Today SPB Software released SPB Radio 1.0, an Internet radio player for Windows Phones. This article will have provide a short review of the SPB Radio application and guide you through the application in a step by step process.

Background thoughts and product features

SPB Software seems to be heavily investing in the online services and multimedia field lately, and developed applications like SPB Online and SPB TV. Both applications are aimed at multimedia content and can be used in the connected mobile scenario on the move.

After launching the unique SPB TV application it makes sense to continue the multimedia spectrum with an internet radio player for Windows Phones. SPB Software summarizes the product as:

“SPB Radio – a high-quality Internet radio player for Windows Phones, which gives subscription-free access to an unlimited number of live streaming radio stations from all over the world.  SPB Radio features a modern touch-interface with adaptive skins and on-screen controls.  The application has a built-in catalog with over fifteen hundred radio stations categorized by genre, geographical region, and language.”

In the product summary the unlimited number of streaming radio stations and global coverage are remarkable, as well as the impressive catalog. On this catalog I will come back later on, but first let have a look at the other new features of the SPB Radio application.

New key features of SPB Radio 1.0

• Finger friendly interface
• Adaptive skins
• On-screen volume control
• Built-in radio stations catalog with 1500+ stations
• Easy setup of more custom radio stations
• List of favorites
• Digital radio sound quality
• Real time radio streaming
• Current Bit rate indicator
• Automatic screen turn off

SPB Radio on your Windows Phone

Let start with looking at the simple and intuitive user-interface of SPB Radio 1.0, with large buttons optimized for fingerfriendy use.

At first we see a play and stop button on the left, and a volume control button on the right (providing the volume level in % as well). Between these two buttons a field is shown where the current channel is shown, as well as the state (playing …, buffering …) and the bitrate of the current channel’s stream.

Furthermore we can see a kind of carousel with radio stations, which I assume are also optimized for finger friendly use. Such an implementation of a carousel, but on a higher control level of the application, is found in SPB Mobile Shell 3.0. In the article “SPB Mobile Shell v3.0 User Interface Step-By-Step Review” a screenshot with the carousel can be seen.

The left softkey is linked to the function: “screen off“, in order to easily safe battery by turning the screen off while listening to the radio channel. It is an implementation I have seen before in the CorePlayer for mobile application, but very helpful in practice. The right softkey will open up the menu, which will be discussed below.

Also remarkable is the volume level overlay, like is shown in the screenshot above. Both with moving the Jogg Ball of the HTC Snap to the left or right, as well as with the volume buttons on the left side of the device let me control the volume level. So my compliments for this good implementation on Windows Mobile Standard (non-touch) devices.

Adaptive Skins

One of the cool features of SPB Radio 1.0 are the Adaptive Skins, highlighted in italic in the featurelist above. Now it doesn’t require to personalize the internet radio player on your Windows Phone any more by downloading and importing custom skins. SPB Radio adapts the background color and application skin to the homescreen you have set on your Windows Phone. On the left I selected the “Slinding Panel” homescreen on my HTC Snap, while on the right I selected the “HTC Home” homescreen.

Current station

The right softkey opens up the menu, in which the different menu items are shown in a logical an functional list. The first item in the list playing or pause the stream of the current station.

The second menu item is used to manage the current station and carousel of “favourite” stations on the default screen of SPB Radio. You can easily move the current station up or down, or set is to the top or bottom of the list, or you simply have the ability to edit or remove the current station.

Various ways to find and add a station

SPB Radio 1.0 offers various options to search for and add a radio station to the carousel of current stations. Each of the different options has been tested and will be described below.

1.   Find a Station

The first way is to find a radio station via the option “find station” from the menu. You simply enter the search string like you do with every search-box and hit the ok-button. In the extensive build-in catalog a search is conducted and the results are quickly shown. In the example I used a dutch radio station called Radio 538, and on the screenshot of the results page (right)  you can see that the results are shown in a list optimized for finger-friendly use.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK_ylYuzTas

2.   Add a Station

“The application has a built-in catalog with over fifteen hundred radio stations categorized by genre, geographical region, and language.”

The second way is to add a station by browsing through the different categories of the build-in catalog. Like describe in the product summary you can browse either by music type or genre, geographical region and language. In the short video on YouTube I have provided a quick overview of the different categories in the catalog, and I hope it gives a rough idea of which types of stations are available.

3.  Add Station by URL

The third way to add a station is to simply add the URL of the lives-stream manually in the SPB Radio application. Simple but effective.

Connections

The last relevant option in the menu is the item “connections”, which gives you control over the used type of connection. You can only set SPB Radio to use only free connections, for example Wi-Fi. This feature was also implemented in the recently reviewed SPB News 2.0, and is shown in the article: “SPB News 2.0 RSS Reader for Windows Phones – SPB Insight renamed“

Also the connection control in the roaming situation can be configured simply by checking or unchecking the option. Again the same implementation as in SPB News 2.0, but very important to help users to keep their data costs as low as possible. So well done SPB software for implementing these connection control options.

Thoughts, conclusions and wrap-up

At first I would like to complement SPB software for bringing this application to both Windows Mobile Professional and Windows Mobile Standard. This to some extend inline with the adopted multi-platform approach, and I’m really curious if we will see the multimedia applications also on other platforms as well.

SPB Radio has a very intuitive easy to use user interface, and despite an internet radio player doesn’t require a difficult interface, it is very well done on both the platforms. And despite I know I just have tested the application on a Windows Mobile Standard device, I can see that the interface is optimized for finger-friendly use.

Furthermore the adaptive skins are a cool addition, and I hope we will see this kind of behavior back in other applications as well. Now the SPB Radio application easily is embedded in your current theme or homescreen of your Windows Phone. The result: you don’t have to customize the radio player skins.

So far I’m impressed with the build-in catalog with radio stations, which not only consists of music stations but also newstalks. The number of listed 1500 radio stations is certainly impressive, and you always can find a radio station of your personal taste. Lots of genres and categories are covered, but in the current version the build-in catalog is a static object.

UPDATE

Finally the sound quality is more than ok, but that is close related to the quality of the stream source and the connection you are listening over. I have tested SPB Radio over various connections (Wi-Fi, HSDPA, EDGE) and it’s a nice application to use on the go while you are commuting. I need to check in the upcoming days what ammount of data-traffic is used, as well as the impact on the battery life (even with the screen off).

Some short remarks

A great improvement would be to update the latest version of the catalog over the air (OTA) simply by pressing a button in the menu. This might be a nice improvement for an upcoming version.

UPDATE

After a short conversation with the developers of SPB Radio, I need to write down a short update on this remark. The catalog with radio stations is hosted on the SPB software servers, while a special team works on finding and adding radio stations to the catalog.

The Catalog is updated automatically in background of the SPB Radio application, which means next time you start listening radio you will always have the latest version of the catalog on your Windows Phone. If you listen to a specific radio station, which is not in the catalog at this moment, please head over to the SPB Club and let the team know.

While we can see a great level of integration between for example SPB Pocket Plus and SPB Diary, it would also be a great idea look at some kind of integration of the multimedia applications as well. It might be a cool idea to plug-in SPB TV and SPB Radio into the SPB Online application and control these different applications from within one single environment.

Availability and costs

“SPB Radio 1.0 is available for Windows Phones running Windows Mobile 5 and later Professional and Standard editions. A free, 15-day trial can be downloaded, or SPB Radio 1.0 can be purchased for 9.95 USD, from www.spbsoftware.com. As a web radio player, SPB Radio requires an active Internet connection via Wi-Fi, WiMAX, 3G, or EDGE.”