We haven’t seen a significant update to Nokia’s fantastic MixRadio app in a few weeks, but that’s changing this morning with version 4.3 arriving in the Store (that’s a bump from version 4.2). What’s more, this isn’t just bug fixes, but rather some fiddling with the UI to make navigation easier and some improvements to the offline mix capability.
Diving into the supplied changelog, we can see the list of what’s new in 4.3.0.387:
- Improvements to offline mixes: time remaining before expiry is shown, mixes become playable before they have completely downloaded, mixes remain playable while being refreshed.
- Navigate Home from any page in the app.
- Navigate to the Player from any page in the app.
- Bug fixes and performance improvements.
Let’s start with the UI changes. Now on most pages, you have two new areas for navigation (seen in the lede image): at the upper left is a home-like button that will navigate you back to the main page of the app. Likewise, there is now a timer in the upper right that shows the duration of the song played, but tapping that will take you to the player, which is pretty useful. It’s a little unclear on the discovery aspect of that feature, but it does look really good plus it’s super useful as you don’t have to hit the back-button a bunch of times.
The offline mixes feature, probably one of the best things about Nokia MixRadio, also got refreshed. Now your offline mixes will let you know when they expire. The app will notify you that “due to some tricky radio licensing rules offline mixes must be refreshed every 30 days”; but with today’s update, you’ll have a better idea when that needs to happen. That fix is probably ideal if you’re traveling or away from Wi-Fi often. Having said that, we haven’t found this feature yet, so if you see it, let us know in comments. The other additions just make it more usable, with mixes being able to be played while downloading and refreshed (previously, you had to wait, and it could take 10 minutes to download on a slow connection).
Nokia MixRadio is a fantastic looking app, and if you’re not using Xbox Music, it’s a solid alternative. The big question we all have of course is what happens to MixRadio once Microsoft takes over: kill it, merge it or leave it on its own? Good questions for which we just don’t know yet. (We’re hoping that MixRadio either takes over Xbox Music, or they merge the best parts).
Regardless, download version 4.3.0.387 here in the Store right now.
Thanks, Mathieu G. and Dean P., for the tips!
