Update: Pandora Android Mystery Solved — Some Apps in Market Only Available on Official OS Builds

android_hero_thumbI am happy to report that my inability to get Pandora running on the HTC Hero phone I am evaluating has been solved. To recap, Pandora would not appear on the Hero in the Android Market, even though the app is there and could be downloaded on other phones. The community jumped all over this problem, including reps from Pandora and Android, and I now happily have Pandora running on the Hero. The solution involved Pandora supplying a direct download link to me that bypassed the Market.

The reason the Hero couldn’t see Pandora in the Android Market is best summed up by a comment left here by Dan Morill of the Android community:

Pandora has marked their app as “copy protected” in the Android Market. One effect of this is that the app will not be visible to phones that are not recognized as running a final shipping build. (Developer phones are likewise not considered shipping builds and don’t see copy protected apps, so my fellow commenters are essentially right.) Since your Hero is not available in the US, it more or less by definition isn’t shipping, and so most likely HTC has not provided us with the info we need to make copy protected apps visible. Once the Hero is finalized and shipping, copy protected apps will most likely appear.

This seems to be what happened, the Hero I am evaluating was supplied by HTC and while it appears to be a final commercial version of the phone, HTC and Sprint may not have informed everyone that it is no longer a “preliminary” version. I was not aware that apps could be submitted to the Android Market as “copy protected”, which has implications for unlocked phones and those running modded OS builds that have been in the news of late.

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