Once at the disposal of radio lovers there were only warm tube receivers, but now there are many applications for desktop and mobile devices that allow you to listen to your favorite radio stations, search for new ones, choose music that suits your mood or increase your musical erudition. User preferences can be very different: someone expects comprehensive functionality from an application, while others are more important than intuitiveness and convenience.
'Online Radio Box' is an application for those for whom radio is a pleasant background to everyday affairs and events, for those who do not want to understand a fancy menu with a complex structure, who need their favorite radio stations to be always at hand, coupled with the ability to search something fresh when the time and desire comes. But first things first.
If it were necessary to describe the mobile version of 'Online Radio Boxing' in one word, 'minimalist' would be best. Concise interface with a minimum of graphics: no screensavers, album covers for the songs being played – only icons of the radio stations themselves. A limited set of menu items: from the main screen, you can search by station name and search by geographic principle: continent – country – city or region. There is no alternative search, for example, by artists, but this does not make the application non-functional. On the contrary, it copes with its tasks perfectly. By default, here is a list of popular Russian radio stations, and for many users this is already exhaustive: we add our favorite Russian Radio, Autoradio and Retro FM to their favorites – and we are provided with our favorite music on the road or at a picnic. But using geographic search, you can always expand your musical horizons. If you are interested in music that is popular in a particular country or even a city, you can take a short cultural excursion at any time. Want to know what is being listened to today, for example, in a particular region of Australia? No problem.
In general, the proposed search engine is best suited for those who use radio as a constant background and whose genre preferences generally coincide with the most popular ones. For example, if you prefer to relax with dance music, there are many more options available to you than if you were a fan of extreme genres.
In order to find out more about a particular radio station, you can use the convenient function of displaying a playlist of most radio stations with a seven-day archive. So you can imagine a rough repertoire, understand which performers and how often play on the air, and decide whether the radio station is worth your attention.
The key item in the application menu is 'My Stations', this is a favorite, where you can add your radio stations, and this item is synchronized with the web version available at http://onlineradiobox.com/ru/. If the mobile application itself does not require authorization, then in the browser you will need to authorize using one of the social networks. After that, the account can be synchronized with your smartphone. Thus, you get the opportunity to listen to your favorite radio from the mobile application and switch to listening in the browser at any time, coming home or at work. It turns out conveniently and quickly. Especially if you take into account that the PC version of the application has functions that are not available in the mobile one. This, in particular, is a search by genres and topics (there are not only the usual genres of music, but also thematic sections, such as 'Conversational Radio' or 'Religion'). We can assume this use case: when you have free time, you can do a more thorough search in the browser, adding stations to your favorites, so that you can then listen to what you find along the way.
There is no seamless switching between browser and phone, but this is not a big problem. Due to the lack of a large amount of graphics and minimization of the bitrate, the application works stably even with an EDGE connection, so that your favorite radio will remain with you almost anytime and anywhere.
Another useful feature is an automatic shutdown timer with a fixed time selection from 5 minutes to an hour (5,10,15,30, 60 minutes) for those who fall asleep well to music. And those who prefer to wake up to it will be happy with the alarm function: you can choose the time, day of the week and the radio station that the application will turn on.
Once again, I note that the application is absolutely free, but it has not escaped the trouble of most free programs – the abundance of advertising. However, there is an opportunity to get rid of it once and for all: the paid PRO version without ads costs only 59 rubles, and if the functionality of the application suits you, this is a perfectly acceptable price for ease of use. You can go to the PRO version by clicking on the corresponding icon in the main interface.
It remains to add that the 'Online Radio Box' application is available not only on Android, but also on iOS.
In conclusion, I will once again list the main advantages of the program:
- the application is free, and the cost of getting rid of ads is low;
- visual and functional minimalism – a plus for those who are looking for a simple and convenient application for listening to their favorite radio stations;
- undemanding to the quality of the Internet connection;
- an exhaustive search by geography;
- availability of both mobile and browser versions and synchronization of favorites between them;
- availability of timer and alarm functions;
- multiplatform.
'Online Radio Box' is not aimed at radio geeks who, as an application for listening to radio online, prefer a 'combine' packed with functionality, which will take time to master. It is a simple, convenient and well-functioning application for everyday listening to popular music, fully covering the needs of a very large target audience, and this is its indisputable advantage.