Sound mixing applications are not entirely new, but come in different ways. Applications such as MyRMX have shown that mixing sounds on Symbian-powered handsets can be done easily. The newest application falling into category is SmartGrooves from Modified. The application has quite an amazing size with the installation file being 7.26 Mb, but this has its own reasons.
First impressions
When installing the application, it asks you to install to memory card and for phones such as N86 and N97 which have “mass storage” the application can be installed there. Launching the application takes a couple of seconds and the reason for that is because it’s a flash application (the phone has to start flash player first). The next thing that came up was an error message saying that the application could only be launched in landscape mode and asking me to restart. When I attempted to try to trick the application by sliding out the keyboard on my N97 the error message just got larger. Tapping on the screen simply closed the application. Oh, well, guess I’ll have to launch it again.
Application in use
With the screen in right mode the application launches fine and music starts to play. On the main screen are three buttons, load, play and mix, very minimalistic.
When loading, you get to choose from phone or from SMS, a great indication that this application is meant for social interaction. Play takes you immediately into action where music as well as visual videos will start to play on your handset. Mix is where you experiment with the different sound effects and loops.
The playing screen has a set of buttons on bottom that are for the most part quite intuitive, the blue arrows controls the video playback, the yellow x is for quitting the application and the red button is for saving the mix. The green button is the magic button and the brown button with the exclamation mark takes you to the options screen. There’s really not much to do on the play screen except for sitting down and watching the different videos fly by and listening to the beats coming out of your handset, very enjoyable. The varied videos show dancing people, the earth being zoomed out, city at night and different text scrolling across the screen to name a few.
The green magic button takes you to the mixing screen with a great amount of buttons, which is to be expected from a mixing board. From top left to right we have the controls for the main beat and the three additional sound effects. The different sliders let you choose the volume, while the bottom slider lets you choose the left or right channel. From the mixing screen you can go directly back to enjoy watching videos by selecting the blue rectangle, quit the application or go to options.
The red button is for loading mixes from your phone and similarly the green one is for saving or sending your mix to a friend.
The mixing screen is quite confusing at first for someone not having seen a mixing board before. With some usage and experimentation you get to know it very well. Should you have trouble with the application you can always consult help by tapping the exclamation mark.
Options
The brown button takes you to a new screen where you can access help, updates and info. There are only two help screens but they are more than enough to explain the application for you. The first one is also interactive so when you tap a button the description will pop up on what the button does. The second screen is not but explains the mixing board in intricate details.
Updates is for updating the application such as downloading new addons or for refreshing the application to find the new addons that you’ve installed. The about option has different segments where you can catch a glimpse on previous releases by the developer, great if you are into this kind of stuff.
Final thoughts
The application doesn’t support portrait mode, and it’s understandable as you need the width of the whole screen to gain maximum effect of the play screen and mixing screen. Only a slight annoyance but easily forgiven. When trying to move the sliders for selecting channels this is not too finger friendly and you are likely forced to use your stylus for more precision. Selecting sounds takes a bit of time as the application have to load up the sounds first and it draws down the fun of mixing. I’d like to believe this is rather a limitation of the flash than the application itself. The developer offered me the SmartGrooves Pack 1 however I got an update error when trying to install this and the developer has been contacted regarding this issue.
Overall despite being a flash application, it works positively well, also included are a total of 30 videos, 109 audios and 524160 audio combinations, which explains the size of the installation file. So it’s sure to have you entertained for many hours. SmartGrooves can be bought for €5 from the OVI Store
Do you find flash applications to be limited in terms of functions or are they as good as applications for native Symbian?
