VLC Beta for Android now available in Google Play free
A screenshot from the just officially released VLC Beta for Android. Photo by MP4player.org.uk
For many years now, VideoLAN (VLC) has been a favorite desktop program among scores of its users. The popular media player is now available in Google Play Store for Android devices running on Android version 2.1 and higher. The just released app has been designed by the VLC Mobile Team and is fast nearing the 100, 000th download mark.
The app, VLC Beta (NEON version) is still in its beta phase. Its development team warns that users are likely to encounter bugs and possible glitches in the normal performance of their Android devices pending the completion of the pilot project.
“This is a BETA version of the port to the Android™ platform. It is intended for power users and hackers. This version is NOT stable and is slower than the final version,” read a statement from VLC development team.
Nevertheless, just like the desktop version, VLC media player for Android handles almost all multimedia formats available today without compromising on speed or needing external codecs.
VLC Beta (NEON version) has already been tested on several devices including HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy S3 and in both cases different videos of 480P to 720P played with satisfactory video frame rate and audio clarity.
VLC for Android details:
- Supports almost all the popular video, audio, picture and streaming formats.
- ARMv6, ARMv7, and ARMv7+NEON processor architectures are supported. Recently launched Galaxy Pocket, Safaricom IDEOS Ascend Y100 and LG Optimus L3 use the ARMv6 processor architecture which is also included in the list of supported devices.
- Rapid search through the entire library for any supported media format.
- Subtitles, embedded and external media is also supported.
- The app can use more than one core to decode media in Android devices with multi core processors such as the Galaxy S3 and HTC One X.
- Custom settings for video and audio output.
- Support for hardware media decoding although this is still in the experimental stage. Should be refined with the release of new beta versions of the app.
Download VLC for Android here or you can search for “VLC Beta (NEON Version)” on the Google Play Store using your Android phone.
The much celebrated media player might fail to work on some of the Android devices listed as supported. However, it is sure to work on these devices recommended by the VLC mobile development team:
HTC Nexus One
HTC One X
Motorola Defy
HTC Desire
Samsung Galaxy S3
Samsung Galaxy Nexus
Android OS is currently the only mobile platform to officially get support for the media player which is also free to install and use.
