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