Exclusive: Previewing Symbian^3's Podcatcher

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As I wrote six weeks ago, work has been progressing to convert the old open source Escarpod podcast catcher into an application that can be part of the (also open source) Symbian^3 operating system. Now, exclusively, with kind permission, I have much more on the app, appropriately just called 'Podcatcher'. Read on for a detailed walk through, screenshots and a link to download it for yourself, to help test it on existing devices. Note that Symbian^3 itsel f won't appear on devices until at least the summer, but at least we now know that it'll have podcasting functionality, a relief to many in the Symbian ecosystem, including me!

Quoting and summarising from my earlier story:

"With the rise and rise of podcasts in the wider world, Nokia's Podcasting utility, launched in 2007, was the right tool at the right time - set up with a known good Wi-fi access point (e.g. your home network), you could leave it to grab new podcasts from your chosen feeds completely autonomously. It meant you were never short of good spoken word listening and Podcasting then shipped on every Nseries S60 phone since then. It also made it onto the business-focussed E71, E75 and some 'numbered' Nokia S60 smartphones and the general thought was that Podcasting was now established as 'part' of S60 going forwards."

However, you'll have noted that Podcasting was conspicuously missing from the Nokia E55, E55 and E72, leading to my suspicion that Podcasting was written long enough ago (best part of four years) that the original author has moved on and the Eseries team simply couldn't get Podcasting working in their own builds of S60. In any event, Nokia has chosen not to include Podcasting in the code it has contributed to the Symbian Foundation (look here). Which leaves an important gap, since Podcasting's biggest users are the tech elite, bloggers and early adopters who make the most noise on the Internet.

In the meantime, Escarpod was started as an open source project (the name's a pun on the French for 'snail'!) to bring audio books and podcasting to UIQ, the existing 2007 touch interface on Symbian. With the fairly swift demise of UIQ shortly afterwards, the developers (Sebastian Brannstrom, Lars Persson and Lars Olsson) knocked up a version of the application for S60 and this works fairly well, if quirkily and still labelled 'alpha' status, to this day, even on S60 5th Edition phones.

Thankfully, EmbedDev (including the original Escarpod developer) has stepped up to the plate and proposed that the application be renamed, refined and added into Symbian^3. This was accepted and EmbedDev have had two people working on the package (now called 'Podcatcher'), in addition to work by Sebastian. I've been beta-testing the client, which works fine (of course) on existing S60 5th Edition phones. Update: there's now a dedicated Podcatcher development page, complete with signed SIS file for you to download. If you do grab it for a S60 5th Edition phone and use it though, please do feed back bugs to the development team - let's try and get this app as bug free as humanly possible, for all our sakes(!)

In the meantime, I'm happy to show some screens of Podcatcher in action, with comment, below. Enjoy!

Podcatcher screenshot Podcatcher screenshot

The new Symbian-themed Podcatcher icon; the main interface. Note the soft action buttons near the bottom. The stub 'Options' menu will have been fully deprecated by the time Symbian^4 arrives, at which point the interface will have been reworked in Qt.

Podcatcher screenshot 

To change a feed's settings, just long press and up pops a mini-menu, as here. The idea of a long-press in the UI isn't new to S60 5th Edition - it's used in several places in current devices - but it's definitely under-used. With enough utilisation of this sort of contextual pop-up, we'll gradually see more and more functions being moved off 'Options' menus, in preparation for Symbian^4.

Podcatcher screenshot

Tapping through into a feed shows all the programmes available, tap any to download/queue manually.

Podcatcher screenshot Podcatcher screenshot

Playing podcasts is to be done in the Symbian^3 Music player, where podcasts will be shown - this app will also remember where you got to and resume a long podcast from the right point; (right) on the menu currently are import/export options, handy for taking a set of podcast feeds to another phone or computer.

Podcatcher screenshot Podcatcher screenshot 

Within Settings are the all important enablers for automatic podcatching - having new programmes downloaded in the background and always available for listening has always been a core part of the Podcasting addiction for the geek on the go (like me!); (right) the current About screen at this development stage.


Thanks to Sebastian and Symbian for letting me share this preview with the world and for keeping the podcasting flame alive, as it were.

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 27 Feb 2010