I prefer the way Midomi works: there is no black animation, but it does work better and has more features.

The Midomo “Sing it” feature is really funny: try it with your friends (humming works better than singing seemingly) to share a nice moment.

For songs that are in their databases, both Shazam and Midomi do a good job of “hearing” and identifying songs, even in less than ideal conditions (public places with background noise, bad radio reception–I even identified one song over a shortwave radio!)

Both apps do a good job on identifying current popular (rock, r&b, c&w, rap, etc.) music on the radio. Older songs (say, over 20 years old) are more likely to be identified if they match one or more of the following criteria:

• English language (more on foreign language in a moment)
• American or British.
• Well known (e.g. Beatles, Elvis, etc. probably have all their songs in the databases, but less well known artists might not)
• On Billboard or other music chart. “Deep album cuts” might not make it.
• Secular (coverage of older gospel/CCM is hit or miss at best)

Coverage of British pop is good (especially on Shazam, which is based in England). On the other hand, I had a few Canadian songs which neither service could identify.

Foreign language coverage varies. French (but not French-Canadian) and German are probably best, with Spanish a distant third, at least for songs from Spain. (Neither seemed to know much about Latin pop music from Mexico, or South America).

Shazam, in particular seemed to be very knowledgable about Chinese and Japanese pop music. I even identified a Japanese song that I had taped off the radio 20 years ago. However, other Asian music, such as Vietnamese pop, baffled it.

Neither is too “cultured”, as the services didn’t seem to know too much about classical music or jazz. Shazam did recognize some non-music material, such as a couple of Bill Cosby comedy bits….

The main screen of Babyphone shows the current status, the microphone sensitivity and the threshold for triggering the alarm.

If the Microphone’s display reaches or exceeds the set threshold, the previously defined phone number will be called. After completion of the call and the expiration of the delay Babyphone will reactivate itself again.

In the settings you can enter the number to call. In addition, there is a sleeping interval with an adjustable delay in minutes, after which Babyphone will reactivate itself again.