Comparison

Granula vs PO

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Granula

Features
Read full description

Granula is a granular synthesizer for the phone. It takes a sound from demo samples (like guitar, calimba, tongue drum, etc.) or thirty seconds you record on the spot and scatters it into hundreds of tiny overlapping grains. A slow, shifting texture comes back to your space: ambient pads, drones, atmospheres that keep evolving as long as you keep listening. Everything is played with your hands. The whole screen is a morph pad: move a finger across it and the sound moves with you, while a field of glyphs lights up under your touch and churns in time with what you hear. FOUR CHARACTERS • Reverse: short grains, played mostly backwards, with octave and fifth sparkles on top • Gater: a denser cloud chopped on a grid, from halves down to sixteenths • Chorus: long, slow, detuned grains with the read position drifting like a tide • Scatter: harmonic intervals thrown at random and sprayed wide FOUR KNOBS • Grain size, from 15 ms clicks to 1 second • Position: where in the sample the grains are lifted from • Density: from sparse drips to a solid wash • Dry/Wet: a six-second convolution reverb, plus the amount of reversed grains RECORD THE WORLD AROUND Hold the record button and capture up to thirty seconds of anything: your voice, a room, rain on a window, a string you plucked once. The take is granulated immediately and kept in your library under a name of its own. You can also import your own MP3 or WAV files. MADE FOR A PHONE • Keeps playing with the screen locked and in the background • Survives calls, headphone unplugs and output switches without losing your session • Any class-compliant USB or Bluetooth MIDI keyboard plays it - plug in and go, nothing to pair inside the app GRANULA PRO Every built-in sound is free and stays free. A free account also brings in one sound of your own - recorded or imported. Granula Pro lifts that limit: record and import as much as you like, and everything syncs to your account so a new phone picks up where the last one left off. No ads. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

PO

Design and edit drum sounds, kits, and patterns for Teenage Engineering's PO-32 Tonic. Transfer your creations to the device via audio. Back up and edit existing sounds, and import/export patches from Microtonic.

Highlights
  • Shape 16 sounds with 21 synth parameters
  • Program 16-step patterns with accents
  • Send kits, sounds, or patterns via audio
  • Back up and decode PO-32 data dumps
  • Import/export Microtonic patches
  • Local library with tags and favorites
Features
Read full description

PO-PatchStudio designs drum sounds, kits and patterns for Teenage Engineering's PO-32 Tonic, then sends them to your Pocket Operator over sound. Free, with no ads and no account. The PO-32 has no USB data connection. It loads new sounds the way an old modem does, by listening through its microphone. So this app does the fiddly part on a proper screen: build a kit, hold your phone next to the PO-32 and press play. WHAT YOU CAN DO - Shape all 16 sounds with the full set of 21 synth parameters, plus both ends of the morph - Program 16-step patterns on the pads, with accents, and hear them before you send - Send a whole kit, a single sound or a pattern to the PO-32 over audio - Back up your PO-32: record its data dump through the microphone and the app decodes it into a kit you can edit - Import Microtonic .mtdrum and .mtpreset patches, including files from older versions of Microtonic, and export your sounds back out - Keep kits, sounds and patterns in a local library with tags and favourites WORKS WITH - PO-32 Tonic - Also sends drum sounds to the PO-35 Speak's built-in Tonic channel HOW TRANSFER WORKS Put the PO-32 in receive mode (press acc + sound), turn your phone's volume up and play the transfer into the PO-32's mic. To back up, start recording in the app, then hold write and press sound on the PO-32. Previews come from an open-source recreation of the PO-32's synth, so they sound close to the hardware but not identical. Once a sound is on the PO-32, it plays through the device's own engine. A NOTE FROM ME I'm a solo developer and a PO-32 owner. PO-PatchStudio stands on the open-source libpo32 library by Eric Lewis and years of reverse-engineering by the Pocket Operator community, which is why it's free. If something is missing or broken, tell me. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Teenage Engineering AB or NuEdge Development AB. Pocket Operator, PO-32 and Tonic are trademarks of Teenage Engineering AB. Microtonic is a trademark of NuEdge Development AB.

Screenshots

Granula4 screens
PO4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: PO at every 2 days against Granula's weekly. PO also leads on device support (3 vs 1) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). On price, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Granula sells 1 in-app purchase, starting at $2.99 per month and PO sells 3 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Granula ships an update weekly, PO every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on October 29, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Granula versus PO: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterGranulaPO
PriceFreeFree
Rating—5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Positive reviews—100.0% of reviews
Number of ratings—1 — better
Update frequencyWeeklyEvery 2 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
Monetization—Free
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad, iPod — better
Requires iOS17.015.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size10 MB14 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperSergey DuzhevPhoton Consulting Limited

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Granula

Subscriptions1
  • Granula Pro$2.991 Month
3 purchases

PO

One-time3
  • Tip: Thanks$5.00
  • Tip: Big Thanks$10.00
  • Tip: Huge Thanks$20.00

Questions

Is Granula free?
Granula is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is PO free?
PO is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Granula or PO have ads?
Neither Granula nor PO shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Granula or PO?
Granula ships an update weekly, and PO every 2 days. Most recently, Granula was updated on October 29, 2026 and PO on October 25, 2026.

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