When comparing Flipboard vs Pocket Casts, the Slant community recommends Pocket Casts for most people. In the question“What are the most useful Android phone apps?” Pocket Casts is ranked 9th while Flipboard is ranked 29th. The most important reason people chose Pocket Casts is:
You can set a 'start from' position for a podcast to skip a set number of seconds from the beginning of an episode. Great for when you don't want to listen to an intro you've heard a couple of dozen times before. Additionally, you can also change the playback speed, to slow down fast talkers or speed up slow talkers.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Very polished UI that is organized like a magazine
This app has a very polished, magazine-style layout, that is flipped through by swiping. Because of its layout, Flipboard is especially nice on tablets.
Pro Personalized magazines
Magazines is a features by Flipboard that can allow anyone to create their own personalized magazine by collecting the content from various websites and collate them into a magazine that can also be shared to other readers. Magazines can be set to either public or private access and anyone can follow the magazine.
Pro Free
Pro Cross-platform
Flipboard is available on Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows and web app.
Pro Google Reader import
There is also a simple import from Google Reader.
Pro Social network integration
Flipboard pulls information from Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc. Everything is aggregated in one app, which can then be flipped through and shared, either directly on Flipboard or on social networks.
Pro Easily discover stories based on topics
Flipboard has millions of Magazines that anyone can follow, covering various subjects. Some cover general topics like home decoration, while others are immensely specific: for example, there’s one just about technological advances that extend human lifespan. All users can create their own Magazines and share them publicly, with friends, or keep them for private use.
Pro Remembers playback speed & starting position
You can set a 'start from' position for a podcast to skip a set number of seconds from the beginning of an episode. Great for when you don't want to listen to an intro you've heard a couple of dozen times before.
Additionally, you can also change the playback speed, to slow down fast talkers or speed up slow talkers.
Pro Quick access to Sleep Timer
The most pleasing User Experience (UX) to set a Sleep Timer.
Activating the sleep timer will stop the podcast after a set period of time or at the End of the Episode.
Pro Vibrant aesthetics
Pocket Casts has one of the most colorful, pleasant to use interfaces.
For example, the app takes the most prominent color from the album art and colorizes the rest of the playback interface based on that color. This allows the app to stay vibrant and slightly different for each podcast.
Or the way it displays featured podcasts in a colorful mosaic made from album art, makes the whole experience of using the app pleasant.
Pro Auto download specific podcasts
You can set Pocket Casts to automatically download the latest episode of a podcast, whenever a new episode is released.
Pro Excellent, easy to use discovery system
Clicking the plus button in the top-right corner will bring you to featured podcasts. From there you can access multiple ways of finding new things to listen to such as: top charts (that can be separated in audio and video), search (that allows searching both by name and feed URL), a list of podcast networks and different podcast categories.
They also have a great selection of podcasts to choose from. The team behind Pocket Casts work hard to maintain a reliable and high quality catalog so you can avoid out of date listings, problems with raw feeds, etc.
Pro Sync with iPhone, iPad, Android
If you use Pocket Casts on more than one device, you can synchronize settings, playback positions, etc., across all your devices.
Pro Sonos integration
It is possible to connect Pocket Casts with Sonos, and play podcasts.
Pro Global and per-podcast playback settings
Enables you to set a "global" playback speed to use for all podcasts which can be over-ridden by a podcast specific playback speed.
Pro Automated playlist creation
Pocket Casts has a feature called Episode Filter, that allows automatically creating playlists based on setting such as playing states (unplayed, playing, played), status (downloaded, downloading, not downloaded), episode type (audio, video) and of course podcasts themselves.
You can also customize the appearance of the playlist with a color and an icon to help it stand out easier.
Pro Can set custom skip-forward and back timing
You can set custom "skip forward" and "skip backward" timings for easily skipping past parts of podcasts you don't like.
Cons
Con Excessive ads with no way to remove them
Flipboard doesn’t offer subscription plans, having only the completely free full version. However, it does feature ads that appear between articles and there’s no way of removing this function.
Con Needs better organization of topics, mags, users followed
When you follow 3-5 magazines per topic (sometimes more) it would be nice to be able to group some of these together in a way that constricts the 'fire hose' of content.
Con Low quality news sources
The default content is from low quality sources such as Mashable.
Con Cannot create custom playlists
You can not add specific podcast episodes to create a custom playlist. While you can set up "filters" to create a playlist, if you're trying to follow a thread of specific podcast episodes, you can't set that up.
Con Skip episode often does not work with CarPlay
The Skip Episode feature, to automatically mark an episode as listened to and finshed, often does not work in CarPlay mode. Instead, you have to push the "skip forward" button a lot. Good luck having a long enough stoplight for that!