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ESPN Radio Android app fails to go the distance

Review for ESPN Radio (Official ESPN App)

Posted November 7, 2010 7:23pm by Tim McLain Tags: Sports

APPOLICIOUS ADVISOR RATING:

1 of 5 bars
  • PRICE: Free
  • TASTY: Tap into the world of ESPN (sports radio) wherever you and your Android phone may roam. (Once the app is fixed, that is.)
  • BUMMER: Lacks baseball coverage. Most content is sports radio talk channels vs. live or recorded game coverage.
  • COOL: When you launch the app, you'll feel like you've got an iPhone! (And that's a bad thing in this case, folks.)

With a lack of local sports stations, an over-population of sports talk radio vs. live or recorded game coverage, nagging issues with losing audio streams every 10-30 seconds and crashes on my original Droid A855, there's not much I can report that's very good about the current ESPN Radio app.

Loading the app presents a series of menus that are obviously ported from the iPhone version. Which would be fine, if everything worked as advertised.

And with the visual look of the iPhone very much in play, it's no surprise that I was unable to get the audio to play in the background; the iPhone can't multitask, but the Droid can. Get with it ESPN.

If you're looking for live game coverage, do yourself a favor and load TuneIn Radio. Read my review here. With a clearer menu system, the ability to play audio streams in the background and lots of game day audio sources to choose from, it's worth your time.

AirKast, the app's developer, is working on a new buffering scheme for the app so the streams are more stable. Many of the app's current issues are tied to the 2.2 OS release. An updated version should be in the marketplace sometime soon.

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