Install or Not: Titanium Media Sync

The Media Sync is a highly advertised in the famous Titanium Backup application. Unlike Titanium Backup there is no free version available. Impressed with the overall experience of the former I decided to give it a shot. Based purely on how the Dropbox integration works in Titanium Backup I had high expectations of how this app is going to work – if it’s designed to do a sync I was sure it’s going to perform even better than the backup app in which the Dropbox integration was only a nice add-on. Find out how Titanium Media Sync works and why is the word “Sync” misleading by reading my review!

Ease of use
The main interface is divided by two screens. Old users – that remember the DOS times – may find some analogy to the legendary Norton Commander. I found the way you need to interact with the UI a bit frustrating. The “go up” menu is quite hidden under the label and the gestures doesn’t always work the way they should. Overall the UI is a bit unnatural. If you want to start a one-way sync you need to go through Manage Folders. There are no buttons to “Sync all” etc. The notification does blink every a half second or so, and therefore in my opinion is quite unreadable, and furthermore takes up precious CPU, and GPU cycles. This might be an Android limitation, but the programmer could increase the time between updates. If you start another app that updates the notification bar so often you might not be able to tap the right one at all! There is no manual available anywhere, and to make things worse the about screen doesn’t include developer websites link so to find it you need to use a search engine or the Google Play Store. I rate this app 2 out of 5 stars in terms of ease of use.

Features
Titanium Media Sync allows you to link your local folders to all kinds of FTP servers, and a Dropbox account. It lacks integration with Box.net and Google Drive. That’s rather surprising, because Titanium Backup includes all of those services. Here comes another surprise too, as you’re only allowed to use “one-shot sync “, if you pick to sync from cloud to local. Continuous sync is allowed only if you choose from local to cloud. There is no lite version of this app, and the Play Store description doesn’t mention that at all, so I felt a little bit cheated. Not to mention that the word “sync” suggests that only files that aren’t present at local are going to be downloaded, but that’s not true at all! If you start the “sync” the local folder is going to be deleted, and completely redownloaded! This is something I cannot accept. For example if I bought a new album of my favorite band, uploaded it into the cloud, and start the syncing on the device to get only the one album I’m going to wait several hours to be able to listen to the new songs. My whole music library is going to be redownloaded. That’s a waste of time, battery, and bandwidth! I give Titanium Media Sync 2 out of 5 stars when it comes to features.

Speed
Titanium Media Sync uses about 2MB of main storage, and over 25MB of RAM while syncing. The downloading speed from Dropbox depends of their servers, but Titanium Track has implemented an innovative optimized code that works faster than the default API. If you selected to sync from local to server the process is always going to be optimal, however as I previously mentioned cloud to local might be a Pain in the butt. I rate Titanium Media Sync 3.5 out of 5 possible for speed.

Install or not
The application for syncing developed by Titanium Track fails on many areas. I highly recommend that you look for alternatives, and don’t waste your $3.44 for an app that is poorly designed, and doesn’t even use a proper sync algorithm. Until the underdeveloped app gets a major upgrade there are no real arguments to buy it. Not to mention cheaper alternatives.

Pros:

• Innovative Dropbox code
• Continually sync, but only from local to remote

Cons:

• Expensive comparing to alternatives
• Underdeveloped
• No manual at all!
• No trial, demo, or lite version to try out
• Bulky interface, glitches in gestures

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