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The Flip's music-playing software is another evolutionary step forward for RIM, but still not one that is big enough. In the main menu, you can get to your music via the Media icon, or the Music icon. The Music icon is faster because it takes you straight to the player.

The basic music menu is unchanged from the Curve and is white lettering on a black background. It lets you select from the songs, artists, genres, albums, playlists, etc. While you can sample songs and even shuffle. There are still no advanced music functions, such as an equalizer. Hitting any of the menu selections takes you into another list of what's available, be it the songs, albums or artists. These lists may be simple, but this is a major advancement over the Pearl, which made you jump through folder after folder after folder to find what you wanted. Once you make your selection, the player interface launches.

The player is no more impressive than the Curve's. You can play or pause/stop the music with the track ball, as well as skip forward and backward tracks. As with most media players, a progress bar shows you how much of the song remains, and album art is displayed if it is tagged to the song.

As we noted earlier in the review, sound quality is not that great. Whether through the external speaker, the earpiece, stereo Bluetooth headphones or standard stereo headphones, the sound quality is just not there. The music sounds dull, lifeless and bland.

With the phone closed, you are able to see the music player interface, though I was unable to interact with it by pressing any of the buttons. Incoming calls mute the music, which will resume once the call is completed.

Otherwise, the music player performs ably, but nothing sets it apart from many other media-playing phones. It does the basics, but not much more. RIM could stand to get its act together in the music playback department.

music player  

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