Sofabaton U3. App seems not finished/in alpha/beta stage
I'm having some major and minor issues with the U3 app. Not only do painstakingly made IR/BT profiles sometimes magically disappear after doing a remote restart, but the whole app just doesn't feel 'finished'.
Enumerating the available buttons sometimes takes a disproportionate amount of time. When you'll need to adjust or add something, it takes ages for the button list to appear. And when buttons do appear, they are in random order with no means at all to sort them.
I must note that it does vary sometimes. Not quite sure what’s causing this. Maybe the number of devices you’ve already set, or some (connection) error that’s lingering in the background that's causing lag. Sometimes it takes ages for buttons to appear, sometimes it’s instant.
At the cost of sounding negative, I do have list of issues/improvement/suggestions, just from the very short period I've used the app. Maybe other users recognize some of it.
Customize Remote buttons
Device > Customize Remote buttons > Pick Button > Normal keys.
Have the software pick the current profile/device it’s on. Now, it picks the top one. If you have lot of devices, you’ll need to scroll and pick the right one.
Add or fix commands
When entering this section (or Customize Remote buttons > Pick Button > Normal keys), the user is presented with numerous available buttons, in no particular order.
Have the option to at least sort them chronologically, or have them shown in groups (numerical, navigation, specific TV functions, user added, etc.). This would enhance the overview of available buttons and make for a far better user experience.
Repeat delay
This is not really an annoyance, but more a feature request.
I’ve noticed that using the original remotes, the response time is slightly faster, especially when a button needs repeating (like scrolling). When using the U3, this wait time-out is longer, making it feel bit more ‘sluggish’ when in daily use, compared to the original remotes.
Have the option to adjust a (global) key repeat delay (the time it takes for a button to repeat itself after long-pressing it)
Continuous scrolling on the remote display
If you have a lot of devices paired with the remote, the list can become quite long. Have the wheel scroll back to the top when it reaches the end of the list (and vice versa).
Bluetooth Air-mouse issues
This is one of the main reasons I’ve bought the remote. This very handy feature should make navigating apps like browsers on Android (TV), that don’t really support a remote, a lot easier.
And initially it does. However when navigating in a browser, it’s sometimes necessary to use the navigating buttons or pgup/down to get or scroll to another point on a page. However, the moment you use those buttons, the air mouse function disables instantly and needs to be activated again via the side button. This makes the air mouse function quite a hassle and a bit useless
Save/export user made IR/BT profiles
It can take a LOT of time correctly configuring your devices, especially because of the long time it takes to enumerate available buttons each time you’ll need to add or adjust. It is very, very frustrating to find that when finally done, the whole profile has disappeared for some reason ( I’ve had that twice). This may be due to my own experience with the app, but it also happened when I just restarted the remote.
Have the option to either save your IR/BT profile to a location or export it somewhere for safe keeping. This would certainly prevent a lot of work.
BT/IR profile inconsistencies Don’t really know who made these in-app profiles but some are very inconsistent or confusing. For instance, any given BT profile contains surplus duplicate entries for number keys like ‘8’ or ‘6’, but not for the other numbers, and the number your looking for is not there ...why? The naming is also not consistent; you’ve got ‘Arrowdown, ‘Down arrow’ and ‘Arrowdown2’. As if these were entered by different developers. And what does ‘Eksel’ mean?
Translation errors While learning my remote (which doesn’t seem to work properly), I found some unnecessary translation errors, like ‘volume dowm’ or Paly/Pause. Also, the command to learn IR codes is ‘Learn’ not ‘To learn’.
Space between buttons
This a minor one but, nonetheless. Why the rather huge space between the available buttons in the app? On any given page only 10 entries are displayed. Decreasing the space between them would show a lot more, and less need for scrolling. (especially because buttons can’t be sorted)
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Finally, I do hope the Bluetooth profiles evolve into more brand specific commands OR have the ability to learn from their original BT remotes. Using v4.11, the different BT profiles are basically the same (just some F-keys behave differently) and have rather generic commands (and a LOT of duplicate entries). Not really tailored for your device.
If you want to control your (newer) TV via BT, you’re stuck with some basic entries. Specific commands for any given TV brand (like menu, ch up/down, guide, settings, TV, input, etc.) just aren’t there, don't work, or do something complete different. Sadly, those that are missing or don't work properly, cannot be BT learned to make them work. You can always add IR commands, but that defeats the purpose.
In short, you can't control the TV solely using BT. You can perhaps control its underlying OS, like Android/Google TV, but specific TV commands are just not present.
It would be nice if the developers also to take notice of the mentioned issues. and hopefully improve the app with coming updates.