Is it time to call out Pandora for WM support?

[snowbound]

Let me first say that I know there's a way for people to hack Pandora onto their Windows Mobile phones... YMMV.

Does that excuse Pandora for having a very short list of WM phones that are officially supported? Particularly when their list of five phones consists of four that are discontinued (based on data at phonearena.com)? The one that isn't discontinued is the Verizon version of the Touch, which launched famously later than it did for other carriers.

http://www.pandora.com/on-windowsmobile

I believe that this slight is not excusable because:
- This software is at least somewhat hackable onto other WM phones, so how hard would it be to complete the job?
- Pandora seems to have been downright prolific in porting their software to other platforms this year (Pre, Android). Why not keep up with an existing platform?

Sure, it's their software and service to sell, and they can do what they darn well please with it. I also can do what I darn well please with my money, and it's rather frustrating to see something so close to being worth spending money on yet sitting stagnant and short of its goal.

What gives?

 

[gregorypleau]

How about that very short list of Countries that Pandora is *allowed* in.... I can use a USA proxy to listen to Pandora on my desktop computer.... the phone is a heck of a lot more work to get that going on.

 

[snowbound]

How about that very short list of Countries that Pandora is *allowed* in.... I can use a USA proxy to listen to Pandora on my desktop computer.... the phone is a heck of a lot more work to get that going on.

I'll buy that as a valid complaint, but from my (software engineer's) perspective, the technical difficulty of getting this to work on more Windows Mobile devices seems to be much less than the difficulty associated with the legal barriers to supporting the service outside the U.S.

You have my sympathy, but I'm much less understanding about why they're not supporting additional WM devices.

 

[Kasona]

What do you mean by "hacking" Pandora to work on your device?
I've been using Pandora on my T-Mobile Dash for months now with no hacking required at all. I installed it from a cab file like I do any other app and it just worked.
I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that it works fairly well over an EDGE connection as well as wifi.

 

[Dave Blake]

The hacked cab doesn't look good on the HD TP screen sure it works fine but the app could be done better and why should we have to hack it. I agree its time for Pandora to give us WM users some love.

 

[snowbound]

What do you mean by "hacking" Pandora to work on your device?
I've been using Pandora on my T-Mobile Dash for months now with no hacking required at all. I installed it from a cab file like I do any other app and it just worked.
I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that it works fairly well over an EDGE connection as well as wifi.

Kasona,

The issues I've heard of have to do with support of screen sizes other than 320 x 240. More details that I'm aware of are here: http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=48458

Also, I don't like having to get a mass-market piece of software (I consider Pandora to be that) via some thread in a forum. A lot of excellent stuff does come out of the forums, but this is just wrong for something like Pandora. It's rather unprofessional for Pandora... and they ought to have outgrown that by now.