Preview: FM radio for N900

Hello everybody.

N900 release was delayed a bit, but you shouldn’t be upset cause this only means that Nokia cares bout end quality of the product and don’t want to give you half-cooked buggy brick. Meanwhile community developers have more time to polish their existing software (like we’re doing with OMWeather) and even create new one.

Community member Martin Grimme, also known as PyCage is working on FM radio application for n900 and I’ve decided to help him with it and create something visually appealing and easy to use.

But first I’d like to thank everyone that have donated money to our Other Maemo Weather team. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve donated – the fact of your attention itself is very important to us that keeps us on track.

In random order:

Sven Muentel
Ralph Angenendt
Ziling Zhao
Zane Farooq (We got your request, will do our best :))
Marcello Bellini
Sami Kyöstilä
Randall Arnold
James Thompson

Thank you very much, we will do as much as possibe to continue work on OMWeather.

So, let’s check out brand new FM radio app.

Forget about that boring radio UI from n800 – today it’s the time for something intuitive and cool looking. Current UI mimics old-fashioned radio “ruller” . Pan around it to tune the station. That’s basicaly the only feature you’ll need, but we decided to add some additional functionality.

These dot marks are saved radio stations. When you tune one you will se either saved name or RDS stream if supported on the bottom. Tap that label to open up favourites menu. If the station is not in the list – you can add it (in real life just double tap on the label – easy) and if it’s already in the list – you can remove it (with confirmation).

Same menu will be opened if you click the station frequency number and it will show you list of all saved stations.

If you have found station that’s not in the list – you’ll see “save station” instead of label – try to guess what you have to do to save this station :)

And the last one bit of extra functionality is location selector. Tap the application’s title to open it. If you travel alot and a radio fan the same time – you can add location you’re going to, for example, download the list for it (or add stations manually) and start using radio in another city right on arival.

Also we’re planning to add “stream recording” option later so you can, you know, record FM stream :D

Well, that’s all for now, your opinions are highly appreciated as always, it’s only you that can make your life better so don’t loose your chance and ask for functionality right here and now.

Thanks for reading and good luck.