Even though at first, the Android operating system was developed and used by tech-savvy people and software developers, it eventually reached the point where anyone can use it, being just as easy to use as the iPhone or a Windows Mobile device.
That is why the OHA (Open Handset Alliance – the consortium of companies that currently own and promote the OS) is creating a lot of new consumer-oriented smartphones and MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices) running on Android.
The last year has seen a significantly higher amount of mainstream and entertainment apps being launched on the Android Marketplace. This year, even more are coming. Games, organizers, emulators, ftp clients, web browsers – a lot of very useful and advanced apps are currently available for anyone to use on an Android device.
Below, we’ll take a look at the best and most popular media players that will allow you to listen to your favorite music and radio stations and watch your favorite shows, movies and online videos.
MixZing.
This app is said to be the most advanced music player available for the Android OS, and judging by user reviews, it really is so. It has a lot of nice features like automatically finding and downloading artist info, photos, videos and missing album art and a nice feature called “Mood Player”, which works sort of like the iTunes Genius, playing music similar to the one you listen the most (and therefore, like the most). And you can’t beat the price – it’s totally free!
MixZing - Android Apps
Act 1 Video Player.
This app is the best video player for Android, according to all the user reviews you can find online. It can play most video file formats; it’s stable and not too demanding on the hardware. The controls are simple and it even supports Bluetooth media keys, but unfortunately, still lacks playlist support, although when you play 20-30 minutes long video files, it’s not that hard to just open another one manually. There is a free trial version, but the full version will cost you $1.50, which is not much considering you’ll get free updates for life and it’s pretty much the only video player you’ll ever need.
Act 1 Video Player - Android Apps
Meridian Player.
This is a great video and music player, and it’s pretty much the best (and only) all-in-one media player available on the marketplace. It will play most video and audio files, has a clean interface and a few nice advanced features like searching for lyrics to songs and subtitles to movies, editing ID3 tags, rating files and controlling the app via gestures. The price is acceptable, too – it’s completely free!
Meridian Player - Android Apps
Video Player.
This aptly named application is, well, a video player. It works quite well, it’s stable, but it only supports Mpeg-4 and 3GPP encoded files, so it’s a bit limiting. But if you convert all your videos on your desktop PC, you should be fine. It has one unique feature that other players lack, and that is resuming playback – it works for all the files you play. The controls are simple, the performance is good, and it’s free – enough for 95% of all users.
Video Player - Android Apps
Cinema.
This is a very simple video player with a very simple name. It’s completely free; it’s very stable and has the highest performance around due to the use of the hardware decoder available on most new Android phones (like the Nexus One and the Droid). The controls are unique, too – it has no buttons, you control it using gestures (tap your finger on the screen to play/pause, double-tap to fullscreen, swipe left/right for quick rewind/forward, etc.). The only drawback is that it supports only h.264 encoded files in mp4 and 3gp formats, but the performance of the playback more than makes up for this.
Cinema - Android Apps
Of course, these apps will evolve and the next versions will be even more powerful and functional, plus many more new players will be released, so you should always stay updated with what’s happening on the Android Marketplace.
Popularity: 37% [?]
foot_ad
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I use Meridian player and actually it does support resume for video, also if a film is split up into several files it will seamlessly autoplay the files in sequence.
Great review otherwise!
Thanks Glen for putting your experience.:)
Hello,
I think this is the best ever list for mac video player I have seen, also all of them are free to download.
Meridian is quite good, but I copied around 700 short funny vids from a mates memory card to my own, and the Meridian interface only listed around half of them. However, I could access the files using astro file manager, and select open with meridian. Just a bit strange that the didnt automatically go on the list of vids within the programme.
Check out arcMedia on the Android market. I had trouble playing high quality video files on my HTC Desire using Meridian and other such players. mpg files dint play on Meridian. I resorted to conversion of formats using ffmpeg to play on the mobile….had to compromise quality several times and had to contend with a few errors every now and then. That dint work out well as there were problems with video & audio sync and sometimes the audio played but with a blank screen in Meridian. Dont be mistaken…Meridian is a good player for the supported formats of MP3, OGG, MP4, and 3GP but does not support the basic formats that we use in the PC such as avi, mpg etc.
Tried ArcMedia…works great….its the best player out there for a large number of formats including avi, mkv, divx, mov, mp4, rmvb, wmv, vob, xvid and growing. I tried out avi, mkv and mpg….I just had to transfer the files from PC to mobile and play them as is….No hassles. Site: http://www.arcmediasoft.com/
I use VPlayer. I copied some AVI files from my comp to SD card and act 1 or Meridian could not play it. VPlayer can.
I tried many video players (not those you mention there) but so far the only that display external subtitles are the stock 2.2 player and MPlayer (Great!)
Thanks for great resource, I am including one more Moboplayer in this list, that in also one of the top best free Android video player checkout for free download