I am a hardcore Android user, even though I run an iPhone 17 Pro as my secondary phone. I have been using Android since its initial days, and I can say that the content-watching experience on a Samsung Galaxy phone, especially the Galaxy S25 Ultra, is superior when compared to an iPhone 17 Pro. Don’t get me wrong: the iPhone’s display quality isn’t bad by any means. It’s just that Samsung is a step ahead in this department.
However, I rarely watch local media or download videos on my phone. But when I do, I, just like millions of others, used to let VLC handle the task. It is the gold standard for video players across platforms, whether on a smartphone, computer, or smart TV. But the technology geek inside me recently came across a lightweight challenger that has actually managed to kick the “cone” off my Android phone.
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The new player is Next Player
Next Player arrives as a breath of fresh air
Next Player is built from the ground up by app developer Anil Kumar Beesetti using modern tools like Kotlin and Jetpack Compose. To straight up clear the air, no, Next Player isn’t as feature-rich as VLC player. It focuses on simplicity and does the task at hand: playing video flawlessly.
But the interface makes up for the lack of features (which you wouldn’t mind). After testing a bunch of Android video player apps, Next Player’s interface stands out the most. It fully embraces Android’s Material You design language.
When you open the app, by default, the home screen of the app shows only the folder that actually contains video files. This means you can open the app, find your file, and start watching immediately. On other apps, you have to add the folders containing video files or let the player scan through your entire memory, even go through endless empty directories, just to look for folders that have videos.
- OS
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Android
- Price model
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Free
Next Player is fast
For everyday viewing, Next Player easily beats VLC
VLC is still the player millions trust. But for someone who is always on the lookout for something new and interesting, Next Player surprised me. In short, Next Player shines when you want a simple, lightweight, and fast video player for your Android phone.
The responsiveness of the Next Player is all thanks to the fact that it is built on modern frameworks. Tapping the screen to bring the on-screen playback controls feels swifter and snappier than VLC. In fact, the controls show up with a fluid animation.
Another area that I like about Next Player is the core video-watching experience. I can think of so many occasions where I accidentally swiped the screen and messed up the video timeline while bettering our grip. To fix this, you had to lock the controls.
In VLC, the screen lock button is available on the overflow menu, which requires multiple taps to activate. In Next Player, the lock icon sits conveniently in the bottom left corner of the player screen. Additionally, the tools that you actually use the most, like locking the screen, adjusting playback speed, video size, subtitles, and picture-in-picture mode, are all just a touch away.
You do get all of these features and more in VLC, but they aren’t readily available. They are buried inside the overflow menu. That is not the case with Next Player. You also get a bunch of gestures to control the essentials, like a vertical swipe on the left side for brightness, a vertical swipe on the right side for volume, a horizontal swipe to fast-forward or rewind, and pinch to zoom in and out.
Next Player isn’t perfect
You will miss quite a few features if you previously used VLC
As I’ve already mentioned, Next Player misses out on a lot of features. Yes, Next Player is fantastic for local playback, but it isn’t a 1:1 replacement for the VLC player.
For instance, if you constantly use your NAS server to play videos from your video player or cast videos to your TV via Chromecast, you might want to keep VLC as your backup. Next Player supports network stream, where you can paste the URL to a video file or web stream to view. However, it cannot browse your network folders (SMB, FTP, SFTP). You have to download a file manager separately, then open that video with Next Player. Plus, there is no dedicated Cast button available in Next Player.
Furthermore, the subtitle feature on Next Player is limited. While on VLC, you get the option to search and download subtitles (via OpenSubtitles) for the content directly from the app; Next Player can’t do this. You can place the subtitle file in your phone’s memory and load it through the app, but you can’t search and download from within the app.
VLC has an expanded set of equalizers, and while Next Player has a built-in equalizer, it isn’t as wide as VLC’s. With the VLC player, you can play a video as audio with a single tap, but that isn’t possible on Next Player.
A free and open-source gem
Though Next Player isn’t as feature-rich as VLC player, it is free, open source, lightweight, and, best of all, doesn’t feature a single advertisement. It also doesn’t ask for excessive permissions and respects your privacy. If you want a simple app that plays videos, Next Player is the one to try out among the various other options.
