Wunder
radio is simply the best streaming internet radio
application for the
iPhone.
Not only it allows you to search for any station by country, but also,
it
allows you to manually search and add your own stations.
Therefore, the possibilities are endless with access to almost any
radio station that is available on the internet besides the ability to
stream TV
audio.
WunderRadio:- Quick Over view
When you open
the iPhone application, you will see 5
buttons at the bottom, and a URL
or search area at the top.
The url area is a unique feature
of Wunder Radio, it allows
you to enter a radio URL address that you might want to add manually. Also, you can enter a
keyword to search for a radio station.
Tap the Stations button to get
a list of several categories.
Each category
opens a new list of sub categories. The first Category is Wunder Radio which lists the Recently Played stations.
The Weather Underground allows
to find the weather conditions for different regions and areas in the
world.
RadioTime is where
you would generally listen to and control iPhone music, sports, talk radios and others.
The Scanners category allows you to
monitor and scan Police band, Air traffic, and locomotive radio traffic for US, Canada and
Queensland's, Australia.
On the other hand, TUNED.mobiallows you
to listen to
FM radio
from different areas in the world.
Subscription Radio, allows you to listen to Sirius and XM satellite radio
while Other Station
Directories gives you access to different radio stations from
different internet radio
websites.
Wunder Radio Features:
The most interesting category is the RadioTime
category. It allows you to browse internet radio stations by your local
position using information from your iPhone GPS or Global
Positioning System (GPS) supplied by the iPhone and iPhone 4.
Tap the Local Radio by
GPS to access local radio,
and local weather stations. Browse Music allows you list many
radio stations by categories
such as rock or classical, hip hop and others. To go back to the
previous menu tap the the
button at the top left.
In RadioTime, tap the Browse World to listen to best
selection of world music from big cities in the world.
Also, tap the Browse by Location
to access
internet radio stations
by continents and countries, which is an amazing feature.
"My RadioTime Presets"
is another interesting area that I cover in more details later. It is a
link to RadioTime.com which has over 60,000
internet radio stations.
In the TUNED.mobi area,
you can list US radio stations by states.
Tap "The Stream Center USA",
and then tap the state you are looking
for, then select the category.
You can also listen to Subscription
Radio stations which allow you to listen to your satellite radio if you have
membership with Sirius or XM radio
accounts.
The Other Station Directories
area is full of other
internet radio stations. Tap TUNED.mobi to open the WunderRadio
browser and browse through different
internet radio
stations. (Of course you can use iPhone Safari or any other third party iPhone browser to do this).
You can access all your favorite
internet radio stations from the Favorites
button at the bottom. The bit rate and the network supported are
displayed to the right of each radio station.
Tap the Edit button at the top
right to arrange your
favorite internet radio stations
or to delete
the ones you don't want.
Tap and hold on the right side of a station to move it up or down or
tap on the (-) button to delete it.
The Player:
When you start
playing a radio, a screen with the radio station shows
up. In this screen you can you can control your iPhone music volume, stop or play a radio station.
You can access this screen by tapping the Now Playing button at the bottom.
If you tap the plus button at
the top right, you will add
this station to your favorites.
Tapping on the station name will open wunder radio iPhone browser and a web page for that radio station will be displayed.
You can also change the Bit Rate
for a station by tapping the
Bit Rate link shown
by the red rectangle and it will show other available bit rates for
that station.
Also, you can tap the iTunesbutton shown to open iTunes in your iPhone if the radio station is supported.
This allows you to purchase that program, show, song or talk from iTunes.
The Play in background link is another unique feature of wunderradio. It allows you listen to the radio station in the background by opining the specific station in the iPhone music player through iPhone Safari.
When you tap the play in background link, you will be asked to tap on the play button, and then tap home after the player starts. This feature could be avoided with iOS 4 which added multitasking, or by installing an iPhone hack called backgrounder from Cydia which allows radio be played in the background. But this of course requires jailbreaking your iPhone.
You can access the Settings screen by tapping the Settings button at the top left.
In Settings, you can change the
appearance of wunderradio to classic if you
want.
You can also set the buffer size,
and the
preferred Bit Rate for all
stations.
Those settings allow you to control your iPhone music stream.
For example, if you have a stream that is buffering too often depending on your iPhone network speed, you can
lower the Bit Rate to improve that stream.
Wunder Radio Web Browser:
The Web button is a local
Wunder Radio web browser that
shows pages related to
the radio stations just like iPhone Safari or any other third party iPhone browser. It also has links to many weather information and other Wunder
Radio help and links. The left and
right arrows at the top left works like a normal iPhone web browser to
go back or forward.
The Wunder Radio Web browser is also used to sign up for a RadioTime account which can be accessed on both a
desktop computer
or from your
iPhone or iPhone 4 by going to the RadioTime area and My RadioTime Presets.
You can add presets on your
PC
or
Mac, and see them in Wunder
Radio by logging to the RadioTime account.
RadioTime is a huge source of
internet radio with over 60,000 stations and 30,000 talk programs. When
you sign up for a free account, you can easily access all your presets or stations from RadioTime area in Wunder Radio.
Conclusion:
The sound quality of the
wunder radio is excellent and
the streams are continuous. However, if a stream breaks too much due to slow iPhone network, you
can always change the bit rate to improve the stream. It is an actual radio app with thousands of on line radio stations that is different than other internet music sharing apps like Last.fm or Pandora.
Wunder Radio is
full of
internet radio
stations, it covers almost every region in the
world including many Arabic countries. Visit the Arabic iPhone application page to learn more.
Its ability to add internet radio stations manually, and its
built in browser are exceptional. The ability to listen to internet TV audio is a great feature that treats TV audio as radio.
Moreover, the ability to link to iTunes with some stations, and the ability to play your radio in the background are also great features for a non jailbreak iPhone owners. The radio possibilities
of WunderRadio are endless.