PodLP

PodLP is the podcast app for the listeners the smartphone-podcasting conversation forgets: KaiOS feature-phone users, JioPhone owners, and the roughly billion people whose primary connected device is not a full smartphone. It's built by an independent developer, Thomas Barrasso (Last Byte), and it's the reason a podcast app exists on a $30 feature phone at all.

Origins

PodLP launched on the KaiStore in June 2020 and on the JioStore (India's Reliance-Jio store for the JioPhone) in October 2020, becoming the first genuinely usable podcast app for the KaiOS platform. Thomas built it as a solo developer project after realising the mainstream podcast apps assumed a smartphone-and-Wi-Fi world that a huge share of listeners don't have. In 2024 the app expanded to Cloud Phone, KaiOS's cloud-based feature-phone-as-a-service platform.

Why it matters

PodLP is a working proof-point for open podcasting as a global technology rather than an iPhone-Android duopoly. It runs on hardware that costs tens of dollars rather than hundreds, syncs subscriptions and playback on a device with a T9 keypad, and delivers open RSS feeds to listeners in markets that Apple Podcasts and Spotify don't prioritise. Nigeria, Uganda, and Tanzania are among its top countries of use, a listener geography most Western podcast blogs never write about.

The app has crossed more than 10 million installs across more than 175 countries, which for a feature-phone app is a genuinely large number.

What it does

PodLP subscribes to any open RSS feed and streams or downloads episodes, sized to the constrained storage and cellular-data budgets a feature-phone user is working with. UI is optimised for T9 keypad navigation and small screens. Discovery runs through the open Podcast Index rather than a proprietary catalogue. Podcasting 2.0 spec support has been landing steadily, so chapters and value tags work where publishers ship them.

Where you get it

KaiStore, JioStore, and Cloud Phone's app catalogue. Not on iOS or full Android; the platform targets are the point.

Current stance

Actively developed by Thomas Barrasso, quietly one of the more consequential apps in this directory for global open podcasting, and a working demonstration that RSS is a portable enough standard to run on any hardware people actually own. If open podcasting stays open globally, it will be partly because of clients like PodLP.