Podcast+ Pro gets a UWP implementation

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Last covered almost two years ago when it was a new entrant into the crowded Windows Phone 8.1 podcatcher market, Podcast+ Pro is back and with a brand new UWP implementation. It's very much a Windows 10 interface overhaul first and foremost, adding in the new style views and controls, plus compatibility with Windows 10 on the desktop (obviously) plus Continuum from the phone via a secondary display. In truth, the UI is still very much optimised for a portrait phone view, so there's still work to do by the developer, but at least this is a full UWP app now and worthy of comparison to the other growing UWP podcatcher stable.

From the Store description:

Using Podcast+ Pro, you can subscribe, download and play podcasts in one single App. And play your favorites everywhere anytime. Feature-rich, operation-simple is a major feature of Podcast+ Pro. The key features include:

  • one click to update all favorite feeds and download all new episodes
  • support play content offline and online
  • support super-fast multi-threaded download of the media, support resume broken downloads
  • easy to add feeds, such as by keywords, by categories, and by the feed URL.
  • easy to manage feeds, support assign the tags of the feeds 
  • powerful custom playlist, including built-in "recent added" and "downloaded" playlists.
  • rich custom settings, such as deleting the out-of-date media automatically, changing the order of playlist

Here's the new UWP version of Podcast+ Pro in action:

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Podcasts seem to be gathered well, with a large fonted and clear display, here on a Lumia 950, all the controls and most UI elements are now recognisably Windows 10; (right) the Now Playing screen, which works well in portrait though is a disaster in landscape (don't try it).

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The Settings panes are much as in the original version - all very logical and everything seems to work. More testing needed for a full review, of course.

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The playlists are as useful as usual, here sorted by 'added' date; (right) within a podcast, episodes are listed along with download status. You can also pin a podcast to the Start screen from here.

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When hooked up via Continuum, Podcast+ Pro works, though as with many other phone-centric UWPs the use of display space isn't optimised.

Well worth checking out, and comments welcome once you've used this for a few days or weeks. You can buy this in the Store here for £2.29 (in the UK).

Source / Credit: Store