While I had been hoping for an agnostic solution, Pandora’s first portable offering (!) is on Sprint. A Power Vision plan plus $2.99/mo gets you mobile access and a web account upgrade (as in no ads). The downloadable J2ME app is currently only available on five phones, including the Samsung A900 (aka “Blade”). Support is planned for additional models including the Motorola RAZR, Sanyo M1, “Katana,” and Samsung Upstage. And it just so happens Sprint is sending me an Upstage loaner…
I was right on target last week with my “Sansa Connect with Pandora” suggestion — Turns out they’re working with Zing (designers of Sirius Stiletto and that SanDisk Sansa Connect) on a WiFi player. Pandora has provided me screengrabs of the prototype running in an emulator:
“We knew that if we wanted to be radio with a capital ‘R,’ we have to be everywhere, and not just on the Internet,” said Pandora founder Tim Westergren. “We knew we had to make it mobile.” Pandora is expanding to other devices as well. Also starting Wednesday, its music streams can be directly tapped from Sonos Inc.’s home digital music system.