When comparing Pocket Casts vs Solid Explorer, 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 Solid Explorer is ranked 25th. 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 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 The team behind Pocket Casts work hard to maintain a reliable and high quality catalog so you can avoid out of date listings, problems with raw feeds, etc.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.
Pro Easy to use
With the amount of functions as well as the two pane browsing, Solid Explorer is very easy to use.
Pro Two panel browsing
Solid Explorer allows for two separate panels to be browsed simultaneously, allowing for easy copy past functions as well as drag and drop.
Pro Beautiful material design
Pro Connects to cloud services
Add Google Drive, One Drive, Dropbox, and more, all natively through extensions.
Pro Ability to read and extract ZIP, 7ZIP, RAR and TAR archives, even encrypted
Pro Rich customization options: icons sets, colour schemes, themes
Pro A perfect implementation of Material Design
Pro Multi-Platform Versatility
Solid Explorer has efficient, productive, and fluid interfaces customized for each users' specific platforms. Versatile, intuitive, and productive on small mobile screens, and capitalizes on larger mobiles (tablets), increasing functionality with added screen real estate.
Pro Cloud file manager: Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, Google Drive, Sugarsync, Copy, Mediafire, Owncloud, Yandex
Pro Ability to create password protected ZIP and 7ZIP archives
Pro FTP, SFTP, WebDav, SMB/CIFS clients
Pro Root access makes Solid Explorer a fully functional root explorer
Pro Detailed file information with storage usage statistics
Pro Native picture viewer (SE Image) and music player (SE Music Player)
Allows quick opening of images and audio files to preview without opening another app.
Pro Useful tools: hiding unwanted folders, FTP Server (plugin), bookmarks, Chromecast support, media browser
Pro Batch rename: change names of multiple files at once using regular expressions and variables
Pro Indexed search finds your files in a couple of seconds
Pro Protect individual files &/or folders with a password
If your device has a fingerprint sensor you can use it to open encrypted files without a need to provide the password. The same applies for cloud storages, which can now be accessed with the fingerprint as well.
Pro Extensibility: more features in separate plugins available in Google Play
Cons
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!
Con Does not work with paid podcasts
Con Costs money
There is a 14 day free trial, but for those that would like to use the app longer, it will cost money to unlock.
Con Slow SMB connections
Connecting to a Samba server can take 30 seconds or longer.
Con No native Office document viewer or video player
There is no native document viewer, except for the plain text editor (SE Text Editor), nor is there a native video player, with the exception of a video casting app (SE Video Cast). The video casting app appears to require a Chromecast device.