BBC iPlayer Radio app arrives on Android

The BBC iPlayer Radio is now available as an app on Android devices, with some additional features since the iOS version.

The dedicated radio app was released on Apple devices last October and had over one million downloads in the first two months.

But now James Simcock, executive product manager for BBC iPlayer Radio (across platforms) blogs that the Android version comes with some improvements that, as an Android user, makes it even better.

“We’ve followed a slightly different design pattern for the Android version of the app which not only leans heavily into the navigational paradigms of the platform (making it familiar to most Android users) but also makes it quicker than ever to discover more content offered by most of our radio stations,” James said.

“On iOS some content is tucked beneath the ‘currently-playing content’ area on the screen, revealed by swiping upwards to show a ‘carousel’. However, on Android simply swiping horizontally will take you through all the content from the currently selected station.”

The app might not work on some phones though, because of an issue with Samsung firmware. This means that some owners of the Galaxy S3 device may not be able to stream the new HLS audio in the short term.

This applies specifically to some Galaxy S3 devices on EE, Vodafone and Three and the BBC expects these networks to roll out a fix in the next month.

“Other differences between the Android and iOS versions of the app include the use of the notifications panel which appears at the top of the screen when you are elsewhere on your phone, making it easy to get back to the app,” James continued.