Can anyone recommend a decent podcast player for my phone? The built-in music player is a bad joke and only suitable for playing 3 minute songs - it has no ability to jump directly to a position in an MP3. It’s use of Spanish in the status messages is also interesting.

Ideally I want something that has decent navigation capabilities within a podcast. If I could bookmark my positions in individual MP3s so I could quickly return to where I was listening, that would be awesome too. No, the FF button is not sufficient.

The old Tungsten T is actually a better device for playing MP3s, particularly in the car due to the bigger buttons. I use the Real Player on it and it had the potential to be very good. Sadly it looks like they are not doing any development on it. I tried a few other MP3 players on the Palm but the UIs were designed by people who clearly never use their own products. I’m surprised no-one built a player for the Palm that emulates the iPod UI using the touch-sensitive screen.

What kills me about the TT is that it is still a great piece of hardware and a tactile delight but the lack of memory (16 MB) means that no new software supports it. Browsing the web using Opera Mini on it rather than on the N70 would be an infinitely better user experience. But there is no JVM for the TT so no Opera. A TT with Opera using bluetooth to the N70 would be a joy.

I’ve come to the conclusion that my next handheld device (whether phone or PDA or both combined) has to have a touch screen. I’d almost be tempted by the iPhone apart from [a] it’s an Apple [b] it’s completely locked down [c] it doesn’t have 3G [d] it only has one button.

I had a look at Lifedrives and TXes on eBay but they are still silly money. I could get a Dell Axim for far less money (anyone have experience of the Axims and their music playing abilities?). Tom showed me his Smartphone on Sunday - a Voda branded HTC job with touchscreen and Wifi. Only £150 on eBay. I’ve a feeling I may go down that route eventually and finally sadly say goodbye to Palm.

Any tips at all? Any comments telling me to buy an iPod will be spiked ;-)

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