After using this latest Beta for a little over a week, here are some observations.
I have a Droid X and I'm running DarkSlide 4.2 ROM.
The new Android-based life cycle is much more stable than the previous version. The device's battery life is noticeably longer and scheduled downloads are much more reliable. Previously it would take about 10 minutes after the scheduled download time for the app to check for new episodes. Now it happens within a few minutes.
A couple of times I have noticed that new episodes were recognized but were not downloaded. The message on the episode was "Waiting to Download". I ended up downloading them manually.
The icon in the notification bar has peculiar yet seemingly consistent behavior. When the device starts the app spins up in the background, which is very nice, but the icon is not shown. When an episode begins to play the icon appears with a message "PodTrapper running". When the episode is paused the icon remains. When one episode in a playlist ends and another begins the icon is refreshed and the message is briefly displayed again. When an episode ends and no other episode automatically begins the icon disappears.
I love the new tabbed interface. It makes the app much easier to use. One thing that is still a little cumbersome however is switching playlists. You have to make sure you do not have the playlist tab currently selected, long-press the playlist tab, select the list, then select the playlist tab again to see it. Here are a couple of suggestions that may help.
1. Allow the long press of the Playlist tab to function when the playlist tab is currently selected.
2. After a playlist is selected automatically display the playlist tab.
There have been a couple of times where I needed to shut down the application to clear up problems. Sometimes the player gets itself into a loop where it is starting and pausing continually and there is no way I can figure out to get it to stop without shutting it down. Reset Player does not seem to work. Now with the exit menu option missing the only way to do that is to go into Settings/ Manage Applications/Running.. find PodTrapper and Force Close it.
I love the fact that the Email Episode option is available from the Now Playing screen. Before I would have to go out to the main list, find the right podcast and long-press on the desired episode to email. This is one of my favorite features as I am always listening to things that I know my friends and family would enjoy and I want to share it with them. I think Email Episode should be available from anywhere whenever an episode is currently playing but maybe that is asking a bit much
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_e_smile.gif)
One problem I have though, and this was happening before this version as well, when I choose Email... and then GMail from the list of email applications... it causes GMail crash. If I choose Choose More... and then select GMail it works but there is no Subject.
Something else I've been meaning to mention for a while and is not particular to this version is the scheduling of podcasts. A couple of years ago I requested the ability to be able to schedule weekly podcasts and you added that which was great. I do have one podcast however that is published twice daily during the week: BBC Global News. I have never seen anyone complain in the forums about not being able to schedule these types of podcasts so I've just kept manually adjusting the times. Perhaps you could design a better scheduler interface that will accommodate all types of podcasts. Here is a clip of the windows task scheduler gui. I'm sure it could be improved upon but maybe it will give you some ideas. Like I said I've been manually setting times for over a year now so this is nothing crucial just something to think about
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_e_smile.gif)
![Image](http://libra.franklins.net/Schedule-Gui.jpg)
Thanks
- J