All India Radio (AIR) announced their new Android application today that will allow users to stream various AIR channels on your smartphone through internet.
Although the announcement was made just yesterday, the application has been available on Play store since April 30th. The app has been downloaded by more than 1000 users across the country. AIR’s new online radio streaming app is very simple and clean. However, it did not took us more than 30 minutes to test the app’s capabilities and get a genuine review out of it for the public.
AIR’s new Android application is just about 8.5 MB in size which will not cost much on your data pack. The app is quite bland and it makes us believe that developers didn’t put much effort in the UI design. Once you have downloaded and opened the app you will be greeted with an All India Radio Live logo.
Once you are into the app you will find a search bar alone on the screen. On the top left corner you will see bar option and after clicking on it a sliding tray will arrive from the left. There you will get 2 options one with tag ‘Channels’ and second one with tag ‘Favorites’. Clicking on the channel tag will bring a list of channels available on the screen right under the search bar.
Now, all you need to do is just click on anyone of them and it will automatically start playing the live radio. Remember, like any other online music streaming app it will also buffer depending on the speed of your connection. Once, the streaming is started you are all set to listen and enjoy the regional radio.
If we talk about the UI and interface of the app to me it seems to be very outdated and bland. However, the availability of the less options is a good as well as bad thing! Good for the non-tech people out there and bad for tech savvy people because you don’t have some common features like setting the quality of output manually etc.
You only get limited regional channels in the app. The channels are AIR FM Gold, AIR FM Rainbow, AIR FM Vividh Bharati, AIR Urdu, AIR Gujarati, AIR Malayalam, AIR Marathi, and AIR Punjabi. I have to say that the streaming is very good on the app. I didn’t face any issues with streaming while I was on my broadband connection. As soon as I switched to 2G connection there were some glitches in the streaming. So, you need to have a stable and good internet connection to get the best streaming quality on the app.
Another thing which I liked about the app is the feature similar to creating playlist. You can click the little heart next to the channel’s name to mark it favourite and access it easily. Since, there are very limited channels, I found this feature not much helpful but it could be if more channels are added to the list.
Now, the last point of this review and the last con that I had with the app is the crash issue. I used the app for about 30 minutes and believe me the app crashed atleast 10 times on my Android device. The device I’m using is running on Android 5.1 but I had no source to check it on a Kitkat device.
If you hear regional content or are fan of classical Hindi music, try out the app and let us know your experience!
Wow.. Really great news. those who are eagerly waiting for this option.. Realy such a nice information to all.