Cherry Rplayer

Summary

Cherry Rplayer is an online radio player that caught our attention thanks to its 4,42 star rating. That kind of rating is reason enough to take a closer look at any app. Read on to find out if we agree with this stellar rating.

Cherry Rplayer provides you with a very generous selection of radio stations from across the globe. Even though the app offers a lot of American stations, there’s a fair share of international stations, too.

If you can’t find your favorite station straight away, you can always add it manually. In order to do so you will need the station’s URL (which you can easily find on the internet). This is a tiny bit of a hassle: I sent URLs to myself in an email and the inserted them. But, all in all, all it takes is a few clicks and you’ve added a whole bunch of stations to your favorites.

The player also comes with a super useful Sleep Timer feature which is easy to set up. Once the timer goes off playback will cease and your device will slip into standby mode.

The app even lets you look up lyrics, though I should specify that this is only the case for very few stations. The question is, is this a useful feature?

The sound quality was excellent throughout the testing phase. The quality is, of course, contingent on the bit rate (even though stations with lower bit rates sounded quite good, too) , as well as on the phone’s internal loudspeakers or the earplugs.

The following four tabs are located near the top of the display:

US Radio
World/Live
Favorites
Visited

You will find stations categorized according to their regions under US Radio (Atlanta, GA – Baltimore, MD – Boston, MA). After you click on a city a list of available stations opens up. Pick a station and it will load and the player will open up.

There are several buttons to choose from within the World/Live tab:

Shoutcast
Icecast
Popular Channels
Add Channel
Search

You can scroll through the first three buttons as Shoutcast and Icecast are subdivided into different categories. Shoutcast is arranged by musical genre (1950s, 1960s, Acid, Blues, Brazilian, etc.) as well as by key words (Beatles, Campus, Carnaval, Halloween, Paranormal, etc.). Icecast is subdivided into MP3, AAC, AAC+ as well as a few genres. Click on any category to get to the list of stations, then click on the station and it will play in the player.

I liked perusing around the Popular Channels option most of all. You can find pretty much everything a radio-fan’s heart desires in this options: rock and metal, classical music, country, new age, folk, etc.

You can add further stations using the Add Channel button. It works best if you insert the URL manually. You can then find the station under your favorites.

Use the Search or Advanced Search options to look for stations and narrow down your search by specifying the musical genre and bit rate.

Favorites and Visited (history) are self explanatory.

Cherry Rplayer is easy to use and well designed. There are four icons situated at the bottom of the screen:

Go back to the main screen
Stop/start playback
Add a station to favorites
Set Sleep Timer

You can access a station’s website by clicking on Channel Info at the top of the screen. You’ll also find a button for Lyrics, but these are rarely available.

Bottom line:

Cherry Rplayer is a great online radio player and I would agree with the high ratings the app’s gotten in the Market. The fact that it’s so easy to get the gist of this app is definitely a big plus. As far as controls go, they’re also pretty much self-explanatory. Searching for stations amidst the huge selection of available channels is actually fun rather than frustrating, and adding your favorites to the list is a walk in the park. Sleep Timer is also a useful function. So, in conclusion: if you’re still on the lookout for a good online radio player, why not give Cherry Rplayer a whirl.
 

Cherry Rplayer runs really smoothly on the G1 as well as the Milestone. The speed and efficiency of loading the stations is contingent on what kind of internet connection you have.

Cherry Rplayer can be downloaded free of charge from the Android Market.