The iPhone and iPad Blog by Simon

I had a chance to tinker the stock music player of my iPhone over the weekend when I realised that it lacks features that I want to experience while listening to my playlist. I rarely do this (since most of the time reviewing third-party apps). It's just one of those weekends when I had time to check out every nook and cranks of the default music player. It dawned on me it was awfully designed.

I need to find an alternative, maybe something that looks like DoubleTwist player in my Android or maybe something better. After testing some apps, the quest is finally over. Beat Music Player for iPhone "beat" them all.

What's the app?

Monkey Bits brings us Beat Music Player—a sleek, simple and beautifully designed music player for iPhone that comes with a set of basic player features and intuitive gestures while listening to your favourite playlist. It's a good alternative for the stock music player.

How does it work?

Add your first three playlist once you launch Beat. You may also want to browse the hints for gestures to maximise the player functionalities.

To start with, you may browse through the themes section and choose a design or theme that matches your taste. You'll find quite a number of them. If you're after the UI, gestures and navigation, this app matches your expectations. There are three locked themes—Fabric, Deep and Sandstorm—that you can unlock once you share and rate the app and play and share the song via social media.

The View option allows you to rearrange the order of Playlist, Artists, Songs and Albums, which are displayed on the player and can be accessed by swiping from left to right.

For shaking options, you may choose what you would Beat do—whether to play a random song, next song, toggle shuffle, play/pause or turn it off as you wish.

You can set a default cover option for the album art—circular, square or no cover at all.

The gestures and hints might intimidate you at first (I was!). I suggest that you spend time reading the hints sections for a few minutes to memorise the shortcuts easily.

Is it noteworthy?

Beat Music Player for iPhone is noteworthy. I like the circular option for the cover. It looks fab. Whilst it still lacks some features like the equaliser and auto (or manual) updates of album covers, I prefer using it because of its impeccably designed UI and themes that blends with the iOS 7. I look forward to the next update. The developer told me that they're already working on it with additional features. The app deserves a 4.5 star rating.

Beat Music Player for iPhone is available on iTunes via direct link for free.

This article, App Review: Beat Music Player for iPhone, was originally published at simonblog.com.