Slacker Portable Radio Thunders Onto Every Verizon BlackBerry Storm

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The BlackBerry Tour might be today’s talk of the town, but that’s doesn’t mean the Storm is dissipating. Verizon just announced that Slacker’s software will be on every BlackBerry Storm. Slacker announced support for the Storm back in January, but it was an optional download up to now. With the news, every Storm will see the Slacker Personal Radio App appear on the home screen over the next few days. Verizon is delivering the software right over the air, so there’s no need to download it from a mobile site or transfer it to your Storm using a computer. There’s no additional charge for the Slacker service for customers that have a BlackBerry plan including email and web. I suspect most, if not all, Storm owners have such a data plan.

The Slacker Personal Radio software is integrated into Verizon’s VCAST music service as well. If a tune you’re listening to is available for purchase from Verizon, a VCAST icon appears in the software. One tap later and the audio file is on its way to your Storm without interrupting the tune on Slacker.

Slacker claims to have to have four times more music than the nearest competitor, which I take to be Pandora. That’s one advantage, but I think a larger one is the ability to cache music. Slacker can do it, while Pandora can’t. As much as I enjoy Pandora, I’m hoping to see a Slacker app for the Palm Pre now that the Mojo SDK is out. I’d love the ability to cache some music and then shut off the radios on my Pre — that would save some battery life. Slacker does offer an application for my iPhone 3GS, but it’s restricted. The ability to cache music isn’t supported on the iPhone.

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