Microfi Nitrogen MP3 Player for Mobile

Jul 6, 2010 by Shivendu Madhava

Finally, a full-fledged MP3 player that gets rid of the pesky stylus

It’s been two years since the iPhone released. Two years of the best music interface on a cell phone. And what does Windows
Mobile have to retaliate? Please, don’t even think of saying the three dreaded letters: ‘WMP’.

We are so thankful for the existence of the XDA developers forum. It consistently gets good programmers who come out with free-to-use applications that are leaps and bounds ahead of any commercial software.

Microfi, a regular member at the forum, decided he had enough of the lack of good music players for the WinMob platforms and started creating his own. Within no time, he presented the community with the Microfi Nitrogen, which has quickly become one of the most downloaded MP3 players for pocket PCs.

The biggest selling point of the Nitrogen is that it was intended to use purely with one’s fingers. The stylus has hampered Windows Mobile users for too long, especially when it comes to tiny keys on media players. The big fat keys on the Nitrogen ensure that you will always, always, always hit what you intended to.

The menu, in fact, is what drew us to Nitrogen in the first place. It was simplistic, good-looking, and devoid of any delusions of grandeur. There was no pretending that this was a project for fun’s sake, and whatever utility that came out of it was a bonus.

Another attractive factor was the speed of the application. Nitrogen opens so fast, it makes you wonder whether it was running in the background all the time. Of course, this could be largely due to its small size, clocking in less than 2MB of storage.

The advantage of working in a community is the amount of rapid feedback a developer gets, as well as the help offered. Programmers are often not designers, and vice-versa. But in a community, you’re bound to find someone with a basic knowledge of one area and an expertise in the other. Before you knew it, Nitrogen had some great skins to go with its default one.

But let’s not get too superficial, and turn our gaze to what’s under the hood. Nitrogen uses the open-source MAD decoder for its high-quality MP3 playback, delivering crisp audio. The OGG playback is taken care of by the OVD decoder.

The playlists are very handy, letting you add files with ease and change the order on-the-fly. The ‘Repeat’ and ‘Shuffle’ options are just icing on the cake.

Initially, Nitrogen came without an equaliser function. But Microfi was quick to rectify this issue, and Nitrogen now has a robust equalizer with 10 presets and a customisable option.

The one feature it’s still missing is fast-forward and rewind, although Microfi promises he’s currently working on this and should have it figured out soon.

Our recommendation? Even without that one feature, it’s the best WinMob MP3 playback tool around and deserves to be the default player on your handset.

Platforms: Windows Mobile

Price: Free

Download: code.google.com/p/microfi-nitrogen/downloads/list