The iPod Classic emulator for the iPhone and iPod Touch has finally been released onto the Cydia Store for a price of only $1.99. For more info on the application itself, check out the review we conducted on it.

This has been an idea that I have seen circulating on forums for a while now but up until now, the idea never came to fruition. But finally, two iPhone developers by the names of Peleaz-1 and Cstsxyfry212 have gone ahead and created a great application called iClassic that is going to be released onto the Cydia store in a matter of days.

Some of you may have noticed that the promo image says ‘Available on the AppStore (Coming Soon)’ but Apple’s strict rules and regulations didn’t allow the application in so instead of giving it up, they decided to release it onto the Cydia Store.

However, the developers were kind enough to let AllTechRelated try out a pre-release of the application so we could share our thoughts on it with our readers.

What is it?

iClassic is basically an iPod Classic emulator for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It simulates everything from the menus, the click-wheel and even the music player. It is impressive how well they have managed to capture the essence of the iPod Classic and bring it to the touch screen iPhone and iPod Touch.

Simply put, iClassic is an alternative way of listening to your music on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Music only. No videos or podcasts (yet!).

The root menu of iClassic has the following menus to click on:

• Now Playing
• Playlists
• Artists
• Albums
• Songs
• Settings

This is essentially the same menu as in the ‘Music’ menu on the iPod Classic.

Once you click on the Artists button using the button in the middle of the click-wheel you come to the familiar list of artists of all your music. The scrolling is done using the click-wheel like on the iPod Classic. The scrolling itself is a bit jumping as the touchscreen is not as refined as a real click-wheel but it is definitely usable. However the switching between scrolling up and down is flawless and dispite the  few jumps in it, it is a very pleasurable way to browse through your music.

It is also slightly easier to ‘miss’ the onscreen click-wheel if you do not look when you scroll unlike on the iPod Classic because of the difference in texture between the click-wheel and actual iPod. However this is impossible to change so the problem is almost not worth mentioning.

On the top of the screen, like on the real iPod Classic, there is the status bar which contains the battery and the name of the menu you are accessing/time (they rotate between).The blue play button also appears when a song is playing in the background but the pause button was not included in this version.

Once you have chosen which artist you want to listen to, you enter the artists sub-menu. Here there is the usual list of albums that this artist has created and the top button saying ‘All Albums’. Clicking on of these buttons will bring you to a list of the songs in this album. Also, the shuffle button has been included in this menu.

When the song has been chosen you enter the all-important music player which looks more or less identical to that of the iPod Classics. In fact, minus the lack of progress bar for the song, they do look identical. Do not worry though. The lack of progress bar has been noticed by the developer and he is working on including it in the final version.

The music player shows the album art, album name, artist and song name as it should. It also includes the number of songs in the album you are listening to and does show the duration of the song and how far into the song you are at. Clicking the middle button allows you to scroll using the click-wheel through the song. However again, there is no progress bar but the time of the song can be used to deduce where you are in the song.

iClassic also has Playlists included in it. It simply takes the playlist from your iPod.app and uses it in the iPod Classic way. Again, the shuffle button appears above all the songs. No inclusion of Genius playlists just yet.

Settings:

In the root menu of iClassic is the settings button. This is not done in the iPod Classic style but in the typical iPhone OS style. The Settings offers different options to customize iClassic to your needs. Here is a summary of all the options available:

• UI Options: In this section you can change two different things:
  1. Change the colour of your ‘iPod Classic’ between Black or Silver.
  2. Change the status bar from Shiny to Matte.
• Music Options: This section is where you can turn on shuffle and repeat. Sadly this is lacking in the actual music player window and is a bit of hassle to come and change it when in the middle of a song.
• Application Options: In this section you can do the following things:
  1. Vibration on/off: This is a vibration that happens every time you click on the middle button. I am thankful for the ability to turn it off because quite simply I find it a bit irritating. I supposed the developer is probably using it as a warning for when you accidentally click the button but for me, it wil remain off.
  2. Shake to shuffle: Here you can turn off and on shake to shuffle.

A great point in my opinion about this is that it still uses the iPhone’s or iPod Touch’s musicplayer in the background so that if you play a song with iClassic, the song is also playing on iPod.app. This allows applications such as Scrobbl (scrobble your songs to Last.fm) to be used.

Conclusion:

I think the application has a few fault but that needn’t overshadow the fact that this is a great idea inside a great application. This is a GREAT application for users who miss their old iPods or a new iPhone users who aren’t yet comfortable with using the touchscreen or simply don’t like the iPhone musicplayer’s UI.

I love this application as I love the iPod Classic. As mine broke two weeks ago, this is a great replacement (until I get it repaired of course ) I am already starting to think of ways to integrate the application into my theme to replace the iPod.app as my #1 music player.

The application will be available on the Cydia store for $1.99 as soon as it is accepted into BigBoss’s repo (which soon be in a few days).

Peleaz-1′s website.