App adds iPod Classic turntable to iPhone screens

An iOS developer is working on an iPhone app that turns the smartphone into a real iPod Classic. The app adds the iconic click wheel to the screen. The app also includes Cover Flow. It is not yet known whether the app will actually be released.

Elvin Hu is a design student from New York City. He has been working on the app in SwiftUI since October. Earlier this week he shared on Twitter a video showing an early version. The app turns the screen of an iPhone into a kind of iPod, including the iconic turntable. He reports that the click wheel supports haptic feedback and also produces clicking sounds. Tony Fadell, the inventor of the iPod, calls the app a “nice throwback‘.

Hu’s app also includes coverflow, a 3d interface that allows users to browse the cover art of music albums. This interface is located above the click wheel, but is also available in landscape mode. This makes the app almost complete the authentic iPod experience.

Hu tells The Verge that he has been a fan of Apple products since childhood. “Before my family could afford one, I already drew the iPhone’s onion design on the lids of Ferrero Rocher packaging.”

It is not yet clear whether the app will actually come out. This is completely dependent on Apple, Hu reports. According to him, the company has good reasons not to approve the app for the App Store, as the click wheel and the cover flow ui are both patented. Hu hopes to complete the project by December. If the app doesn’t make it to the App Store, he may release it as an open source project.

The app in question. Screenshot via Twitter