More than two years ago, Pandora began working on a Windows Mobile client for their personalized music streaming service. Right as that project was entering alpha, they penned distribution deals with AT&T and Sprint, who both had one requirement: it needed to work on their standard, run-of-the-mill feature phones. With their relatively small development team, Pandora shifted their efforts to the development of a J2ME application. Soon after that was ready, the iPhone SDK became available, which meant Windows Mobile development was pushed aside again.
At long last, the project has come to fruition. Pandora has now released a Windows Mobile client.
Anyone accustomed to the online Pandora experience should feel right at home here. Punch in an artist or song, and Pandora will start offering up songs it thinks you will love. Love it? Give it a thumbs up. Hate it? Thumbs down. Pandora will throw these factors into its algorithm in attempt to fine-tune its understanding of what you like. Also similar to the online package, you can log in to make sure Pandora doesn’t forget how much you love Swedish female-lead punk bands.
While the client is free to download, having a Windows Mobile handset doesn’t mean you’re good to go. At launch, they’re currently only supporting two devices: the HTC Touch, and the Motorola Q9c (Sprint/VZW only, for both handsets). The good news? The HTC Touch is (obviously) a touchscreen handset, while the Motorola Q9c is not - that means they’ve got base versions for both input methods complete, so expansion to other Windows Mobile handsets should be fairly rapid.
HTC Touch and Q9c owners can grab the new client by pointing their mobile browser at http://www.pandora.com
Whoa! What have we here????
Internet Explorer has a serious security flaw and Microsoft themselves have told the users to use a different browser!
http://vishtecho.blogspot.com/2008/12/serious-flaw-detected-in-ie.html
2 years for a windows mobile pandora ?
how much time did it take to make the iPhone version ?
No AT&T HTC devices supported yet :(
I just installed it on my Q9C and it works great! :)
Psst.. Windows Mobile has a much larger base than the iCrap.. somebody please tell all these idiot developers that.
psst… No it doesn’t.
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F15%2F2253235&from=rss
though I wish there was more WinMo out there (HTC owner).
That argument is getting VERY old.. The iPhone had a higher growth rate for ONE QUARTER (Q3 2008). That is NOT the same as taking over entire market share. Please learn how to read and comprehend.
It’s important to remember that it doesn’t always come down to the size of the userbase. A hugely important aspect of a centralized, on-device app store is promotion; Pandora knew they could strike early while the market was still relatively small and grow exponentially as a result - its already established userbase would carry it to the top of the download charts, where the constant (free) promotion would lead to a rocketing userbase.
It may not open the door to mobile Pandora for as many people, but it likely draws many more new eyes to the Pandora service as a whole.
Ugh… Still nothing for Blackberry.
Yeah, where’s the BlackBerry love? And what ever happened to the Slacker app too? I know we blackBerry users are too busy shooting out e-mails at stop signs, but I wouldn’t mind me some Internet radio
http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=48458
This news is about a week old (if not older)…the app itself installs on pretty much any WM handset, but YMMV. VGA support isn’t there yet for us Diamond/Touch Pro users, but it still works (the album art displays kinda funky and the text is reeeeeally small).
Not working on HTC Touch Pro, getting a ‘Sorry, Pandora does not support your device’ on both Opera and IE.
see the link in my post above yours. you can download the installer directly from there.
*
Hopefully they launch a BlackBerry application.
You can listen to pandora using a Tilt and the skyfire browser. I still can’t can’t get it to login and it goes out sometimes when the device times out but it’s still nice for a free internet radio on the go. If I could just get my device to not timeout, it would be perfect