While a plethora of entertainment and music app already await you on the Play Store to let you enjoy your favorite songs locally or explore even more with an online music streaming service or a radio; what exactly calls for the need of another radio app? “Internet Radio” an app from Ensight Media is a simple answer to anyone who loves to take along their music players and radio’s while going to bed, travelling in a personal vehicle or even when you want to add an elegant look to your corner table or work place with an Analog clock.
Fire up the app and you will see a beautiful dashboard with calendar and a live analog clock embedded on a old style radio with grilled speakers and mechanical switches that are sure to make you recall the good old times you have been enjoying music on your classic radio. Following these, there are application specific brightness and volume settings that go perfect with the app when you want to use the app as a night clock or in a desk clock mode with screen ON for unlimited time. The three mechanical switches that sit below the clock, read as Alarm, Radio and Timer.
The first thing you want to try is the Radio . When turned ON starts with some nice and noticeable tuning sound effects that any radio user would have experienced when searching for a radio station. Once the connection is established, the Radio plays as normal using your WiFi or mobile data. But you can also set it to WiFi only mode that will save both your battery and mobile data bandwidth. The information of channel and current song information is also displayed on dashboard while also allowing you to choose radio stations by country, by genre and you can also add channels with direct URL if you know. There’s a star symbol which can be tapped to quickly bookmark your favorite Radio channels and find them on the top of selection menu.
The Timer mode is one of our favourite mode in Internet Radio. If you have a habit of listening to music before sleep, the timer mode can be used to turn off the radio after a specified time without being worried about leaving the radio playing all night long, draining your phone’s battery and disturbing you after you have entered into deep sleep. The Radio will run for the time specified by you and slowly pull down the volume, a minute before it finally quits itself. The application shuts itself down completely and stops the playback to improve battery saving while also giving you a sound sleep.
The elegant clock also comes with a decent alarm feature that can be a useful feature for a desk clock or to wake you in the morning after you slept with the timer mode at night. You can choose the radio station to play as alarm and wake you up for a pleasant morning rather than hurting your head with beeps and booms out of regular alarm clocks. The alarm start a minute earlier to the specified interval and slowly pushes up the volume level to wake you up very softly as opposed to a shock.
Under the hood, you have option to customize the app with new themes and also prevent screen lock when you are using it as desk clock. The option to use WiFi only mode has its own benefits too.
All in all the wonderful Internet Radio is a simple and complete app that brings the features of three different apps in one beautiful app you would love to keep watching your phone screen for. Internet Radio app is available for Free without the timer mode and some advertising while the premium version removes ads and comes with full functionality discussed in this review.
