Pandora Puts Personalized Music On Windows Mobile Devices

[Jon Westfall]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=3731' target='_blank'>http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=3731</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Pandora provides a personalized, Internet-based radio service. Today, Pandora announced that it is extending its PC-based software to select Windows Mobile devices. The mobile version will have the same features as the online version, such as creating new stations, bookmarking songs, and rating songs with thumbs up or thumbs down. Pandora will initially support the Motorola Q9c and HTC XV6900 on Verizon's network, and the Motorola Q9c and HTC Touch on Sprint's network."</em></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><a href="http://www.pandora.com" target="_blank">Pandora</a> provides a nice alternative when shuffle on your iPod/Zune/MP3 Player of choice is just being too repetitive. I've even found more than one new song that I like through it, and it's nice to see that eventually we'll all be able to play it on our WinMo devices, with initial support for a select few VZW &amp; Sprint customers.</p>

[davea]

The Pandora service is VERY impressive. I'm enjoying their Windows Vista Gadget on my desktop. It works great! Their WM software will not load to my Motorola Q9h (unlocked & 6.1) on T-Mobile. When I wrote them to ask to make this combination "acceptable" for Pandora; their prompt response was:

We'd really like to be available on all carriers and all the phones that make sense, but that some carriers are more receptive than others at this stage. But we'll keep working on it!

-- Johnny
Pandora Listener Support

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So "only the HTC XV6900 on Verizon, the HTC Touch on Sprint, and the Motorola Q9C on both Sprint and Verizon" are currently "legal".

[mbranscum]

I have a copy working on my ATT q9h. Very smooth.

[JKingGrim]

Why do they feel that they must go through carriers? Its not a locked down feature phone..

[kerrins]

Pandora is great. It's the only music worth listening to. Better than a radio station because you can select the type of music you like and they find similar. no commercials so it's as good as XM radio (and no DJ). I use it on my Tilt which isn't even supported by Pandora, but someone at XDA-Developers created an application so it will work.

I can put Pandora on my Tilt, then use the auxilary jack into the car and stream good music. Listening at work is just a given.

[OSUKid7]

Why do they feel that they must go through carriers? Its not a locked down feature phone..
Yeah, I don't understand that either... it's gotta be something to do with support, although that doesn't make sense with a free service.

Anyway, I spent a few minutes and got this downloaded and working on my AT&T Tilt. Here's how I did it:
I saw that I got an error message when visiting pandora.com in Pocket IE saying my device is not supported, and yet I got the main/non-mobile homepage when I visited the same page in Opera Mobile on my device. So that told me the page probably detected what device I was on from my browser's user agent. A quick web search showed me that the agent string for the HTC XV6900 (shown on Pandora's Windows Mobile page (http://www.pandora.com/on-windowsmobile) as a supported device) is:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.7) 320x320; XV6900; Window Mobile 6.0 Professional;So I just added a new user agent in my User-Agent Switcher (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59) Firefox add-on, and re-visited the page. Downloaded perfectly. :)

I transfered the cab file to my device, and it installed and now runs great.