May 30 2007
Spodtronic thinks for you
Spodtronic is an excellent application for listening to Internet radio streams and podcasts from around the world. The graphical interface is easy-to-use (a la Widsets) and the performance is snappy on my E61. The selection of stations is good enough for me (DI.FM) and the podcasts are a nice bonus. All this wrapped into a neat little package at a good price - free.
Unfortunately there are a few shortcomings as a post on Symbian-Guru points out and one of them went unnoticed: Spodtronic keeps an eye on your mobile minutes and decides when you should stop listening.
As I was writing this post Spodtronic was updated (from 2.1 to 2.1.0??) so some of the following issues might have been addressed.
Minute Minder
Spodtronic keeps a tab on the time you’ve been listening to avoid racking up a huge mobile bill for Internet data charges. Unfortunately there is no way to turn off (or change) the 30 minute timer. European users may not have unlimited data plans but we do in the U.S. and I want to use mine before T-Mobile changes their mind. (Bummer…the update hasn’t changed this.)
Wi-Fi Broken
It won’t work over my E61’s wi-fi connection. I can choose a wireless access point but it reports “error 0″ when trying to connect. This appears fixed in the latest release.
Screen Saver Issues
The phone’s screen saver is disabled while listening to Internet radio but isn’t for a podcast. The podcast will abruptly stop when the screen saver kicks in (1 minute for me). This makes one of the best features of Spodtronic unusable. This must be an E61 issue because there’s no way Spodtronic could win a Best of Show award for an obvious flaw.
Other Bugs Remain
The backlight still remains on for streaming music and it won’t play in the background. The folks at Spodtronic are listening because they replied to an e-mail I sent them about adding podcasts so send in your bug reports.
Related posts:
- Spodtronic two months later
- Scott McNealy’s leaky Magic 8-Ball
- T-Mobile vs AT&T EDGE
- Making blogs (mobile) browser friendly
[...] been about two months since I last wrote about Spodtronic. A recent email from Keith prompted me to see what’s new with Spodtronic and give my two [...]