S1.010 Bugs and Annoyances

I purchased my Miniplayer two days ago and I've been giving it a run for its money. I thought I'd start a buglist here. If this is not the right place for that, please forgive me.


I've noticed the following bugs and, um, niggles, so far:


* There is a rather serious issue with some MP3s. I will post a video of this soon, but let me try to describe the problem already.
The problem seems to be restricted to VBR MP3s. Those happen to be the kind I prefer (I am a rather enthusiastic user of lame alt standard). When I play VBR MP3s, the timebar on the player goes crazy. Time played and (especially) time remaining swing wildly from second to second (e.g. one moment it'll say 9 minutes remaining, the next it'll claim there are only three minutes remaining). Luckily enough, the MP3s seem to play with no problem.
This is a very reproducible problem, which is not limited to one MP3 file, but rather to different MP3 encodings from different albums and from different sources. The one common denominator (as I mentioned) is the VBR. The one real functional problem it creates is with scrolling through the song: it is impossible to go to a precise time position, and with some songs, it can even be impossible to scroll at all.


* I've mentioned this, and I've seen no improvements so far: in some long audio files, the beginning is clipped. This clipping can entail multiple seconds. In one podcast I enjoy (Filmspotting, formerly known as cinecast), instead of hearing "Welcome to cinecast (...)" I hear "'cast (...)". The common denominator here seems to be long audio files with low bitrates (>64kbps) and sometimes low samplerate (eg 22khz). This also happens on the NPR podcast 'African-American roundtable'.


These two problems are not huge issues, but they are annoying (for me) and embarrassing (for Meizu). Playing MP3s is something I'd expect any MP3 player produced in 2006 to have mastered.


Another problem:
* I was watching a video when my battery was almost empty (my purpose actually being to see what the battery life was like). It suddenly stopped playing, but the player didn't shutdown. When I started playing again, it flashed a warning on the lower half of the screen (the video still playing), in Chinese. I have changed the interface language to English though. I like Chinese, I study it every day. However: I fear many people outside China are perhaps 'allergic' to Chinese. When they expect to see English, they should NEVER be shown Chinese. That just screams amateurism and (unfortunately) cheap Chinese knock-off, which is too bad. I really do feel that Meizu is one of the few players in the Chinese personal electronics market that has a very real chance of making it internationally in a modest to big way.


* A MAJOR niggle for me: the shutdown time!

As those of you who own a Miniplayer know, the player shuts itself down after about 'three minutes' of inactivity. There is, after three minutes, no possibility to quickly resume what you were listening to. Let me be more precise, there is a resume feature (thank you at least for that), but you must first go through the system startup again, which takes (I haven't timed it) anything between 10 and 20 seconds. Very disappointing compared with, e.g. the instant response you get from a tape player (like a Sony Walkman) and many other MP3 players (though I've known only my iPod, which does this).
There should be, at the very least, a setting to extend this time from three minutes to whatever I feel suitable.
I know there may be battery considerations in play, but that's not a reason. I'd rather not have to wait out those ten seconds every time I happen to turn the player off for a few minutes (and get only 19 hours of playback) instead of getting a full 20 hours. I don't often stay out for 20 hours, so I get enough chances to recharge the player.
There are very real and common usage scenarios... this is not just in my head:

-you are listening to the player and receive a phone call. you talk for four minutes. you hang up, want to resume, but the player is turned off now =>

-you're walking around, you run into someone you know, you talk for a while, you say your adieus, get back to the music, the player's turned itself off =>

-you're doing some shopping, you come up on the cash register, stop the music for a moment while you attend to business, ...... , =>

Are all your VBR tunes showing this issue?
That would mean that the Miniplayer cannot deal with the vbr-header and should be fixed by MEIZU (a very ugly bug, indeed).
When only some VBR tracks of your collection are showing this issue you have to add a vbr-header to them.
There are some tools doing this job.
It's normal, that CBR tracks will work without any problem because they are ripped with a constant bit rate.

to address the 3 minute shutoff, meizu should incorporate a difference between "pause" and "stop". since it's just one button and there is no difference as of now, meizu could do:

press = pause - this doesn't have a timed automatic shutdown
press & hold 3 seconds = stop - timed automatic shutdown

it's pretty simple and i think meizu can add an option like this easily in the next firmware.

I agree, those are very annoying, and they also happen on the M6 TP
However, it should be quite simple for Meizu to fix them up!

i wonder when the next firmware will be out. At the same time I'm happy that so many people have good ideas, but do the meizu guys recognize them? Do they visit this forum and read all the suggestions?
Maybe we should post them at the official forum

Originally Posted by puffel

i wonder when the next firmware is out. At the same time I'm happy that so many people have good ideas, but do the meizu guys recognize then? Do they visit this forum and read all the ideas?
Maybe we should post them at the official forum

I sorta agree. one of the Meizu guys posts there quite a bit (Ice Orange is his name i believe) and takes the time to answer questions pretty well.

we could compile a nice organized wishlist and submit it to him perhaps.

edit: i think ice orange is actually a girl

Yes, ice-orange is actually a girl. Meizu Marketing Team goes through MeizuMe at times, so does various firmware teams of western companies carrying rebranded Meizu products.