Review: T-Mobile myTouch 4G
The myTouch 4G offers one of the neatest music player ideas I've seen yet on an Android device. Rather than call out just the "Music" player, the myTouch 4G has a "Media Room." Go to the media room, and you have access to your on-board music and video. Additionally (and this is the fantastic part), the Media Room software also integrates an FM radio and Slacker Radio into the same media interface. That's freaking awesome. Way to go, HTC!
HTC has also re-skinned the player itself. When music is playing, rather than a static picture of the album cover with playback controls under it, you can swipe through the songs in the current playlist. It's not much, but it's something.
The menu items allow you to share the song, add it to playlists or look at song file info, but falls short of offering much-asked-for features such as an equalizer of any sort.
Moving to the FM radio or to Slacker from the main media player is as simple as pressing a software button at the bottom of the media player screen. Of course, the FM radio necessitates headphones, and users have to set up a Slacker account before using Slacker. The myTouch 4G also comes with the Amazon MP3 store pre-loaded. It is a breeze to use Amazon to search for and download music if you already have an account.
One thing worth noting, the way the lock screen works when music is playing is really cool. When you press the lock key once, you see the album cover and you have access to the play/pause rewind/fast-forward buttons without unlocking the phone first. Music controls are usable with the phone still locked. This means you can shut off the music player quickly when it needs to be silenced. That's a nice feature.
Music playback through the speaker actually sounded pretty good. It sounded better through stereo headphones. Music playback through stereo Bluetooth headphones was pretty good, too.
CTIA Fall 2010
HTC myTouch 4G
