Android: If you’ve been waiting for news on an Android version of VLC, wait no longer. The media player finally launched an Android beta today, and it brings VLC’s trademark play-anything goodness, multi-track subtitle support, and even whole-library management tools to Android devices. But be warned: the developers make no bones about the fact that it’s a beta, and there’s a lot of work to be done on it.
The first thing worth noting is that the VLC for Android beta is a port of the iOS version, largely to get a framework in place wich the VLC mobile team can work from. The team points out that everything about the app will change as it gets updated, including the UI and major features, and notes that hardware decoding only works on a few devices at the moment.
Even so, it’s still VLC, which means it can play just about anything (including network streams), supports multi-track audio and video with subtitles, has a home-screen widget for audio control without launching the app, and supports headsets with in-line audio controls.
The developers point out that it “might kill your kitten, destroy your house and start the mayan apocalypse”, and warn you to use at your own risk. They also point out that this version is for “power users and hackers”, so while it worked well on the devices we tested, make sure your device is supported before trusting it with your media. It’s definitely not as polished as our favourite media player for Android, MoboPlayer. If you give it a try, let us know your experience with it in the comments below.
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