Real Buttons!
I love digital audio player -- also known as MP3 players. In particular if they still have real, physical buttons, allowing them to be operated without even looking. A real advantage over smartphones when it comes to playing music!
Common MP3 players become even better if RockBox is being installed -- a free alternative operating system which comes with a lot of great and useful features the default firmware of most devices can only dream of. Just to name a few:
- Some MP3 players don't allow you to simply select tracks right from the file system, but insist on building an ID3 tag based database. I usually take care to properly tag my audio files, but, hey, I just know that my folder structure is consistent and easy to navigtate! RockBox, of course, supports both modes of operation.
- Even when offering plain file system naviation, some MP3 player (in particular rather cheap ones) fail to sort files alphabetically. So even with track numbers included in file names, the tracks will usually not be played in the intended order. No problem with RockBox here!
- Killer feature: RockBox supports multiple bookmarks, allowing you to arbitrarily switch between different music albums, audio books and podcastst and still continue just from where you left when returning to a folder/album.
- Nice to have: RockBox comes with a number of little utility applications ("Apps", if you will). So, for instance, you'll always have a periodic table at your fingertips! ;)
- RockBox is themeable. While for me, some MP3 players' user interfaces are virtually illegible for me unless I use a magnifying glass, with RockBox I was able to create my own theme (or "skin", in RockBox lingo), providing all the graphical features I require.
Cyan...
...is one of my favorite colors, and that's also what I called my RockBox skin -- even if the eponymous hue is only visible in the background. Still, it provides a nice contrast to the actual interface elements, which feature shades of red, yellow and green.
The source files for my theme are available from my GitLab page; readily installable packages for various MP3 player models can be downloaded from the RockBox homepage, for instance: