In this article we will be looking at the applications available on the Creative Zen X-Fi2 media player. To read the previous article in this series which looked at the hardware and user interface read A Closer Look At The Creative Zen X-Fi2 Part One.

The default icons section on the X-Fi2 includes Music, Videos, Photos, FM Radio, Mic, RSS, X-Fi, Date, System, Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, microSD, and Applications – these are split across two screens (to navigate between screens just swipe your finger left or right). To launch an application simply tap the appropriate icon.

Tip about volume: By pressing and holding the menu (home) button, in any application, you can bring up the volume slider where you can change the volume and toggle mute the sound.

Integration with videos, photos and music is launched from the included Creative Centrale application which runs on your computer. This application allows you to rip CD’s directly into your computer, organise them, and transfer them onto your device (converting automatically as necessary) – all this is done quickly and with little fuss.

Music is where the X-Fi2 comes into it’s own and this is launched by tapping on the Music icon. Music is driven by a number of options including the “Now Playing” section, Playlists, Albums, Artists, Genres, All Tracks, Recordings, Bookmarks, and DJ sections. Tapping the X-Fi icon at the top of the screen quickly enables and disables the X-Fi features.

Now Playing is probably the screen you are likely to view most as it shows the currently playing track name, album, track number, artists and a quick tap brings up the media buttons.  You can move through the track using the slider, and leap to the next and previous tracks, play, pause and stop the current track. From the Now Playing screen you can also rate the current track, from 1 to 5 stars, and get the album track information.

A neat feature, whilst a track is playing, is the Bookmark option in the context menu which allows you to make a section within a track that you can quickly navigate back to – for example if you are listening to an audio book and want to continue where you left off.

The context menu also offers fast access to the equaliser, set the play mode to normal, repeat track, repeat all, shuffle, shuffle repeat, or track once. You can also view track information and look up the artist to see other tracks they have performed from your library. Other options in the context menu allow you to remove a track, remove all tracks, save to playlist (which also allows you to create play lists using an onscreen keyboard), and switch the speaker on and off.

The DJ option offers a number of productivity options and utilises the ratings system as it allows you to play tracks by Album of the Day, Random Play All, Most Popular, Rarely Heard, Highly Rated, and Yet to be Rated tracks.

Music support can use FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), MP3, WMA (DRM9), WAV (IMA-ADPCM), Audible 4, and AAC.

The Videos applications lists your videos in albums where you can open a folder, delete a video, or delete all videos. Tapping an album lists the contained videos together with a thumbnail, filename, and duration. The familiar, and expected media buttons, are available including previous/next video, play, pause, and stop. You can also enable AV video out to send the video to an external display.

The Photos application allows you to browse the images on your device. A folder view is presented, tapping on a folder brings up a tiled view of the images. Tapping an image brings it into view and you can zoom in/out, rotate, enable slide show and enable the AV out which then changes the screen to a remote control view with media buttons. Tapping the context menu allows you to rate pictures, view file information, set an image as the background wallpaper, delete a picture, set the slide interval, and turn the speaker on and off.

Supported Video and Image formats are MJPEG, WMV9, MPEG4-SP, DivX 4/5, XviD, JPEG, and BMP (though TIFF, GIF and PNG can be converted).

Radio can be accessed by connecting the headphones which also act as antenna. Even though the headphones are connected you can still tell the device to direct it’s output through the internal speaker. There are 32 available presets in the radio application and these can be set either manually or using the auto scan feature. I found radio reception to be very good and the X-Fi expand feature can be applied to the radio to enhance the sound.

The Mic application launches the microphone/recording feature. Once launched you are presented with a recording screen; clicking on the red button starts recording which then shows the record time and recording level. The recording screen, on the device I am currently using (the 8GB version), indicates the maximum recording time is 10 hours. You can also pause, and stop the recording. Each recording gets stamped with the date and time of the rec ording for easy access later. You can also access your previous recordings and play them back through the headphones or internal speaker.

The RSS application lists your existing web feeds together with the number of unread items – the context menu
allows you to mark the feed as read, quickly access any articles you have marked as favourite, and delete feeds if required. Tapping a specific feed brings up the feed headlines together with a read indicator. Tapping a headline title brings up the article itself and the context menu allows you to mark the article as a favourite. From within an article you can move to the next and previous articles which saves precious time on the move.

A nifty feature is the ability to display RSS content feeds offline – this is done by connecting the device to an available USB port on your computer then running the RSSSynchronizer application from the file store (in the root folder of the device).

It is a relatively painless process – you just pop in the web address of the feed you want to read regularly or import an OPML file if you have a large number of feeds – then click Update All – you can also choose to bring in entire articles rather than summaries.

If storage space is an issue you can also tell the synchronizer program to delete old feed entries from just a few days old to several weeks.

The X-Fi application allows you to take advantage of the development in the X-Fi technology. The technology attempts to compensate for issues caused by using compressed music tracks, such as MP3 files, and can dramatically increase the quality of the sound played. There are two main settings in the X-Fi application – the Crystalizer and the Expand option which can both be increased or reduced using a slider – either can also be disabled/enabled.

The Crystalizer option restores lost detail in music that has been compressed.

The Expand option improves playback by moving the left/right sound source away from the ears which gives a bigger stage presence to the sound.

The Date application brings up an analogue clock, and also shows the date and day of week; whilst swiping to another screen indicates the time (hours, minutes, seconds, am/pm), the date and day of week. From this screen you can also access the context menu which allows you to set an alarm, set the time and date, change the clock style, change the time and date formats, and turn the internal speaker on and off. When setting an alarm you can choose which audio to play from either a simple beep, through to music stored on your device, the radio, or your own voice recordings.

NOTE! The following applications can be found on the second icon menu.

The System application provides various information and statistics regarding your device including the firmware version (I am currently running version 1.20.08), storage space, and the count of various items including albums, photos, and videos.

You can also access various settings from the system menu including audio, photo/video, display (where you can change the theme, backlight time, and brightness), player (you can set the idle shutdown time, auto lock, and sleep timer), clock, and language. You can also reset your settings from the system menu.

The Contacts and Tasks applications provides access to your Outlook (Contact and Tasks) or Windows Contacts (Contacts only) information. This is performed by clicking on the tool icon in Creative Centrale and selecting the option “Sync Organizer data with Player” option.

The Calendar application can also be synchronised with Outlook and displays a month by month calendar view with the current day highlighted. You can sync the calendar with your desktop applications and you can also drill down into individual tasks and events – it is handy to have this sort of information when you are out and about.

The MicroSD application is the central place for dealing with any add-in cards. From here you can access music, pictures, and videos contained on your supported external memory card. You can also import media directly from the card onto internal storage and obtain further information about the information contained upon the storage card.

The Applications icon lists your add-in applications and include a simple Calculator and a few games (Sudoku and PushBox). Additional applications and games can be downloaded from various online sources which we’ll talk about in the next article.

These are just the default applications and the whole system can be extended through the use of downloadable applications and through the software development kit which is surprisingly easy to get to grips with. In part three we will take a look at how the X-Fi2 can be extended through downloadable applications and the development system itself.

To read more about the X-Fi2 visit Creative Zen X-Fi2.