[General Questions and Answers] notnerb84:
To increase the volume of Pandora on Windows Mobile:

1. Open Pandora

2. Wait for music to start playing

3. Press the OK button (you should now hear an audible increase in the playback volume)

4. Bring Pandora back into focus, repeat steps 1-3 and enjoy your preferred level!

Why this works:

Let's concentrate first on the number of levels of fail in play here...

Level 1:

Windows Mobile utilizes some pretty funky key-mappings. As can be seen here:

http:[slash][slash]msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb431750.aspx

the key for 'volume +' is actually 'F6'. Since most Windows Mobile phones do not have the F-key row, the only way to do this is if you have a hard button.

Level 2:

The Pandora programmers decided to give Pandora an independent volume control at all based upon the same button configuration used by Windows Mobile to detect hardware button presses.

This also works the same way in the browser-based version at pandora.com! Try using your hardware 'volume -' button (if you have one) on your PC while you have the browser window running Pandora in focus - you'll see what I mean...

Level 3:

The Pandora programmers decided to not expose the above control to the user in the GUI

Level 4:

The Pandora programmers decided to utilize Windows Media Player mobile for their backend. Unfortunately for us who do not have a hardware volume control, they initialize the Windows Media Player ActiveX control's (Those of you who have ever programmed in Visual Basic should know what I mean here) volume value to BFFF (hex) or 49151 (dec) - equaling about 74.6% - every time you start the Pandora player, instead of 100%.

This is a 32-bit value, so the max value is FFFF (hex) or 65535 (dec). It is also written to the registry at the location \HKCU\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences\Volume and it's horrid results can be observed by starting Media Player after Exiting the Pandora app.

Level 5:

Those of us suffering from a lack of hardware buttons may have thought they were really smart after discovering the above and tried a button re-programming application for Windows Mobile, to attempt to bestow upon ourselves a volume +, volume -, or both hardware buttons. This simply does not work for one reason or another - I am guessing because the programs may only send the key-down event and Pandora may only look for the key up event.

I spent the last two days trying to bring forth fruit from this method.

And the best part...

When you press the 'OK' hard button, it doesn't correspond to just one button in the Operating system. It is actually a combination of WINKEY + F6. Those of you who have hardware button controls can try this, or the rest of us can get the 'cerdisp' program and try this with our Windows computers. It should close whatever program you have in focus. Since Pandora is not really looking for the WIN key, I'm assuming it ignores the WIN key press, instead looking only at the F6 key press alongside it, this time most likely along with it's associated key-up event.

Please let me know your results. This was tested on an HTC PPC-6800 with a cooked WM6.5 rom.

On a side note, it's been a long year of searching for a solution, but at long last I can listen to Pandora at full volume through my Ford SYNC-capable stereo using A2DP! :)