Hope that helps,
John
[Nexus 5 running Lollipop 5.1 on T-Mobile USA]
I use BeyondPod to scan through stories from many feeds at once. I glance through the list of story titles to see which ones I may be interested in.
Thus, for my use I really need a list of titles, one after another, as many as possible on the screen. Other similar programs put other information (feed names, dates, pictures, summaries) in between titles, which interferes with glancing through titles as quickly as possible.
Allow for multiple playlists within BeyondPod
I would use the following playlists
CBC
Photography
Radio Dramas
Meditation
I hate having to constantly add, remove and rearrange my playlist just BeyondPod only allows for one playlist.
BeyondPod 4 already has multiple SmartPlay lists (I currently have 7 in use).
For more information on SmartPlay lists in general, see Playing episodes with SmartPlay
Julie
Version 4 has been a big improvement, but I still have some mild fiction points when using the app.
In addition to manual playlist creation, I am a heavy user of categories and smart playlists. I subscribe to 120+ podcasts. Here are my main configurations of use: General Podcasts (downloaded, played on 3x), Music Podcasts (downloaded, no auto delete, obviously played 1x), Audio books (local storage, virtual speed, no auto delete, speed varies.)
My use of multiple smart playlists always seems limited by my inability to put podcasts in more than two categories.
If there was on option to "flatten" the interface to three screens that slide left and right like android home screens, I would enable it straight away. Sliding would allow for better flow than hitting specific touch targets and make jumping around the app extremely quicker when using app heavily.
Better signaling of the download status of a podcast would be helpful - if a smart playlist adds an episode that is not downloaded yet to my playlist, there is no indication until the file begins playing at normal speed.
I'm not sure what usefulness the "add to my episode" step has. Glad to hear there will be stream lining here.
Scrolling to the bottom of a long feed list to add a new feed is annoying when lots of feeds are present. Can this and settings be added to the menu button list?
I manually archive the music podcasts onto a USB drive via an OTG adapter. This works because there aren't very many and I move the entire folder of files.
I use the favorite feature to prevent general podcasts that I want to keep from being deleted and have begun using the share feature to move these to my one drive account. Doing this manual maintenance while listening to podcasts is complicated by the fact that the share item is only available from the playlist screen and is not directly located on the episodes screen (which has a wonderful filtering option to show favorited episodes). Extra steps are required because of this. (Manually removing favorites via my USB drive, OTG adapter, and file manager app is difficult when trying to only save select files.) Can the share option be added to the menu button list of the episode screen?
I'm sure I have missed something, but I hope this helps for now.
Oh, and occasionally partially downloaded episodes are never fully downloaded on subsequent updates.
I use the large widget on my home screen and have used Nova launcher and Tasker to add a row of icons below it that let me adjust speed from my home screen, restart default smart play, update all feeds and to add a new feed. A couple of these are on the hamburger button for the widget but I duplicated then with the other buttons to have a more consistent interface. (I photoshopped some nice button icons for most of these... Need to create the one for adding feeds since I am using a generic icon currently.) I have considered creating a widget to initiate these commands to replace my row of icons/buttons, but have not had time.
Additionally it is worth noting that the above describes my usage on my personal phone. On my work phone (byod), I have all of my streaming only podcasts enabled. Typically these are podcasts that I only occasionally check in with. This is configured on my second phone because it gives me a fallback listening device when my main device is charging (that dang charger cord limits mobility and my back up batteries are not always charged or easy to use).
I have video podcasts configured to stream on my tablet (WiFi only), but only initiate manual downloads when needed.
(Warning: I have to many devices)
My "phablet" (WiFi only) is configured as a mix of how I use my tablet, work phone, and also has audio books configured in a similar way as my main phone.
I have a cheap "pay as you go phone" that I plan on setting up as my "news radio" on my stereo system. This will be setup to check for new news podcasts - automatically adding them to a playlist that will automatically start streaming them. Kind of like listening to a police scanner that auto plays hourly news updates... Not sure if I will use it much, but it might be neat... (Does this post make me sound crazy?)
Last edited by jhonen; 01-14-2015 at 11:14 AM. Reason: More stuff added