Kinoma Play without Soft Keys = Misery

[borntochill]

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]

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]

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.

[Charles@Kinoma]

Originally Posted by borntochill

Why the heck doesn't Kinoma list that feature in its User Manual?

We do, so apologies that it didn't stand out enough for you to easily find.

I'm glad you read it, though! For other folks reading along (whether you own Kinoma Play or not), the Kinoma Play quick-start guide is at http://kinoma.com/support/manuals/play/.

-- Charles Wiltgen

[dafuse]

Originally Posted by Charles@Kinoma

We do, so apologies that it didn't stand out enough for you to easily find.

I'm glad you read it, though! For other folks reading along (whether you own Kinoma Play or not), the Kinoma Play quick-start guide is at http://kinoma.com/support/manuals/play/.

-- Charles Wiltgen

I can vouch for that: Ironically, I found it today, right after reading this thread.

[borntochill]

Originally Posted by Charles@Kinoma

We do, so apologies that it didn't stand out enough for you to easily find.

I'm glad you read it, though! For other folks reading along (whether you own Kinoma Play or not), the Kinoma Play quick-start guide is at http://kinoma.com/support/manuals/play/.

-- Charles Wiltgen

Charles, if it says so in that manual that you linked to, then it is either unclear, poorly written or I'm a dumbf***, which is certainly possible.

In your manual, I only see instructions for using "soft keys" to return to the Kinoma home screen. According to every cell phone definition/glossary that I've ever read, soft keys are physical hardware buttons on a cell phone, usually located just below the LCD display. See, for example here:

http://www.phonescoop.com/glossary/term.php?gid=361

If, on the other hand, your manual had said that pressing and holding down the on-screen half-loop arrow icon for several seconds would return you to the home screen (as Malatesta informed me upthread), then I would have tried that and there would have never have been an issue. Where in your manual does it say that you can use the on-screen icon that way? On what page? I will eat crow if I overlooked it, but otherwise your documentation writers, who are writing about a cell phone product, need to learn the difference between "soft keys" and icons.

[Charles@Kinoma]

borntochill,

Originally Posted by borntochill

Charles, if it says so in that manual that you linked to, then it is either unclear, poorly written or I'm a dumbf***, which is certainly possible.

I think the last possibility is the least likely. Another possibility is that we talk to carriers and device makers too much, and that "soft key" is too jargony.

The Phone Scoop glossary entry is (IMHO) misleading. In their entry, the "soft keys" are "Camera" and "Contacts". On non-touch phones, physical keys trigger the soft keys as the illustration shows, but on touch phones they're soft keys as well -- the difference is that you just touch them directly, instead of (or even in addition to) using a physical key.

Originally Posted by borntochill

If, on the other hand, your manual had said that pressing and holding down the on-screen half-loop arrow icon for several seconds would return you to the home screen (as Malatesta informed me upthread), then I would have tried that and there would have never have been an issue.

That seems totally reasonable, and I'll make sure we revisit that in the next manual update. (Thanks!)

-- Charles Wiltgen

[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.

[borntochill]

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.

[dafuse]

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.