UPDATE: Some of the features i've listed and some nuances i've noticed (that werent really in the way, just mildly annoying) have been fixed in update 1.31. Still nothing as far as UI organization.

Changelog for 1.31 can be found here

Also fiio contacted me again and ive let them know that i was making suggestions for improvement, and that they should look to head-fi and facebook (perhaps polls) to get input on what firmware changes to make.

While its nice that my thoughts are being considered, i highly doubt enough people will want a more ipod-like sorting algorithm running.

JamesFiio on Headfi along with the actual Fiio facebook page have both informed individuals that when we have a feature request or firmware improvement suggestion, we should email to the Fiio Support inbox. So I did.

Here is the result in which they reiterated exactly what I knew already and essentially told me that they will not be changing a single fucking thing.

To elaborate on why I suggested these changes:

1. In category view, there is no "All Songs". If you select artist, it simply enumerates every single song by that artist. It does not let you go to artist>album>track. In Category view, for the sake of organization, the All Songs option should be there. Also, you should be able to view either all albums, or all albums by an artist. not JUST all songs by an artist.

2. when you go to category>artist, it will have everything in alphabetical order. so now you have no way at all to see album groupings aside from actually going to the album.

3. Whats worse, in this "artist" grouping, lets say i have 3 albums. It will list them alphanumerically....INCLUDING THE TRACK NUMBER. And the idiotic thing is, they dont do this in accordance to the file name. They actually rip the track information out of the id3 tag and include that in their alphanumeric sorting. So now, it will group like this by track number: 1,1,1, 10,10,10, 11,11,11 12,12,12, 2,2,2,3,3,3,4,4,4.

4. When the hold switch is activated, you dont want to interact with the device anymore. You've been staring at the thing doing your thing, now you want to make sure you arent preessing any buttons accidentally. So why the fuck do i have to wait for the backlight timer to count down? wouldnt blanking out the screen automatically save me battery life in the long run?

5. Numerous users have reported that their 64 gig cards completely choke the device. They cannot have their tracks in multi-level folders, and can only dump all tracks into a single folder if they want it to work.

Currently, the only way to use the device like a standard english device would work is to have your folders meticulously organized on the SD card and to use "browse by file" rather than tags. And having a 64 gig card (on this shitty 8 gig player) completely destroys that functionality as well.

DONT BUY THIS PLAYER. The cost is WAY too high for such trash. Get an ipod+LOD+amp, or an ipod touch, or a Cowon, or a newer android phone (which supports USB Dacs).

EDIT: in the grand scheme of things, the hardware functionality of this player is fucking fantastic. Its pretty much only the UI that has big problems. Also, the 64 gig card issue seems to be sporadic and i dont think they know exactly what is going on with that.