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LG Renoir only plays music alphabetically

I got this note in from Paul Newton, a reasonably happy LG Renoir user.

Paul saw the footage we shot at the Renoir launch and, suitably impressed with the device, took the plunge.

But there’s a glaring, glaring issue with the device.

Have a read:

Hi Ewan,

I am looking for some advice. I recently upgraded my handset to an LG KC910 after seeing the footage of it from the blogger party on your show. Overall I am extremely happy with it. However one annoyance with it is when browsing music that I loaded onto the supplied micro SDcard. When you select albums they are displayed (and play in alphabetical order) not the track order specified in the tags for the files. I can see no way of changing this. The manual doesn’t mention it. I had a quick search on the web and found a few other people reporting the same issue. I tried contacting LG Mobile Phone support. The operator I spoke to couldn’t give me an answer and has emailed the head office, but couldn’t give me a time scale for a response. I was wondering what I should do next. Do you have any contacts that could give you answer on this? I suspect that the software currently on the phone doesn’t allow albums to be played in the correct order. This seems like a big oversight on LG’s part. I hope that they intend to issue a software update and soon as this was one of the reasons I went of for this phone. You may want to mention this issue on the site so that others are aware of this. I dodn’t see it in any of the (many) reviews I read.

Keep up the good work.

Regards,
Paul Newton

Quite simply, the LG Renoir is a ‘Fisherprice’ music phone.

We were never sent a Renoir test handset so we weren’t able to test these kind of things.

On the face of it, Paul should shut right up. You’ve got music, right Paul? It does play music? What more could you want?

😉

In reality, this is 100% ridiculous. It ONLY plays music in alphabetical order?

What chump programmed that?

Total rubbish.

Total unmitigated rubbish.

You’d think some bright spark, somewhere deep in the bowels of LG, would have thought that SOME people might like to play music in ALBUM order.

Anyway to answer your questions Paul, I do have LG contacts.

I’ve got two routes to LG. One is through the LG blog. Chris and the team there are very good — but there’s not much they can do, I suspect, in this situation. I suspect all they could do is pass your enquiry to LG in Korea.

Which brings me to my second route to LG — direct to Korea. You’ll need to give me a few days Paul, but I’ll put this issue to them and ask for a response.

If they respond with some kind of acknowledgement then that’ll be good. If they respond with a fix or a solution, even better.

Trouble is, these LG devices nowadays are literally pieces of plastic and metal. They can’t be easily upgraded, even though there’s software inside. Don’t expect a 2.2 style iPhone upgrade for the Renoir.

If you’ve got suggestions for Paul, please post them here.

30 COMMENTS

  1. Renoir deleted from my Xmas wish list 😉

    I have to agree, only playing music alphabetically is one of the most ridiculous issues I've ever heard of

    BTW, LG used to be pretty good with their blog etc so that's one way to go ahead so far

  2. I'm interested as to how you might recommend they 'fix' this. I.e. how would the phone be able to know the proper album order?

    We'll just ignore the fact that the whole premise of 'albums' is ridiculous and out-dated, along with 8-tracks and cassette tapes. 😉

  3. Ah, I wasn't aware that the track order was recorded anywhere (other than the back of the CD case, obviously). That makes sense, then. I wonder, how do other phones fare? This is something I've never noticed before (as again, I think albums are complete silliness). Do Nokias?

  4. The track number is stored in the TRACK field of the ID3 tag information. If you think that albums are complete silliness then fare enough but anybody else that wants to listen to albums is going to get rather annoyed when they are played in the incorrect order, e.g. the last few songs on Abbey Road.

  5. I did think about this but the music I want toi put on the phone is also the music that i use for my SlimDevices Squeezbox, which recognises the TRACK ID3 tag fine. I don't want to rename the files as I will then have 01 – 01 Intro displayed on my Squeezbox.

    LG should rectify the issue.

  6. The music that I transferred is in MP3 format. Although I have also noticed that some of the music isn't displayed when I select Artist or Albums but if I go to Entertainment->My STuff-> My Sounds it lists all sound files I have on the phone. In here I get a lot of the files that aren't displayed to me when I select Artist or Album from Music. The tag info is displeyed correctly for these files.

    I have to say that this phone is pretty useless as a music player (which is one of the main resons I decided to go for it)

  7. I just got this phone today & was having the same problem…I have now managed though, to work out how to listen to a single album (as opposed to a playlist of albums) in order.

    >Go to the 'My Stuff' menu
    > Select 'My memory card'
    > Choose 'Sounds'
    > Choose 'Music'
    > Select the album you want
    > Select the 1st track

    Now, if you look at the icon in the top left of the music player (the 2 arrows going round in a circle) & select this until it has the letter A in the middle of the arrows…. this should now allow you to listen to each track, one after the other (in the albums intended order) without having to select anything else.

    Hope this helps 🙂

  8. I am finding that you neeed to access the music through the My Stuff menu as teh Music player doesn't find all of the music that has been loaded to the phone. However if you access through my stuff and get the properties of the file the tag information is present.

    This phone's music playback abilities are laughable. I find the fact that LG advertise it as having an MP3 player as being a bit rich. Yes it can playback MP3 files, but it cannot be used as an MP3 player by anybody used to a proper MP3 player.

  9. Hi Laura

    I have this phone about 2 days and I noticed the problem with the music not playing in track order straight away. I tried your solution and it worked straight away. Thanks for your post!!!

  10. (sorry if this post is duped – had browser issues!)

    Ewan

    Did you manage to get any info about this ridiculous oversight from any of your LG contacts? The only thing I can get from the incredibly poor UK LG support is to ring their revenue generating 0870 number.

  11. Ewan

    I was wondering if you ever managed to get anywhere with your contacts on this matter.

    The Renoir is absolutely horrible as an mp3 player, in this regard especially but also a niggle that album art doesn't show up at all unless you use the PC Music sync software instead of the much quicker mass storage option.

    I have found lots of other bugs too, most are mentioned on the web somewhere, but one that doesn't seem to have been found….if you're WPA key is too long the phone spectacularly reboots when trying to connect with wi-fi.

    I emailed LG UK 'support' about this, joyously received the 'Please phone our revenue generating 0870 number'! or words to that effect!

  12. (sorry if this post is duped – had browser issues!)

    Ewan

    Did you manage to get any info about this ridiculous oversight from any of your LG contacts? The only thing I can get from the incredibly poor UK LG support is to ring their revenue generating 0870 number.

  13. Don't really know much about this type of thing. I wanted a phone that plays music, but didn't want to go to O2 for an iPhone. Why is the Renoir so bad as an MP3 Player? I went for the Renoir over the Omnia because I read the Omnia was tricky to get to grips with.

    Anyway, the main reason I'm here is because I also struggled to get the phone to play music in album order rather than alphabetical order. Laura Davis's advice was helpful, although I found that once I had selected an album I had to go into the menu and change “Sort by” to “Type”. This seems to have worked for some albums but not others. I'm not sure why.

    I think one of the main problems with this phone is the manual. It's rubbish.

  14. Hey, I've the same problem. Only solution I know is to manually make playlists that you call by the album/singer/whatever. It is rubbish indeed, but well, what else can we do? 😛

  15. Hey, I've the same problem. Only solution I know is to manually make playlists that you call by the album/singer/whatever. It is rubbish indeed, but well, what else can we do? 😛

  16. Hi – actually its very simple ..with the album selected (inside the album folder – go to the upper left hand corner square – and select 'sort' – then – 'by name'. Voila!

  17. Hi – actually its very simple ..with the album selected (inside the album folder – go to the upper left hand corner square – and select 'sort' – then – 'by name'. Voila!

  18. i just made a playlist for each album and put them in order. its a pain i know but it worked! i'm happy with the phone. i think its good.

  19. I wrote here about a month ago, asking why this phone is crap. Here are the reasons why:-
    a) it only plays music alphabetically, unless you put it into playlists. That's hardly appealing for every album you put on your phone. No mention of this before.
    b) it claims to be able to deliver your emails, but doesn't work for hotmail. Hotmail is hardly some obscure, rarely heard of email provider. No mention of this before.
    c) the user manual is dreadful; barely covers the basics.
    d) the customer service at LG is appalling. None of the call-centre operatives have any product knowledge, few of them can string a sentence together. They offer nothing by way of help or explanation. LG appear to believe that merely having someone answer your call means they have delivered customer service.

    It doesn't.

    LG are rubbish, the phone is rubbish – never go near it. Ever.

  20. I wrote here about a month ago, asking why this phone is crap. Here are the reasons why:-
    a) it only plays music alphabetically, unless you put it into playlists. That's hardly appealing for every album you put on your phone. No mention of this before.
    b) it claims to be able to deliver your emails, but doesn't work for hotmail. Hotmail is hardly some obscure, rarely heard of email provider. No mention of this before.
    c) the user manual is dreadful; barely covers the basics.
    d) the customer service at LG is appalling. None of the call-centre operatives have any product knowledge, few of them can string a sentence together. They offer nothing by way of help or explanation. LG appear to believe that merely having someone answer your call means they have delivered customer service.

    It doesn't.

    LG are rubbish, the phone is rubbish – never go near it. Ever.

  21. this is the most retarded argument ever, the phone is not rubbish its easily the est on the market. it doesnt file any old file type away in the right order, sure thats a flaw, but if you convert your files to mp3s it will store them in album format

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