Way worse than original Beam
The lowlights I’ve noticed so far… They changed it so that to enter annotation mode, you hold the screen. Doesn’t sound too bad until you’re trying to zoom in or move the music around, and you end up accidentally drawing all over it because you held the screen too long. Also the bottom bar to switch pages as well as the Beam logo button never go away, which robs precious screen space and covers your music which is especially problematic on a phone.
There are also features that are missing or broken from the old Beam app. First of all, they removed the feature that let you auto select your part, so now you have to choose your part for every individual piece, which is extremely inconvenient as a marching band student where we have dozens of different things we need to switch between. They also removed dark music mode, which was a huge battery saver with an OLED screen and was a much more elegant solution than having to invert your entire phone through accessibility settings. Finally and maybe worst of all, the save zoom feature is completely broken. The problem is that when you bring up the menu, it shifts the page down quite a bit, so when you then save the zoom level, it ends up saving somewhere off in the corner of your music instead of where you actually wanted it.
Overall, this is a horrible and unnecessary “remaster” of the old Beam app.
Waiting on tech support to address a zooming bug.
Removed the one good feature
Response from developer
Hello, so sorry you've run into this. This was a bug in the latest release that will be fixed in the next update! If you run into anything else, please reach out to us on the chat on our website or support@joinarc.us.
Major downgrade
Response from developer
Hi! The bar at the bottom of the screen has been addressed in this next release as well as Save Zoom level being active again. Live mode will launch here in the next week or so and we're excited for you to see it! If you run into anything else, please reach out to us on the chat on our website or support@joinarc.us.
Lost Functionality
Response from developer
Hi Ethan, so sorry you've run into this. Auto Download and Default Parts will be coming soon and the screen sleep bug has been addressed and will be available in the next release. If you run into anything else, please reach out to us on the chat on our website or support@joinarc.us.
