Say Hello to the New Sing! on Android
28 May 2014Greetings Sing! Karaoke Android people! This is Mark, Engineer-Progenitor of Smule’s Sing! Android app. Since we first released our debut version of Sing! Android in December 2012, over 4 million of you have played with our app. Today, we’re proud to announce that we haven’t, in fact, been sitting on our thumbs for the past few months. The entire team here at Smule HQ has been hard at work making Sing! for Android even better. To find out how we’ve improved Sing!, read on.
The new Sing! Karaoke!
Note: This post is featured on the Smule blog. Visit blog.smule.com to learn more about what’s going on at Smule.
Here at Smule, we believe change is good. That’s why we’ve given Sing! for Android a major facelift — designed to make it easier for you to get around, explore and discover new ways to Sing! For example, the previous version of the app used a tab bar on the bottom of the screen for navigation. Now, there is a navigation drawer, which also has other things for you to explore, like hot Open Mic performances and recent performances by your friends. Browsing performances has also become a lot more streamlined. Now, when you select a performance, a little bar slides up from the bottom and starts playing it, allowing you to continue browsing other performances.
A more streamlined performance-browsing experience.
The core singing experience has also gotten a makeover to make it more streamlined. Long gone are the days when you needed to wait for your performance to render whenever you adjusted voice volume, changed effects, or updated delay calibration. Now, everything will automatically re-render at the current playback location and resume playback. And just like NASA, Smule has also abandoned our space shuttle – the little one that indicates your pitch level – and replaced it with a simpler triangle because the astronauts in our space shuttle missed their family.
The core singing experience gets a design update and lots of optimizations.
Major re-designs are always challenging. Engineers need to find new ways to introduce bugs. Testers try to break things. And project managers wring their hands over deadlines. It’s a crazy time for everyone, but we think you’ll like what we came up with: a new and beautiful Sing! Karaoke for Android. We hope you enjoy it. Sing on!