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RadioTime review
Damien McFerran
Stream over 30,000 different radio stations direct to your Android handset with this excellent application, RadioTime
Rating: ![]()
Verdict: RadioTime has a staggering number of stations but the performance of the data stream leaves a little to be desired
Platform: Android
Pros: Massive range of stations and a clean interface
Cons: Stream is unpredictable over a 3G connection
Version: 2.1
Publisher: RadioTime Inc
Price: $2.99
More Info: RadioTime site
The moving image may have tried to destroy it but the spoken word is still as popular today as ever. Right now countless radio stations are broadcasting music, speech and other aural delights to millions of people all around the globe, and with RadioTime Android owners finally have an app which is capable of allowing them to appreciate this awesome occurrence.
RadioTime grants access to over 30,000 different stations from all over the world, covering a wide and diverse range of topics, regions and languages. It’s possible to connect and steam these audio sources using either your 3G or – preferably – your Wi-Fi connection.
What makes RadioTime stand out from its competitors is that it has loads of UK-based stations, right down to local BBC radio. You can even access podcasts which are issued by certain providers.
Navigating through 30,000 different presets is obviously going to be a bit of a nightmare but thankfully RadioTime is divided up into different regions, categories and languages. You can also search for the exact station you’re after using the search box on the main menu. It only takes a few seconds to locate what you’re after, providing you know exactly what it is you’re looking for.
Once you’ve found a few stations you like you can then add them to your presets menu for quick access later on, although you will need to register online for a RadioTime user account in order to do this.
It’s a bit of a pain – especially when you consider you can’t do it via the app itself – but it does mean you can save your preferences to the online server and share them with the dedicated RadioTime web portal.
In terms of selection RadioTime simply cannot be faulted but when it comes to performance it’s a little less impressive. Like so many apps of this type the quality of the steam is determined by the strength of your 3G network signal. During our review we found that the stream paused with annoying regularity, although when we moved to a location with a strong 3G coverage this improved slightly. Wi-Fi access is without a shadow of a doubt the best option when using RadioTime.
Despite these problems, there’s still a lot to recommend about RadioTime. No other app we’ve seen can offer the same range of content and the user interface is clean, uncluttered and easy to work around.
If the developer can improve the performance of the actual data stream then RadioTime will progress from being a great app to being a near-essential one.