps? Thanks.

**Malatesta** · #2 (**permalink**) 11-01-2009, 01:24 PM

Nah, Kinoma Play is just fine without softkeys.

See the half-loop arrow in the lower left hand corner? Instead of pressing it once, press and hold.

Watch as you magically return to the Kinoma home screen

borntochill · #3 (**permalink**) 11-01-2009, 02:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malatesta

Nah, Kinoma Play is just fine without softkeys.

See the half-loop arrow in the lower left hand corner? Instead of pressing it once, press and hold.

Watch as you magically return to the Kinoma home screen

Excellent, thank you!

Why the heck doesn't Kinoma list that feature in its User Manual? Looking at the Kinoma forums a lot of people say they're going nuts with the same issue.

dafuse · #4 (**permalink**) 11-01-2009, 04:56 PM

thanks for the info. At least one annoyance is now solved with this app. I think Kinoma is just so terrible. It still can't play protected music, can't sort my music per track number within an album, it thinks it's helping me by searching all of my device for all pictures and presenting them to me in one big lump, ignoring my directory structure and showing me all the temp files downloaded by Opera. I really regret buying that thing.

borntochill · #5 (**permalink**) 11-01-2009, 06:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dafuse

thanks for the info. At least one annoyance is now solved with this app. I think Kinoma is just so terrible. It still can't play protected music, can't sort my music per track number within an album, it thinks it's helping me by searching all of my device for all pictures and presenting them to me in one big lump, ignoring my directory structure and showing me all the temp files downloaded by Opera. I really regret buying that thing.

I agree with you about the album track number thing. Annoying for sure, although I otherwise like the music player interface, especially how it displays album art better than any Windows Mobile player I've tried. I haven't any protected music so I can't comment on that.

If you click on the Get Apps icon on the Kinoma home screen there is an "Advanced Settings" option that you can download in just a few seconds. Advanced Settings allows you to select which media folders to scan, so you don't have to see extraneous system/temp files showing up in your Pictures or Music apps.

Aside from its cool iPhone like interface, what sold me was its YouTube app which displays much much higher quality video than the built in Touch Pro 2 application along with nifty GUI interfaces to Yelp, Orb, Shoutcast, Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, etc.

JStewartx · #6 (**permalink**) 11-01-2009, 06:46 PM

@borntochill

Its been my experience that the built in youtube app far exceeds Kinoma's picture quality...

borntochill · #7 (**permalink**) 11-01-2009, 06:47 PM

Actually, I just did a little testing. At least with MP3 files, Kinoma appears to play album tracks in the proper order so long as the album's MP3 files contain track numbers in their ID3 tags. A tagging utility can quickly tag or retag entire albums. I mentioned a couple of free tagging utilities with links to them in another thread here: http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=94002.

borntochill · #8 (**permalink**) 11-01-2009, 06:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JStewartx

@borntochill

Its been my experience that the built in youtube app far exceeds Kinoma's picture quality...

I just did an A/B test. Funny...you're right. Now the vid looks better in the built-in app. Go figure.

I wonder if it was always that way and I just had a bad connection, or whether my ROM upgrade changed anything. Either way, I take back my earlier comment.

**jmorton10** · #9 (**permalink**) 11-01-2009, 07:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by borntochill

I just did an A/B test. Funny...you're right. Now the vid looks better in the built-in app. Go figure.

I wonder if it was always that way and I just had a bad connection, or whether my ROM upgrade changed anything. Either way, I take back my earlier comment.

When i had an xv6800 Kinoma had much better YT playback than anything else.

That all changed when I got my TP's. Now, I find Kinoma virtuallu useless for just about any kind of video playback & don't even bother installing it anymore (& I have the $30 version)

~John

dafuse · #10 (**permalink**) 11-01-2009, 08:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by borntochill

I agree with you about the album track number thing. Annoying for sure, although I otherwise like the music player interface, especially how it displays album art better than any Windows Mobile player I've tried. I haven't any protected music so I can't comment on that.

If you click on the Get Apps icon on the Kinoma home screen there is an "Advanced Settings" option that you can download in just a few seconds. Advanced Settings allows you to select which media folders to scan, so you don't have to see extraneous system/temp files showing up in your Pictures or Music apps.

Aside from its cool iPhone like interface, what sold me was its YouTube app which displays much much higher quality video than the built in Touch Pro 2 application along with nifty GUI interfaces to Yelp, Orb, Shoutcast, Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, etc.

@borntochill: dude, thanks. That helped a lot. Now it just shows me the pics in my "Pictures" directory structure.....still in one big lump. For 1400+ pics, that's pretty useless. But, if I go specifically to the storage card, and select the appropriate folder, it works. But then, ironically, it won't let me view them as a grid, only as a list. Just weird.

I *want* to like this. You're right, the interface is really nice. I was exploring the apps a bit, and I found a reader that uses Google reader as a basis, so I get all my feeds. That's really nice, so I just found one reason to keep it installed. I checked the Facebook app, and it seems ok so far. Flickr too.

BTW, referring to comments above, my music is in WMA format, not MP3. Maybe it can't read those tags to sort the songs appropriately. Additionally, I can't sort them at all, even by name. I rip the music to have the track number as the first thing in the file name, but nope, Kinoma won't let me sort on that either. Since I listen to albums, as opposed to songs or playlists, that kills it for me as a music player. The fact that it can't play my Rhapsody music (protected) is the nail in the coffin, so I'm still searching for a music player. Sigh.