Moving on...

[TheLastMan]

Just got a glimpse of the future, and it is phone shaped.

I have been a bit late to the smartphone market. I have an old 2nd generation iPod Touch but it was a bit sluggish with apps so did not really go far down that route.

My cell phone contract came up for renewal and I needed to economise so ditched my 3 year old Nokia and expensive contract and bought the cheapest Android ICS phone I could find on a £10.50 "sim only" monthly tariff which has twice the "minutes" of my old contract, unlimited texts and 500MB data for 2/3 of the monthly cost of my old contract.

The phone is a Sony Xperia Tipo which cost £80 + £10 for a 32GB microSD card bringing the total cost to around a 1/3 that of a new 32GB iPod Touch and only 2/3 of a 16GB Nano! In the face of the competition how Apple can justify those prices beats me.

The screen of the Tipo is quite small but is very slick. Apps are noticeably quicker to respond than my old iPod and although a bit fiddly I am getting used to typing - landscape mode helps. But wow! how things have moved on...

The phone side is so much more capable than the Nokia, with all my e-mail and texts in one place, all my contacts stored in the Google cloud (and backed up of course) and a shared calendar with my wife (life saver!). This gives me all the old PDA functions with knobs on - and automatically synced between phone and PC.

On the apps side my requirement is for a mainly audio stuff so I have already installed Spotify, Squeeze Player, Squeeze Commander, official Squeezebox app, Last.fm, PodTrapper, BBC iPlayer and TrackID - not to mention converting about 70% of my music to 120kbps VBA MP3 and dropping it onto the SD card which only half fills it, leaving room for photos and video. I even have access to my full music collection on my NAS from anywhere with a mobile or wi-fi signal using a handy Synology app.

Installed a few games to play while I listen to the music too.

And of course there is the maps and GPS and I have added a compass app (which has come in handy already!).

..oh and there is a camera of course.

The crunch bit for Logitech is that with the Squeezebox app and Squeeze Player I now have a free Squeezebox - and if I bought a bluetooth speaker it would not be much different from a SB Radio.

I am beginning to understand now how Logitech might have felt it was not worth making any more SB hardware if you can effectively get it all for free on your phone. In fact I am surprised they even bothered with the UE Radio.

The one thing this does not do, of course, is hi-fi quality reproduction and reliable multi-room synch. There is still a place for a SB Touch / Receiver type device - which is where, unfortunately, Sonos are now going to take over. Ho hum.

[bhaagensen]

Oh, and several other things such that your home is left without a music-system when your phone=you is not available for music-playback

[bhaagensen]

Also Im not reading you clear when you on one hand say you understand Logitech for leaving a product one can get for free, and on the other hand say that there *is* a market (for Sonos and such) to take over....?

[ModelCitizen]

Smart phone and/or tablet = controller and/or player and has done for a long time now

Does it ever worry you that you are so far behind?

[TheLastMan]

Oh, and several other things such that your home is left without a music-system when your phone=you is not available for music-playback

Also Im not reading you clear when you on one hand say you understand Logitech for leaving a product one can get for free, and on the other hand say that there *is* a market (for Sonos and such) to take over....?

Sure, it is not a replacement for a streamed music system - just makes it difficult to justify buying more Squeezeboxes, particularly the mobile ones like the Boom or Radio.

There will always be a place for a static streamer but SB has more competition these days from Apple AirPlay and DLNA as well as Sonos. Also, if you want to pay too much money, there are plenty of "hi-fi" streamers out there. Some, like Linn, even offer multi-room sync. In that environment you can see the Squeezebox market share gradually being eaten into.

You also forget that in most modern homes there is more than one smartphone. My wife has one and my daughter is angling for one. My eldest son would love one but he would spend every hour of the day playing games on it. I already have to hide the iPod Touch!

Smart phone and/or tablet = controller and/or player and has done for a long time now

Does it ever worry you that you are so far behind?

Its my age you know, we oldies are slower on the uptake...

I was on a two year phone contract and didn't really bother looking around until it was coming to an end.

My wife has a 2 year old HTC Wildfire Android phone, but that obviously was not mine to play with! She is also rather less interested in the tech than me. She wanted an iPhone, because all her friends have them, but decided it was too expensive and went with the "poor man's iPhone" as she calls it. She just uses it for calls, text, e-mail and calendar duties. She didn't even possess a pair of headphones before I bought her some last week!

AFAIK it has only been possible to use an Android phone as "player" since May 2011 when Bluegaspode launched his little app. But I suppose 18 months is an absolute age in technology these days.

[simbo]

The lack of Napster/Spotify on non-SB devices has been the only barrier to me following a similar path. I don't use them much, but I want to have the RIGHT to, goddamit!

[bhaagensen]

Yes, I think I'm with you. Though I think you are overlooking one important aspect the Squeezebox-brand [had...].

Namely a unique status as a high-fidelity, high-quality, feature rich (almost "complete"), very reasonably priced streaming solution. Even with todays plethora of offerings, the competition isn't quite there yet. Some such as Naim, Linn and the big high-fi names are much more expensive, mainstream high-fi is not there yet as far as features and quality, Sonos is still "low-res", etc.

Squeezebox have (had) its foot solidly planted in the music/tech/high-fi communities - people where using Touches as sources in major $$$ systems and *everyone* agreed that they where that good - or one would at least, as the saying goes in high-fi, "have to spend major $$$ to achieve better". Some then went for the Transporter while others, naturally, bought into the Naim HDX at ~5000GBP-league.

The Boom/Radio where, for many, nice system-completing additions for streaming to the toilet and such places.

As I said I dont think any other brand had such a good standing. Its all shattered and laying on the floor now though....

[ModelCitizen]

Well I'm 52. :-)

I've had iPhones for a few years now, and also have a Google Nexus 7. My wife (whose phone I borrow as and when) has an HTC desire and son an iPod.
We use iPeng on the Apple devices (although the latest update has confused us and is very flaky on my 3GS) and Orange Squeeze/Logitech App on the Androids. They all work supremely well as controllers (really knock the spots off *all* the Logitech hardware devices in terms of usability and ui design) and the iDevices work well as players (with disparate docking stations).

My favourite is the Google Nexus with Orange Squeeze (and Squeeze Player), as the now playing screen looks so good, the app is so straightforward and fast and the Nexus 7 a useful all round device for having around the house (perfect screen size for aging eyes, fits in cargo pant pockets).

I run one server and have multiple wireless repeaters so the wireless signal stretches over a couple of acres (to garage, workshop, barby area and pond).

Having looked at the iPhone 5 I suspect that the (expensive) iPhone series is past its sell by date. With the Nexus 7 Google finally managed to get their Android OS to iOS standard (and in many ways I now prefer it).

So for me, it'll be Android phone and tablets as controllers and to a smaller degree as players from now on..... and when I've finally finished off my house and re-bought some Naim audio stuff I'll resurrect the Squeezebox Plus.

Still like the Radio, Boom and Classic though but no time for the Duet (and certainly not the hideous Controller) and the Touch is just a bit of a white elephant (makes a nice clock though).

[TheLastMan]

Yes, I think I'm with you. Though I think you are overlooking one important aspect the Squeezebox-brand [had...].

Namely a unique status as a high-fidelity, high-quality, feature rich (almost "complete"), very reasonably priced streaming solution.
[snip]
As I said I dont think any other brand had such a good standing. Its all shattered and laying on the floor now though....

Yes, all absolutely true. In fact in terms of "features" (plug-ins etc) the competition are not even half-way there, and likely never will be as most, like AirPlay and Sonos, are closed proprietary protocols.

Unfortunately not enough people are sophisticated, like wot you am and I is, and aren't prepared to invest the time and effort into a SB system in order to get the best out of it. Most people just want to choose music and press the play button. Still, as long as the LMS server is running on my NAS and my two Receivers hold out then I will stick with it for my static streamers.

They made a few mistakes though, the Duet being the biggest one as it was such a bast@ard to set up and was buggy as hell until about the fifth firmware upgrade. Set up properly using net-UDAP mine have been super-reliable for over three years now, but I could easily have binned them in anger lots of times before that.

[TheLastMan]

Well I'm 52. :-)

Ah, but obviously young at heart!
(so am I by the way)

I've had iPhones for a few years now, and also have a Google Nexus 7. My wife (whose phone I borrow as and when) has an HTC desire and son an iPod.
We use iPeng on the Apple devices (although the latest update has confused us and is very flaky on my 3GS) and Orange Squeeze/Logitech App on the Androids. They all work supremely well as controllers (really knock the spots off *all* the Logitech hardware devices in terms of usability and ui design) and the iDevices work well as players (with disparate docking stations).

My favourite is the Google Nexus with Orange Squeeze (and Squeeze Player), as the now playing screen looks so good, the app is so straightforward and fast and the Nexus 7 a useful all round device for having around the house (perfect screen size for aging eyes, fits in cargo pant pockets).

I run one server and have multiple wireless repeaters so the wireless signal stretches over a couple of acres (to garage, workshop, barby area and pond).

Having looked at the iPhone 5 I suspect that the (expensive) iPhone series is past its sell by date. With the Nexus 7 Google finally managed to get their Android OS to iOS standard (and in many ways I now prefer it).

So for me, it'll be Android phone and tablets as controllers and to a smaller degree as players from now on..... and when I've finally finished off my house and re-bought some Naim audio stuff I'll resurrect the Squeezebox Plus.

Still like the Radio, Boom and Classic though but no time for the Duet (and certainly not the hideous Controller) and the Touch is just a bit of a white elephant (makes a nice clock though).

A lot of expensive high-tech stuff there. Your 52 years have obviously been more lucrative than mine.

I think you are a bit mean to the controller - it was quite cool in its day and would have been "bleeding edge tech" if it had come out a year or so earlier. However it was launched just after the first iPhone and iPod Touch so was very quickly outshone by them when used with iPeng. Its biggest problem was not its looks but its reliability - which was a disaster to begin with.

Ours is still ugly, and the wheel is impossible if text searching, but it is now reliable and fine when picking music if no text entry is required. It is still used more than my iPod Touch with iPeng in our house simply because the iPod Touch has usually been snaffled by some kid and is nowhere to be found. The Controller, because it has no other use, can always be found in its dock. I will use my phone as a controller, but my wife has had the app on hers for about a year now and I often find her with the phone in one hand and the Controller in the other.

You can lead a horse to water...

[edit]Wikipedia tells me that the iPhone and iPod Touch did not accept 3rd party apps until after July 2008 and iPeng was not available until September, so for a few short months the Controller was the bees knees. Remember that at the time most phones still had black and white LCD screens. Amazing to think all that was only just over 4 years ago.

[ModelCitizen]

Both of my Controllers are bricks. Won't charge. I've changed the batteries but they just run out and never recharge. The bases are OK and so are the devices. The connections between them make. It's baffling.

[TheLastMan]

...and the Touch is just a bit of a white elephant (makes a nice clock though).

Not sure what you mean by that. Are you saying that you no longer use it as a streamer? Or just that just the screen is superfluous?

If my amplifier and speakers are static there is no need for the "player" to be mobile or in a dock. In fact, with my kids, probably better that it is wired in and can't be used for games or facebook.

[ModelCitizen]

Yes, I mean it's a lovely touch screen fixed in place by the wires to the amp/speakers which seems inconvenient/unnecessary when you've got use to controlling all elements of your music systems via a phone/handheld. Obviously a different case than a Boom or a Radio which are combined player/controllers and tend to be nearfield (i.e. radio by bed)... mind you, I still often use the phone or a tablet to control the radio two feet from my head as the UIs are much better thought out than the Logitech ones, and the tablet screen especially, easier to see.

[TheLastMan]

Both of my Controllers are bricks. Won't charge. I've changed the batteries but they just run out and never recharge. The bases are OK and so are the devices. The connections between them make. It's baffling.

That's a shame. When I drop mine into its dock the screen brightens and it makes a small beep to indicate it has made a connection and is charging. I presume yours don't?

Sounds like some wiring has come adrift internally that links the charging connections on the base with the battery. Odd that it should happen on both units, not heard of that before.

I have heard of Controllers where the base charging contacts do not properly contact those on the Controller itself, as I am sure you have too as you say the connections are OK. I am sure you will have pursued the "bit of paper stuffed down the back" fix or the "get them to send you a new base" fix.

Mine has been a pretty robust unit given all the abuse heaped on it by the family. Food covered hands have been the biggest hazard, along with red wine (my fault), blu-tack (my youngest thought it would be better wall mounted) and guinea pig wee (don't ask).

I bought a spare battery but have not needed it yet and, luckily, somebody told me early on to set the screen saver to "off" as the screen darkens over time if used to display pretty patterns, the news, a clock or whatever.

Just before they announced SB was to be discontinued Superfi were selling Controllers off at £60. A bargain compared to the RRP so I bought one as a backup. If, as seems likely, we all end up with smartphones it will probably just gather dust. Probably not one of my wisest purchases!

[ModelCitizen]

One of the Controllers was from the beta program so I think it's probably not supposed to work now. The other one was always frustrating (dropped signal, slow scrolling, badly executed UI) so I don't really miss them!

Orange Squeeze on the Nexus 7 tablet provides the best experience but lacks some higher level features (e.g sync), but as I only use these very infrequently this doesn't trouble me and If i need one I open the free Logitech app instead.

It's taken me by surprise just how clunky, heavy and overlarge iPads seem after using a 7" tablet for only a short while. BTW. here was a Groupon offer for a 7" Gemini tablet with latest Android OS yesterday at £59. Incredible.