Phones should have FM radio again
(www.spacebar.news)
from corbin@infosec.pub to technology@lemmy.world on 02 Oct 2023 15:14
https://infosec.pub/post/3213510
from corbin@infosec.pub to technology@lemmy.world on 02 Oct 2023 15:14
https://infosec.pub/post/3213510
threaded - newest
I really hope not.
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i will not elaborate
The 90s kid in me yearns for a phone with Fm radio, headphone jack, IR blaster, stylus, memory card slot, slide out keyboard and one of those click on projectors the Motorola phones used to have. I would call it the Donatello and it would be radical.
I’ve refused to buy these “flagship” phones that don’t have a headphone jack. The 90s kid in me will live on, damnit!
Just use Bluetooth
Cables doesn’t consume battery not get affected by radio interference.
When you plug earbuds into your phone, your phone is literally powering the earbuds. The cables transmit an electrical signal; they consume battery. The consumption is fairly negligible, of course, but so is modern Bluetooth.
I believe they meant that bluetooth headphones need to be charged, while wired ones just run off the phone’s battery. Sure, the amount of power consumed might not be that different (though bluetooth will still be more), but its easier for the user to just charge one device.
Sure, that should be why using BT my phone headphones, battery lasts 30-40% less 🤦🏻
Either your phone is straight up broken or your anecdotal measurements are way off. There is effectively no difference in battery life on a phone between using wired headphones and Bluetooth.
Why? You can just hire a dude to sing to you as you walk around. Just use a bard, bro.
…Is that a serious offer?
I’m sure that you can find one on craigslist or whatever hell site people use for that these days.
How pray tell would Bluetooth help with having FM radio? The headphone cable is used as the antenna for phones.
Worse quality audio, vastly more expensive, easier to lose pieces, yet another device I need to think about charging, will need replaced after a while as the batteries swell/die, extra e-waste, occasional pairing problems (especially on PC), etc.
And guess what, if all of that sounds good or doesn’t matter to you, you can still use Bluetooth on phones with 3.5mm ports!
As a solution for me, I grabbed a fiio brt3k. Supports the highres Bluetooth codecs and can totally be used as a usbc dac. I got a pair of the samsung beans with my last phone and just hate them, this lets me use any pair of wired headphones I want.
I still want a proper on board dac and a headphone jack but it’s what I have to work with
I used to swear by wired headphones.
The audio quality, not needing batteries, the simplicity.
But then I got a decent pair of Bluetooth headphones and I discovered how much wires got in my way. I discovered that the audio quality coming out of phones were garbage regardless of connection type, and the headphones I got would last weeks of daily use on one charge.
Plus I would get a more water proof phone, and I would never have to worry about the headphone jack breaking inside of the port, or my headphones going flying off because I walked past a knob of whatever at just the right height to ruin my day.
I still want phones to have the ports, but on mobile devices I’ll never use them. I just want others to be happy too.
I have inside pockets added so that I can deal with the wire issue. Makes for a better place to carry the phone anyway.
My old Moto G3 was the only real waterproof phone, whatever you have I bet you take it out of your pocket to swim, and guess what, it had a headphone jack.
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Same I use wired earbuds everyday at work and I refuse to buy a phone without one
I recently bought Bluetooth large headphones and I feel like they’re a massive improvement. However, when it comes to earbuds (which I still use a lot when big ones are inconvenient), I would never buy wireless ones. I am afraid that in a lot of them, battery is not easily replaceable (while in my big ones it can be accessed by unscrewing a cover), and the small things would get lost fairly easily.
I do have a pair of Bluetooth headphones and I use them from time to time. I tend to revert to my wired m50x pretty often just out of personal preference
I have some wired headphones for when I am gaming on the computer, but anything else I use Bluetooth earbuds, and I can’t imagine going back to wired ones, never getting the cable caught on things is so freeing. They also have active noise canceling and hear thru which both come in real handy on work sites.
Also you have to spend a lot more for good bluetooth ear buds compared to wired. Like, you can get a pair of KZ ZSN Pros for 20 bucks or so. They sound great, have nice material quality (they got metal bits on em!), good quality cable, great sounding mic… you get the idea. To get bluetooth ear buds that sound just as good you’d probably have to spend like 80 bucks? And they’d be made of plastic and not have the mic quality anywhere near the KZs. It’s just so much easier to get good audio quality with a wire.
If there was a decent phone with FM radio and an IR blaster, I might pick it over a lot of other ones.
I miss having an IR blaster so much, I was always finding new uses for it. Now I’ve got little remotes everywhere again
Same, including an IR led is such a simple thing, why did this ever go away. Though I’m pretty sure most Chinese phones still have them, Xiaomi phones do for sure
There’s a lot more capability with USB-C audio though. Even entirely discounting Bluetooth, there are plenty of high quality USB-C headphones out there that blow the pants off of what you could do with a 3.5mm jack.
No lol. It all gets converted to an analog signal to drive the headphones. There’s no difference in fidelity between 1/8" and USB-C. It’s literally the exact same signal.
Except you’re not limited to the phones hardware and space constraints with USB. You can put the DAC, you know the thing that does that conversion, in the headphone end now, whereas you couldn’t with 3.5mm because you can push power over USB. Meaning you have the ability to get headphones with a much better DAC, which will provide better audio quality.
It also frees up space in the phone for more battery, different radios, and other things.
Where’s our different radios and other things? They just keep adding more camera lenses, and MORE MEGAPIXELS.
Nothing innovative or useful, and now we’re forced to buy more shit (adapters) to make other things we already have, work with our phones.
I’ll stick with my “mid grade” phone that does all of the same things, but also connects to 3.5mm
PS. This mid grade phone also has USB C if I really wanted a custom DAC, and alternatively I can also charge and listen to things at the same time, with no extra cost
Uh, since Apple removed it they’ve added the mmWave antenna, the ultrawideband chip, the satellite antenna, and a thread radio.
Fair point about Apple. They did also remove the home button and optimized their display further to accommodate that though.
If only it wasn’t so proprietary, I could get on the apple train. Still mad about my headphones jacks though.
DACs in phones these days are totally fine these days. There really isn’t any need for an external one unless you need to drive higher impedance cans. Quality-wise, they’re totally fine.
It’s a tradeoff of convenience. I want the jack because it’s a universal standard that doesn’t require external batteries or the right alignment of the stars for proper functionality. Quality has been fine since the dawn of the smartphone, IMO, at least for earbuds. You’re still free to use a USB DAC if there’s a jack!
Basically all the phones with headphone jacks now have abysmal long-term support. Even the fair phone got rid of the headphone jack so they could sell their bullshit wireless headphones
This is why I love Sony phones.
And a translucent purple case!
You’ll be happy to know that I bribed my kids into watching the 1990 TMNT live action movie this weekend. The younger one loved it, but the preteen was full of critical commentary the whole time. Go figure. But hey, I won one of them over to the TMNT side.
I’ve an Armor 21, it has the radio, headphone jack, IR blaster and the memory card slot, plus a loud and clear speaker, actual night vision and is rugged as fuck. Base price sub-$250, upcharge for an attachable endoscope.
Hell yes, just jumped on the ulefone train myself!
Just checked it out, this thing looks sick. But it also looks ugly as shit. Is it as ugly as it looks in person? Specifically not a fan of the RGB LED ring thing on the back?
Honest criticisms: It’s a bit of a brick for sure. I turned the RGB ring off. The multi-function button isn’t as usable as I’d hoped, mostly just a flashlight/screenshot button. The headphone jack and USB port are behind a protected rubber flap, so I keep opening/closing it frequently, but that’s to help with being waterproof. While the optional case functions as a good stand for horizontal viewing and for holding, it is inadequate for vertical, and it just would’ve needed a small internal brace to fix that. The case also blocks their wireless charging connectors, if you were planning to use a dock for that. Attaching the endoscope requires removing a tiny screw. The lack of a bottom button bar has taken some getting used to but I’m fine with it now, the side fingerprint scanner is similar.
Overall I am happy with it. The battery lasts a whole day with high use, it has decent internals for games, the screen and included protector are appropriately unobtrusive, it isn’t running a very outdated version of Android. Perhaps most importantly, it should survive my child who likes to throw my phone and my dumbass who left it in my pocket getting in a pool.
how do you know someone was born in the 80s? they’ll fucking tell you. you can just like stuff without referencing your stupid metal lunchbox all the time.
I was born in the early 70s. We didn’t have anything cool.
i remember old ipods could listen to the radio using the headphones as an antenna and i thought it was the coolest thing in the world. listening to a live feed like that is so much more…viscerally satisfying than just streaming a song or even listening to internet radio, where it could easily be just a computer. it’s nice knowing someone is actually creating a show for you in real time
Only a couple of the final pod nanos had built-in radio, the other iPods all required additional hardware to be plugged in. I found that the hard way with an iPod classic… Even my shitty flip phone had built-in radio with an earpiece connected lol.
Sadly 95% of the shows are just computers with a pre-loaded playlist. Still fun to know though that you are listening with a lot of other people together.
The shows don't really exist anymore. At least not in my area. Well over a decade ago they were all replaced by playlists and commercials.
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You could check out NTS Radio - so many shows from a very wide variety of genres, and they have an archive of every episode
Uh, no. It entirely depends on the station. My wife has radio stations in her car that sound almost 100% prerecorded and edited together - I can never tell if someone is actually talking now or if it’s just a snippet from a previous recording. However, if I listen to a very specific radio station from my home country, which I can only get via internet stream, it still feels like listening to the radio. The way of listening has nothing to do with it, it’s all in the station’s programming.
They should have DAB+ radio. Much better.
My car has DAB+ and it kinda sucks. In principle it’s better, the audio quality is better and instead of static it decreases the volume when the signal degrades. But it’s so sensitive to interference and when it looses the signal (or thinks it has lost it), it starts hunting and gets totally confused. Often it can’t re-acquire the signal till I just hit the button to re-tune to the channel. Maybe it’s just the radio in my car is bad (2016 Chevy, nothing special) or I live in a bit of a dead zone or something. I imagine if you don’t move it would work perfectly, but when driving it’s mostly annoying. Which is a shame, because a lot of stations are only on DAB+, not having the money for an FM license.
Definitely. Especially in countries like the UK where the only decent commercial radio station (absolute radio) is now DAB only.
Then you’d need to include a headphone jack since the headphones acted as the antenna.
Good.
It’s funny how the few who’re totally sold on Bluetooth go “ugh, but then you’d need a headphone jack” as if it isn’t an upgrade for others which wouldn’t affect their ability to use Bluetooth at all.
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But what’s the problem with having an analog component?
Also, your last claim is weird, because the headphones will ultimately require an analog signal, so, it just changes the place where the conversion is made, either in the user device, or in a digital circuit inside the headphones, and the cable diatance is small enough for adding interference. Your better sound experience is probably due to manufacturers making better sound actuators, not due to the digital data transmission. Try some really cheap bt headphones, and you will see what bad quality is.
Not an expert on this but, but AFAIK having the analog component inside the device is exactly the problem, as all the components in there cause electrical interference that you can’t really shield against inside such a tiny device. It’s similar to how the built-in PC audio is often quite bad compared to even the cheapest external DAC.
Not to mention it’s a form factor that requires a considerable amount of space. That for the majority of users is doing nothing but taking up that space for no reason. Every phone without a headphone jack is capable of getting a jack with a simple dongle. What I love are the people who have absolute no problem with a dangly cord around their neck but lose their shit if you have to connect a 1 inch piece of wire first. They act like it’s a bag phone you attach to your side. And as far as audio fidelity goes the DAC inside a cell phone is nearly always garbage and you’ll need your own DAC anyway which is easy to obtain when it can be powered by your phone.
Yup. What I’d actually like to see is a secondary USB-C port becoming much more common. USB-C is just much more universal and if both ports support charging it also helps device longevity since you can still charge if one breaks. My handheld emulation device has two and it’s been handy several times already.
I’m not an expert either, but the DAC on my Galaxy S10 sounds amazing. It’s just a question of whether manufacturers bother implementing it properly.
Indeed, interference is the greatest enemy of analog signals. It’s not impossible to shield, though. Other parts are already shielded, but I can see how it could have become more challenging.
Btw, I thought it was more related to frequency than components size, but now I’m confused, I will look more into it when I have more time. Thanks for bringing this into the topic.
It doesn’t make it at all harder to waterproof the devices. Sony has been making them for a decade now (IP57 in 2013 on the Xperia Z), Samsung didn’t have any issues with the S10 line either. This is just a lie manufacturers tell you to sell bluetooth crap.
This requires an expensive (in my country) data plan and cell tower service.
Then get a $10 transistor radio instead of a cell phone
I see myself wanting to listen to music in situations where the data signal is bad more often than I want to use my phone underwater or something.
You say that like it’s a bad thing. You can still use Bluetooth even when your phone has a headphone jack, and headphone jacks can be IP67 rated so it’s not a concern for waterproofing.
Why is it limited to 67? It should be easier than the USB port right?
I mean, the only other rating above that is IP68, and that would require them to specify the depth and time that the phone can be submerged. Most manufacturers only go for IP67 because it’s much cheaper to test.
That I know but I was wondering why you specifically mentioned 67. I guess I misread that as a limit.
Nah, not a limit. It’s just a cost/benefit trade off. Manufacturers don’t typically push for IP68 unless they’re specifically marketing the device for underwater use, and believe users will be willing to accept the higher resulting cost.
How did I say that like it’s a bad thing?
I wonder if wired USB-C Headphones could work the same?
Yes. But it would also drain more power.
Considering when I use the radio in the car I might get 2 songs before 5 minus of commercials, no thanks. Audiobooks, podcasts, and PlexAmp all the way
it's not about the entertainment value, but rather news, weather and other information during emergencies when your cell signal might, and is more likely to, go to shit.
I mean, just because it’s included doesn’t mean you have to use it.
I must be ootl; what’s the upside compared to Spotify ? Having to endure ads, talk-shows and other open mics while having shitty reception isn’t enticing… at least here there isn’t any station I would find satisfying content-wise; given the whole frequency assignment bullshit small stations are few and far between with nothing that would cover metal and / or frenchcore. So the small benefit of music discovery isn’t really possible anymore for me.
If you can afford to pay for all that mobile data usage, and if you’re walking through an area with good mobile data coverage, go right ahead.
For the rest of us, we have to suffice with saving our MP3s to an SD Card and listening that way, or using the radio, though as you pointed out radio sucks haha. But it is very low power and low barrier to entry!
What mobile data usage? I’m loading my tracks at home save a few times I browse where I have network coverage… for all intents and purposes bar the monthly tax it’s the same as my good old mp3 player. Also audio streaming isn’t exactly the most bandwidth consuming thing right ? Unless you want lossless quality but then good luck with FM radio…
News during emergencies
Yeah that would be a good one and the reason I keep a receiver at hand and charged. But I see the point.
Do these chips have AM radio? Otherwise it's not that useful for emergencies.
Depends on the emergency. No, AM would require a ferrite roild and thats something phones just dont do.
from what i recall almost every QCOM chipset has the circuitry baked in, it's just disabled. https://www.wired.com/2016/07/phones-fm-chips-radio-smartphone/
Yeah, a lot of smartphone chipsets still have an FM tuner, but it needs additional circuitry (e.g. a 3.5mm jack to use as the antenna) that most device makers don’t implement.
Or they just disable the radio for some reason even though everything else is there. They’ve been hardware disabling them these days instead of just software. Makes you wonder.
Makes me wonder if you understand that if they have the feature turned on then they need to support it with additional hardware, software, and ongoing tech support.
Even if it was as simple as turning it on, they would need to support people complaining about reception since phone sizes are not great for FM antennae (which they most likely don't have). Then they would need to support people who complain about signal quality since FM is not a work/not work situation like digital. Don't even get me started on the confusing FM HD weirdness. Oh, then they need to have an app built in that people can ignore because they didn't spend any money on it like their other terrible default apps.
You’ve never had a phone with a working radio.
That’s been going on for years. I had a Nexus One back in 2010, it had the radio hardware but no software support in the stock ROM. When I installed an alternate ROM the radio worked just fine.
Removing headphone jacks is more about saving internal space and pushing Bluetooth headphone sales than a ploy to stop radio listening though.
it probably wouldn't be too hard to diplex it with one of the low band antennas, wouldn't be great reception but it'd give you something for FM stations that are close enough. a relatively big ass coupling inductor and small series cap before the antenna tuner shouldn't do too much insertion loss damage, these cellular front ends are lossy AF already... and the lowest low band freq is like 6x higher from the FM band, so isolation should be ok... dunno, obviously adds more cost than what it's worth to the bean counters in charge i'm sure.
I hate this idea. FM channels have more advertisements than they have music. And there’s no technical way (yet) that I know of to automatically block said advertisements. Advertisements have driven the world into madness, as now anything that requires them to stay profitable either jams them into everything, or has a huge focus on rage-bait in order to get people to listen/watch/click. This rage-bait has made our world more angry, more divisive, and more chaotic than ever. Fuck advertisers.
The point of the article is to have them there for emergencies since we already have systems in place to broadcast emergency info over radio, and it’s a lot simpler to implement than satellite for when cell signal is down.
I don’t see the necessity for FM Radio to be used for this. They’ve removed them from most of today’s phones, and adding them back would be just as complex as adding something like LoRa for emergency messages.
LoRa could also be used for mesh-messaging, and bring some added privacy features that people genuinely would have a use for.
I guarantee this article has FM Radio station money behind it.
I’m a qualified amateur radio operator and I work in IT as my day job, if you can’t see how bad it would be to continue to put all our eggs into one basket for datacom, primarily in the hands of poorly regulated private cellphone companies, then I can’t really help you.
Fact is, 80-110 MHz FM requires less infrastructure (aka fewer broadcast points) to more completely cover an area, and it’s almost impossible to have it blocked by buildings/walls/vehicles, etc. Sure, the signal might go to shit, but it’s at least able to be heard even in very challenging conditions. It also takes nearly no power to run. Receiver chips can be made so small that it would be a trivial addition to make for most cellular manufacturers. There’s no licensing fees or service fees so the entire process is free from top to bottom.
Add that to the fact that it’s already deployed, regulated and configured for emergencies, and you have a very low implementation cost for a very reliable and robust service.
The idea here isn’t to add it so we can listen to FM commercials all day. Anyone I know who had FM on their cellphone, didn’t use it; and I won’t suggest that anyone will use it now… but if there’s a major catastrophe and the cellular networks go down, having a recieve-only way of getting emergency information to those who are otherwise disconnected from everything is a big deal. A lot of households are going digital only for their entertainment and getting rid of old stereos and hi-fi units with radio built in for all HDMI systems that make their Netflix work nicely. Many also have zero land line service so once the internet stops functioning and the cell towers go out, the only method of communication these people will have is standing on their porch and screaming into the void.
I’ve monitored communications during major outages, like sitting hurricane hits on the contental US and heard the radio traffic stating that there’s people at x location and all consumer/commercial communication systems are inoperable. The only thing working was an amateur owned and operated repeater network to relay the communication across the region; I was listening to an internet relay on the outskirts of the coverage area and it was clear that they would have had no outbound communication if they didn’t have those repeater nets. Inbound, I’m sure FM and AM radio was still operable, so anyone with an FM set could hear news and alerts as they happened.
Radio is also nearly instant, while LoRA mesh networks rely on people having nodes to relay the messages and the messages may be interrupted while a node is down. The first isn’t a thing yet, the second is difficult to do at best. Amateur FM cells can transmit over many miles potentially several dozen, meanwhile most LoRA can’t reach a fraction of that far, requiring a massively larger number of them, and each one is a potential point of failure.
With regulation, commercial broadcast FM sites are required by law to participate in the emergency broadcast system, no such regulation exists for LoRA.
Under normal operating conditions, FM is fairly useless, unless you feel like listening to ads, but in an emergency, it can be the only way for you to be told that, though the weather seems to have gotten better, it’s temporary and you should stay where you are.
All my handheld radio transceivers have commercial FM recievers built in, so either way, I’m covered. I also have several dedicated FM and shortwave receiving radios around. I have adequate communication capability for an emergency. I’m not perfectly set up, even remotely, but I’ll be able to reach out to someone if I’m without power, internet, cellphone coverage, etc, during a major event. I can call for help, get information about the situation and it’s duration, I can reach out over 10 miles or more to communicate with others, all with my handheld.
And you want to take all this infrastructure and preparedness that we as a society have developed over more than a century, and flush it all away… because why? You have a hard-on for LoRA? You think old tech is useless in today’s day and age? Because you have a problem with broadcast radio trying to survive, a service that’s free to you, by playing ads?
Do you realize how stupid you sound?
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Most people won’t read until that last paragraph, ha ha.
Thanks for writing this up. I have always been concerned that my car is the nearest FM radio. I always kept a clock radio stashed in my basement “workshop” area but it was thrown out at some point along with the old rotary phone I had with it.
My son has a beginner electronics kit that can build a very low powered transmitter so I got him a cheap usb chargeable AM/FM receiver with an aux in, speaker, and headphone jack for next to nothing. The antenna is actually extendable and doesn’t suck. Going to stash it when he’s done with it. Could come in handy.
Man, we have maybe 5 radios all around the house so battery operated or rechargeable.
I always did but we moved across country as a lot of stuff just got tossed. You know that old radio in the garage covered in paint, and the clock radios no one uses anymore, etc. My mother’s house has one in every room, I think (except bathrooms and maybe the living room, ironically).
Well this was a fun read and makes me want to be better prepared for a potential real emergency.
I would like to be the first to encourage you on that journey.
For me, I’ve mainly focused on skills, more than stuff. IMO, preppers are a bit short sighted most of the time, they’ll pack a month’s worth of supplies in an airtight drum and leave it in their garage. It’s 50+ lbs of stuff. You’re telling me that when you get an evacuation order, you’re going to haul that thing into you Ford Explorer before you evacuate, when there may be a flood or wildfire just minutes from you? Okay.
I have my first aid certificate. Standard first aid, level c CPR and AED training. I also know some basic self defense (though it’s been years since I practiced anything), and I know enough about radio that if I’m presented with a walkie or ham radio, or something, I know what I’m doing without being told (maybe if I find one and the previous owner of the radio is incapacitated or something).
I’ve put a first aid kit everywhere I practically can, we have two in the house, plus one in my car (soon to be all cars). I also want to look into some MRE’s and a safe way to store a moderate amount of water long term in my car (winters here are kind of a shit show)… plus maybe some basic survival supplies, enough to make a fire and a crude shelter, which can be repurposed for other things as well. Maybe a water filter for turning Creek water into drinkable/potable water… I want to keep it fairly trim. For shelter supplies, a good multipurpose knife, a couple of tarps and some good rope… you get the idea. Though, that stuff sounds like things you would carry to kidnap and murder someone. Not my intent, but it’s funny how much overlap there is between survival gear and gear for more nefarious activities…
I’m also very well learned on how to fix just about any common thing, like cars or something, so I should be pretty useful in a pinch. I have a ham radio in my car with more range than the walkies I have, and I have a small collection of walkies all with extra batteries charged and ready to fly (usually already attached to my backpack which is my usual daily carry). I need to make some tweaks and round out my setup (as previously mentioned), but I feel like I’m in a good spot for now.
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reddit moment
A lot of people still have am/FM gear, and they’re so invested into their primary communications which is so reliable they don’t think about secondary communications. I have, which is why I’m a ham operator.
Most people at least have FM in their car, the broadcast range is in the lower VHF airspace, not much higher than HF. Most of the HF and LF bands are so tightly allocated that there’s no room to just Willy nilly add another frequency for emergency use for civvies… which would require everyone to buy new radios, which they won’t. Meanwhile, there’s still shortwave, which people also don’t buy that’s already there and lower on the frequency range than broadcast FM… people need to be saved from themselves. Allocating something new and building a bunch of new infrastructure for it is idiotic. The structure is already there with broadcast FM, we just need to save people from themselves and ensure that they have access to it.
I’d be in favour of there being a dedicated broadcast FM frequency for emergencies only. It would become trivial to have a radio station change frequencies to the emergency broadcast frequency when something happens. We could even make the frequency digital instead of FM, and have it encode information by text, and turn it into a recieve-only text-based emergency channel… but making it a whole new band and new radio type on a different frequency that’s not already set up for such a thing is insane to me. So much infrastructure cost for something we literally already have.
Any government that green lights such a program has lost the plot. Use what works.
73
73 to all on frequency.
Whats a good emergency radio with a hand crank that you would recommend?
That class of emergency radio is usually shortwave/am/FM. I have a shortwave/am/FM unit but it’s not hand cranked. The one we have is a ccrane, and honestly I’m not sure if that’s all that good. It seems to function, from the few times we’ve turned it on. I’ve never had to replace the batteries yet so that’s a plus.
Not sure on this. I’m prepared for disaster but I’m not what someone would call a prepper. I mostly have VHF/UHF ham radios and the knowledge on how to make use of them. I’m still pretty new, so I hope someone can comment further.
The ccrane was my late father’s. He insisted on buying that brand and I’m not sure why. It’s probably about 10 years old right now. It’s only a reciever, so anyone should be able to buy one.
I think FM Broadcast is great, but with regard to phones aren’t we missing something here? For a phone to even receive FM broadcast headphones have to be plugged in, it’s been a requirement for any FM RX capable phone I’ve ever had, for antenna purposes. So with regard to the argument for mobiles to have FMrx if such functionality were to become common place we’d need to see the return of headphone jacks and people would need to be carrying corded headphones for it to function.
I think this capability is a great idea, but the limitations forced on us by losing the headphones socket as well as societys fascination with making everything wireless at any cost is a little concerning.
I’ve always considered average to good quality wired buds to be great, but it seems they really are on their way out.
You have an excellent point, and historically, yes, you did need something plugged into a headphone jack to facilitate the rx of the transmission, however, this isn’t strictly required. Broadcast FM is in the 2-3m range, meaning a full-wavelength antenna would be aproximately 3m in length, we don’t even see this on vehicles; most are limited to less than 1m. Even with aerial whip antennas for home-based hifi/stereo systems, often the antenna is not any longer than 1m/3ft, which is about 1/3rd as long as it should be for optimal signal.
The issue here isn’t one of having the space for the antenna, since smaller antennas are used in all sorts of applications, such as with FM and vehicles/stereos etc. The issue is having enough antenna to produce a signal strong enough to differentiate from background noise. The signal to noise ratio is key here. Historically, the only good way to get more signal is to use a better tuned, larger antenna, or an array of the same, this isn’t so much the case anymore. There’s plenty of antenna designs that are still fairly omnidirectional, that can enhance signals. Combine that with more advanced filtering and pre-amplification, a large antenna is not generally a requirement anymore; even the 1m/3ft whips used on cars are often overkill for what we can do with signal processing and modern design. Look at any modern vehicle, and with few exceptions, there’s no longer a visible antenna. That’s not because there isn’t an antenna for FM, it’s because the technology has progressed enough to be able to use much smaller antennas to accomplish the same task. The antennas are still there, they’re just so small and well placed that you don’t need a flagpole on your hood or trunk lid to have it work as-well-as any other FMrx antenna.
Given that the proposal requires a minor redesign of the cellphones to incorporate the broadcast receiving radio, adding a small antenna, or simply using the chassis of the phone as an antenna, would not only be possible but it should be fairly trivial to accommodate for. by no means am I saying it would be the worlds greatest FM antenna system, most certainly it would not be, but it should be sufficient to differentiate the signal from the noise; with relatively trivial signal processing, it should be more than adequate for the purpose.
The technology surrounding FM broadcast radio didn’t just cease and we get what we get; vehicles, among other specific technologies still utilize FM radios and development has continued on them even though very few people have been watching. The technology is far improved from what you can build with a battery, coil of wire, a speaker, and a handful of resistors/capacitors/etc. and similarly it’s far improved from what vehicles had even 15 years ago. Add that to the fact that radio technology is all pretty much the same across the board (from what we use for broadcast FM, to WiFi, 4G/5G/LTE cellular, and GPS included), and a lot of the developments made in any area of radio can be almost directly translated to another radio on a different band, and there’s a lot of technology that, unsurprisingly, will blow most of what most of us have in our houses on our hi-fi stereos, out of the water.
The wonderful thing is that a lot of it is tied to miniaturization and modernization of the technology, meaning a lot of this is tied into integrated circuits that are being mass produced already. IC designs that can be embedded into other ICs to decrease the overall number of chips in a device, fairly easily.
The point I’m dancing around is software-defined radios. SDR is becoming a huge player in all aspects of radio technology, and can replace far more advanced/complex systems with something less complex than a raspberry pi, and often less costly. The big cost of SDRs is mainly regarding transmission, since they don’t put out a very strong signal, and need some significant and high-quality amplification to be useful; but we’ve seen SDR chipsets starting to dominate the lower-cost market within the HAM/Amateur radio space. Extremely capable, very small and power efficient radios, for significantly less cost than more traditional methods of doing the same. The issue is that first word: Software. With great software comes great responsibility… or something. Fact is there’s a lot of SDR radios out there with garbage software interfaces… at least there are right now. Things are improving all the time. The wonderful thing about SDR, is that they’re generally compatible with whatever you want to use them for… meaning AM/FM, or even something more elaborate like OFDM, or other modulation techniques. This means these radios can essentially be re-programmed on the fly to adapt to a new standard with little more than a software update.
I apologize for the long discussion on this, but the technology is so interesting to me the more you look a
Wavelength varies from 2.7 to 3.4 metres. Just because that is the size of the wave doesn’t meant that a good antenna has to be that size. A very good basic antenna is a 1/4 wave vertical, and we see them pretty often as telescopic antennas on radios and cars. A 1/4 wave FM broadcast antenna will perform excellently, and will be 68cm to 85cm in length. More modern cars have antennas printed into a window similar to a demister strip. They are actually NOT smaller, some can be quite larve, but also very stealth. But the point remains is that they are NOT small as you suggest. Much shorter antennas exist, but there is a gain penalty, and that penalty gets more extreme the smaller the antenna gets. I have such a small antenna on my car and it IS an issue. In physics nothing is free, yes, you can make an antenna small and still have it be resonant, but you’ll pay a price on effective gain.
This is a problem that technology has not solved. Sure, clever designs have helped a little, but there is always a price to pay if you try to cheat the physics.
A compromised antenna can work in a very very stong signal area, but it will easily be the difference between a clear solid recieve and no recieve at all in a fringe area.
AM Broadcast is an example of this, with antennas sometimes 2 inches / 50mm long or even less and hidden inside the radio. Buy as a ham myself with a HF setup, even my HF setup, which is a poor compromise on MF broadcast gets me stations from all over Australia. That isn’t going to happen with a regular AM receiver.
Ultimately, sure you can have a mobile with no external antenna receive FM broadcast… but only in a VERY VERY strong signal area, within a few miles of the transmitter, while a propper antenna will work at 10x the distance.
This would work at very short distance only, it really would be that limited. Would it be useful for the people in those short distances? Maybe. Buy while a regular ordinary transistor radio with a telescopic antenna would work 10-30x further away, comparing those 2 really shows how much of a compromise is going on.
SDR’s are not magic. In fact they actually have some drawbacks compared to conventional designs with regards dynamic rage, over loading etc… Pulling the ‘SDR’ card and not knowing this i think shows your lack of understanding of the topic (not trying to diss, just an observation). SDR’s are a great tool, i have 4 of them in front of me as i type this, so I’m no stranger. Icom IC-705, Icom IC-7300, HackRF and an RTL-SDR. You could also maybe count the University of Twente webSDR i have open in another tab, and an MMDVM at a stretch to make it 6. websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901
This is all exciting stuff… but none of it has revolutionised RF physics for human portable commodity radios, nor even come close to an adjacent technology that could be adopted / adapted.
My ~ AUD$1900 IC-705 can go from picking up stations all over the state of Victoria, Australia with it’s non optimal antenna tuned for 146MHz, to picking up literally nothing if i hook up a few hundred mm of wire to it’s antenna socket on the bench here. And I can engage pass band filtering, up to 2 pre-amp stages, and a variety of Digital Signal Processing features and sill get… nothing.
I appreciate your passiona nd interest, but… physics.
We can look at other technologies that are great… WiFi… it’s great, but the transmitter location is in your home and still struggles to cover some larger homes… from inside your home itself. Cellular… again, great, but again, as the name implies it;s made up of ‘cells’, physics is a massive issue with cellular, each individual cell tower consists of tens or sometim
in most cases radio is supported by SoC but disabled by software + headlhone jack is no longer wired up as anthenna (some phones don’t have headphone jacks at all nowadays)
The broadcasters lobbied to have it mandated. Thats the only reason it was ever included.
In addition to all that @MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca said, implementing an am or fm receiver on an existing device is as easy as plopping down one of the existing bga chips that has an antenna input and an audio output. here’s one of the bigger ones that needs a killer 3mm x 3mm land pattern. It’s also only $1.79 or so, which is expensive for an ic, but in the context of a phone wouldn’t contribute significantly to the cost of the device.
The need for an 1/8” out would be the worst part because ironically, phone jacks suck for uhh… phones.
Thanks for the support gayhitler.
And it’s way better than the xitter.
It’s not like you have to use it. My phone has it, I’ve used it to listen to local football games while camping. Worked great. Some people like to have the option to use it though.
What, you don’t like watching two 15 second advertisements before each youtube video, which has a minute+ dedicated time to talk about today’s sponsor?
Ublock Origin and SponsorBlock makes youtube bearable.
Forget all that. Just use LibreTube (with Piped API disabled) and FreeTube
That’s not all radios for sure. For example the Bulgarian Radio 1 seems to be almost exclusively music. Sometimes there are advertisement blocks that are long, but usually it’s just music. Then there may be local stuff like college radios (e.g.: KGRG) that won’t have as many advertisements, if any. In Slovakia there used to be Rádio Anténa Rock that was also mostly music as well, but they shut down as it wasn’t profitable. They are now owned by Bauermedia and operate as “Rádio Rock” with only 3 low-power FM transmitters which barely cover 2 cities. At least they’re in DAB+.
Anyway, there are some radios that do not have as many advertisements.
I hate it when this hypothetical radio app downloads itself and turns itself on every time there’s a radio ad break!
If you live near a University, tune in to the local student radio.
It’s usually run by the University without ads.
I rock out to WPTS radio in Pittsburgh and both WUOG and WPPP in Athens, GA.
There is also WSOU in northern New Jersey. Seton Hall’s Pirate Radio.
I love our local university radio. They actually play jazz sometimes. It’s basically mindless pop, frozen in time 90s, or you can pick between new country and even newer country where I live.
Imma just leave this here: www.campus-fm.com
Our local college has an alternative rock station that radio students come on air. Minimal ads with great music and personalities.
There are some channels that aren’t like this if you’re lucky enough to live in an area with something like NPR stations, college/highschool stations, or donation funded music radio.
I just built a website that makes it easy to find and stream community radio stations (which you refer to as ‘donation funded’) There are over 100 stations listed. Just choose from a drop-down and hit ‘play’. Looking for more beta testers AlternateAirwaves.com
Oh that’s awesome, thanks for doing that!
The emergency channel has no ads…
The reason they had FM in the past was because broadcasters lobbied for it to be a requirement.
I could use public radio.
Oh no! Imagine being forced to have the option to listen to another form of communication!
I’d like to listen to my local NPR station. It’s not an advertising nightmare.
FM radio is the one feature removal I don't mind. You can access all radio on the internet now, so it's unnecessary anyway.
And when the internet goes out during a hurricane? Thats a thing
Better would be to have an emergency radio receiver with alternate power (e.g., a hand crank), and save your phone battery for outgoing emergency calls.
This is something I currently have, but there’s a few benefits of having it built into the phone:
One problem with relying on a phone to receive emergency FM broadcasts is that the phone usually needed wired headphones to be connected to use as the FM antenna.
Most smartphones today don’t even have a headphone jack. Even if they did bring them back, many people have embraced wireless headphones/earbuds and so wouldn’t have any wired ones to hand during an emergency.
There are possible ways to have an integrated FM antenna but it would have greatly reduced range - so not great in an emergency either.
I am fully aware that we would be requiring a headphone jack. I (and many people on this thread) find that to be a bonus and make lots of people happy. I know I use my wired headphones daily and I feel like a good number of people only went wireless because of the jack’s disappearance. A wired headphone Jack with a decent amp might actually get me to replace my 4yo phone that’s otherwise fine.
If you could just make it work marginally with an internal antenna and switch to the external when a wired headset was attached, that would likely work. We’re picking up fairly near by FM, not SW or anything crazy.
Sure, but how many do this? I suspect very few
I'd rather a wind up radio for emergencies as opposed to wasting the battery life on the one thing I can use to call for emergency services.
Edit: also, who uses FM in emergencies. You want AM radio for that.
You are right, depending on the emergency AM is a better choice. Many people have phones, few have crank radios.
Many people have phones without those radios. If they want that feature, it's available to them right now via another device that is better suited to the task.
It doesn’t have to be a big emergency, FM can still be very useful. A few years ago there was an earthquake in my city that wasn’t too big but we still had to evacuate the building. I don’t remember any damage in my area but because everyone was trying to make calls there was ZERO cell service. So a bunch of people were gathered around my phone listening to a news station for updates because I was the only one who had brought headphones. Without FM this ability is now lost.
Bring back vinyl record players!
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/f19ff4b3-806c-4c85-8562-4b2bf6016042.webp">
Why? My country doesn’t even have FM anymore. It shut down in 2017, frequencies repurposed for more useful things.
It’s an almost 100 years old technology…
Norway?
How’s the DAB+ coverage now? I’ve heard some ugly stuff about it before when the switch happened.
My country was planning to do that, then the main party remembered that most of the people who vote for them are really old and are the most likely to be annoyed by a change like that.
If im not mistaken you can still get the channels, the app is just not pre-installed.
They'll never include it as it needs the headphone jack. Unless they expect a huge market for radio, that is big enough for them to offer a mea culpa and give back head phone jacks, it's never going to happen.
Would people love to get headphone jacks back? I'm sure. But I don't see the market being there to get companies to give in on that.
Fun fact: almost every phone on the market has the hardware. It’s just drivers/software that are missing (and, more recently, the antenna’s been unavailable with the removal of the audio jack. The radio chip is still in there though)
Well, thinking about it like that really puts things in a new perspective.
What do you mean?
I mean that we may think that supporting fm radio isn’t worth it, but, if it’s only a matter of software, it could be done without much trouble. For example, if the android ecossystem was truly open, this feature could be supported by the interested part of the community, allowing users who want the feature to have it, while not bothering anyone else.
My phone has an FM radio.
I’ve listened to it in long international flights just to see how things change.
other than that it serves no purpose whatsoever.
I suppose it could be useful in an emergency but I’d bet just having cell seryqould fair better.
So, what, we’re just going to carry around USB antennas now?
I already do, sort of. RTL-SDR
No better way to drain phone battery. Also doubles as a hand warmer.
You do SDR on your phone? The last time I played with one of those dongles was like a decade ago and mostly I used it to check out NOAA satellite data and eavesdrop on air traffic control at the local airport.
I wonder how useful that would still be to keep tabs on the local pigs during the protests the next time they murder someone?
A lot of phones already have the capability to recieve broadcast band FM, the type and electrical length of the antenna matters a lot less when you’re just receiving signals.
Exactly. Have that as an emergency option or a free substitute to streaming music and news. The more options there are, the better. Surely, this is not relevant for the US, where radio kinda sucks nowadays, and Billboard Top 100 are put on repeat, but in European countries, Middle East, Asia etc. this kind of thing is invaluable.
European country reporting; our radio offer sucks ass as well and has been for a while. There aren’t small niche stations on waves since it’s cheaper on the net. No clue how it is elsewhere but I don’t think it’s going to be better…
Imagine if every American had a shortwave radio transmitter in their pocket. Endless September for hams
As a ham, ugh.
I dream of it being more common to have radios in everyone’s pocket, but it needs to be accompanied by some level of education on how to use it.
Maybe the price of the transceivers would go down, at least, lol. I have a general license and I just mess around with a Baofeng for the most part because I cannot justify buying a better radio. Tempted to get a QCX-mini or Pixie kit for a project… Unfortunately the like… $1000+ transceivers are just way out of budget for me, and I’m not sure I’d get enough use out of it to warrant the expense.
I hear you. I have a handful of HT’s, all are 2m/70cm, same as the baofeng’s… I have an alinco and an ailunce, plus two baofeng’s. I picked up a small 20W mobile unit for my car, around $100 or so, all told, plus an antenna. Maybe $150 for everything? A little less?
I’ve been looking at the software defined radios on Ali Express for HF stuff, all low power. I think less than 10W, but you can go global on 10W on the right band with the right conditions. They’re usually up for around $350 USD? They’re small too. Good for POTA. I think they can go from 6m up to 40m. Something from the big brands that can do that is usually in the 1200+ range. I think that’s similar to what you’re talking about. Someone local here that I’ve met has one and he’s been lighting up parks constantly with it.
I want to experiment with DMR more. My next project is to build a hot spot, since the closest DMR repeater tower is a bit too far to pick up. I can sometimes get it at the lakefront (it’s across Lake Ontario from me, in Toronto VE3WOO if I recall correctly), and I’m in the Niagara area.
I would like to get a DMR repeater in the area and I’ve been talking to a local club about it. So it may just be a matter of time. In any case I’m weird. I use FM a lot still since that’s what all the VHF and UHF stuff around here uses. There’s some fusion/dstar stuff but no DMR.
I’d imagine no phone would have transmission ability, or at most transmit like a Walkie talkie
There are some ham radio call phones that can transmit. They’re pretty specialized and not cheap, but they exist… around $1200 for what is essentially 3+ year old phone hardware (with software to match … Android 9-ish) with a built in transceiver… I like the idea, but I’m not paying that much for a very old phone because it happens to have a ham radio built in.
The current ideas with adding radios to phones is almost entirely to pick up broadcast radio, like am/FM. Nothing fancy.
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What the fuck is this person smoking?
No idea?
but to break the points apart a bit…
FM radio is something like 54kHz. Simplisticly we can say that would be 54kbps… let’s even say it’s double that to account for overhead. so 108kbps. That’s just about 1 GB/day. That’s not really an amount that carriers sell anymore… Nor do people normally listen to music 24hours a day.
Only if you’re listening… and our phones do automated alerts already… as long as those systems are working. And considering that FM is a completely different well documented thing… it’s worth keeping it around.
Nah, FM has been built into chipsets for well over a decade at this point. Most radios even still have them today. Just disconnected. But even if it wasn’t available… Most phones at this point use RTL-SDR radios… software define radios means you can just program it to FM frequencies and it will work.
Or even the wireless contacts for Qi charging and NFC… Just disable the radio app when these things are actually in use…
No need, the vast majority of phones already have what you’d need. Just never connected/used by software for some reason.
There are gaming phones, phones with crazy cameras, and iPhones where the lack of features is a feature. What I wish to have is a phone with as many features and functionality as possible.
That includes (but not limited to): IR blaster Headphone jack MicroSD card slot FM Radio RGB Notification/Status LED
Rather than a slim phone with a glossy finish that will pick up scratches right away unless wrapped in a phone case, the outer cover of the phone should be rugged and replaceable. Like with old Nokia phones. I don’t care about few extra grams, or another millimeter of thickness. And I’m sure I’m not the only one.
I was hopeful about the Fairphone at first, but they started removing features as well.
“You don’t need practical capabilities, you need to be an obedient consumer.”
—OEMs
I actually meant to reply to your comment but replied to the main thread by mistake, I had the same frustrations with modern phones losing features, and even fairphone dropping the 3.5mm jack was a wtf decision to me. See my comment on the ulephone 18t, it had virutally everything I wanted in a phone.
When I changed in my iPhone 3g for an original Galaxy S, with barometer, I thought that by the iPhone/Galaxy 10 we would all be rocking tricorders. What kind of crazy sensors would they jam in by then? Zero. Here we are at generation 15 with no additional cool sensors.
FOUR cameras, however!
My guess is that eventually the back of the phone will be completely covered by cameras.
It’s intentional. They’d like to drop features to cut on design and manufacture costs, while taking out features most of the target audience doesn’t really care about. Some of these are just greedy. Phones used to rely on microSD expansion, but once you drop this option you could charge for additional space much more than what the equivalent microSD card would cost. You can also stop shipping phones with chargers because most people have them anyway. This is pure profit as the customer is paying the same price, but doesn’t get a charger.
As for other features, they probably dropped them because people just didn’t care enough.
It seems to be incredibly difficult to design a phone from scratch, and that’s why we only see a handful of manufacturers, with the small endeavors being able to make something that looks obsolete by the time it rolls out and even then it takes a few months to overcome all the bugs and glitches. Fairphone is the closest we’ve got, but it’s still far off and strays further with each generation.
I still have my LG v20 because of this. I’d love to upgrade but nothing that’s come out since even comes close.
I still have my V10 and v20. My v60 is better though. Definitely some trade-offs but I will argue that v60 is better
Yea, I wasn’t ready to upgrade yet when the v60 came out. I guess I should have said “nothing I looked at to upgrade has come close” looking at it now though the non removable battery is a deal breaker.
Still have stacks of batteries for my V10 and v20. I thought it would be a deal-breaker too but it’s not as bad as I thought. The huge battery they put in the v60s really been lasting. I do admit I prefer to wirelessly charge slowly which possibly helps.
V60 was the best phone ever, represent!
The v60 is the best phone ever.
All the features, very fast, 2 screens.
My v35 was on par and had the back fingerprint, but otherwise the v60 was the ultimate phone.
Non removable battery is a pretty big deal breaker IMO especially in an era where every subsequent phone is more and more stripped down.
No, the v60 was truly incredible, and the battery especially.
I upgraded to a zfold 3 and the battery life is garbage now.
But when the battery wears out you’re fucked if you can’t find an upgrade. I’m on my 3rd battery on my V20 because I can always just pick up a new one (or at least as long as someone makes them). I’m not saying the v60 wasn’t a nice phone. Just I don’t want one that’s lifespan is limited by the battery. That is a big deal to me.
Disappointed Moto Mods didn’t catch on. The obvious approach of “skinny phone with minimal features but you can slap whatever you like onto the back (radios, projectors, beefy batteries, gamepad, etc)” - just makes sense for me. I loved my old Moto Z.
Still have my force 2 with the click on battery, loved that phone.
My Poco F2 Pro has all of those but microSD slot (none of my recent phones have had it, and I’m starting to miss it right now with 128 gb of base storage) and the IR blaster has saved my ass more than once!
ITT: people who have never heard of college radio stations
I’m people ITT. what’s a college radio station? I’m imagining the illegal setup Hal had in that Malcolm in the middle episode.
It’s a radio station at a college. They are usually public access and therefore, the content is free form.
I'd like to shout out community radio as well! Your town or city probably has one or you can stream them online. Local DJs playing whatever they want with no ads, just music. I volunteer for a couple and they're really fun to be a part of.
There is no such thing in France. Only crap between lots of ads.
In Brazil there is a lot of decent radio stations, though they mostly play the same music they have played since the 2000s.
When I was at uni in the early 2000s in the UK our uni radio was internet only. I would assume that’s something that wouldn’t have gone backwards in the last 20 or so years.
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What do you mean again, my smartphone has a radio and it came out in 2019?
I’m going to chime in here to plug the ulefone power armor 18t I just got. I was pretty nervous to get a chinese phone as I’ve only had samsung and lg phones before, but this thing legit blows me away. Not only does it fully support every band that my carrier uses (rare even for phones made for the US market), but it has:
Replaceable battery that lasts 3+ days between recharges
Extremely rugged, IP69 waterproof and designed for underwater photography (physical shutter button and diving camera app)
3.5mm jack, sd card slot, FM radio (with built in antenna - no headphones need to be plugged in), and an RGB notification led
Dimensity 900 chipset that beats a lot of the snapdragon chips on the market.
12 fucking GB of RAM… yes, 12…
Wifi 6(ax)
Wireless charging and reverse charging
A fucking 60x magnification microscope? (Why???)
A FLIR thermal camera (Just because, why the fuck not)
Runs mostly bloat free stock android
All that for under $600 (on aliexpress)
The only thing it’s missing is an IR blaster, otherwise this is the best phone I’ve ever had, bar none. It is a chonky beast though, be warned.
This has really changed my view on Chinese electronics, especially at a time when phones for the western world are losing features and functionality all the time (including stuff from South Korean). Turns out capitalism isn’t that great for innovation!
As a former fan of ulefones:
They’re great as long as they work, but I already had two ulefones where something broke internally physically and the IR-blaster blasted non-stop, even after the phone was off. Never had other significant problems, tho.
Honestly this is amazing. If only it wasn’t so big…
Ulephone is a beast that fits in your pocket. Its hardware is near perfection, too bad they cut costs at software resulting in many crashes, random reboots or apps that stop working. But it’s indeed a solid Chinese phone.
Damn, this seems like exactly what I’ve been looking for… Shame I’m finding it a year late.
One last really important point you didn’t mention is how long do they serve security updates for?
Yeah I’m not looking for Chinese spyware on my phone’s from a company that will no longer exist in 3 months.
Are people missing some ads that they could otherwise be getting with an FM radio on their phone?
Radio has enshittified it’s way to being turned off whenever I get in a vehicle that has it turned on, so I’d miss any emergency broadcasts anyway. Can’t imagine paying extra to have it on a phone.
IHeartMedia can be blamed for that
Every phone I had that did this also used the wired headphone cable as an antenna. Personally I do like Bluetooth on the go (for casual listening only), so I’m not actually sure it would be usable unless the phone had a separate antenna.
All my Android phones had FM radio, what are you talking about?
Had. Recent ones don’t.
Why not just use internet radio?
what happen when internet go down
radio win every time
I stopped watching TV and listening to the radio a long time ago. I will never do that again even if the internet disappeared forever.
Because the apps fucking suck
I’ve been saying this for a while now. FM radios and such are invaluable in emergency situations.
There have been times in the past where I’ve lost power to my house. No internet, no electricity etc in the middle of an emergency weather situation. I had to rely on battery powered radios to learn about what the situation was elsewhere and how long we’d be stuck etc. There is basically no reason why this can’t be incorporated into phones, aside from the fact that phone makers would rather you use Apple Music etc. It should be legislated for I believe.
Just buy a $15 FM radio. Especially since you can’t charge your phone when you have no power, but a small radio takes AA batteries which can sit in a drawer for 10 years until you need them.
In addition to being able to take AAs, my FM radio has a solar panel and a hand crank to recharge the included rechargeable battery, which can charge a phone in a pinch. Win all around!
It probably also picks up the NOAA frequencies for weather forecasts and will have a standby feature for severe weather alerts. Emergency weather radios are pretty cool, and good to have on hand.
It absolutely does!
You’d think so but every device around my house that I “put batteries in it and forget it” when I need it I find the batteries have exploded and the device is ruined (regardless of the decade on the expiry-date label of the battery). So my plan now is to keep the device separate from the batteries like it’s a freaking handgun and make sure my phone is charged so I can use its light to make my way to the drawer where we keep the batteries.
Alkaline batteries are the crappy ones that leak. Get the more expensive lithium batteries, or go full on rechargeable ones, and you can leave them in without worrying about your device getting ruined.
Lkline leaks, lithium explodes
Yeah but at least you’ll know exactly when the lithium ones go bad…
Rechargeable batteries self-discharge and get damaged if left unplugged for too long, and explode if left plugged in. They are not ideal for something you want to pack away in an emergency kit.
Almost everything in an emergency kit expires. But many name brand alkaline and non rechargeable lithiums are now rated for ten years shelf life. In addition there are rechargeable eneloop branded batteries rated for slower discharge rate.
Yes, but there’s a difference between “expires” and “leaks all over the inside of my emergency radio”. And they don’t make it to half their stated lifespans once put into a flashlight and the flashlight goes into storage.
A weather radio is even more useful. It usually has FM as well, but getting National Weather Service alerts can be vital.
one of those windy radios you crank for a bit would be better for emergencies
You can make your battery phone last a lot when you are not using the display and disconnect from any networks. You can also have some powerbank around. Emergencies won’t necessarily find you in home or wherever your radio is stored in. You keep your phone with you most of the time, chances are, if an earthquake happens, for example, you’ll have your phone with you. Been there.
Yes… but… this becomes one of those things that everyone should buy to be prepared but few actually do or they forget.
I keep a little crank-chargeable radio in our emergency kit but most people don’t. If the cell networks go down (and they usually do in severe weather and most other big emergency situations) most people will lose all of their access to information.
One reason is that every implementation I’ve ever tried relies on using the wired earphones as an aerial and Apple magically convinced everyone that having a 3.5mm port is somehow a bad thing.
Exactly. The real plea here is “bring back 3.5mm ports.” I’m afraid of the day my old phone dies because I have this fear that even cheap-ass phones are going to abandon 3.5mm headphones for cheap, unreliable, garbage bluetooth trash.
Just double-checked. My current smartphone that I partially picked for it’s 3.5mm socket does have built in FM radio that works great and only functions with earphones plugged in.
I’m glad battery backup can keep the internet going for a long time but I also have data to use and never get close to making a dent in it. If service providers went down though I do have several radios around the house. I don’t go anywhere but I’d I did i would carry a little radio lol. That being said, I miss my smart phone and flip phone that had radio on it. I don’t care about headphone jacks but I definitely would love radio.
The components to make the phone able to decode FM radio take place. Which, in such small device, is valuable. If you really need FM radio for emergency situations, why not take a dedicated miniaturized FM radio receiver?
FM radio was integrated in even smaller phones 20 years ago. And the tech to “decode the signal” is already present in today’s phones. FM are radio signals, just like NFC, Wifi, Bluetooth and cellular.
Not the same radio frequencies, not the sames technologies (analog vs digital). Those radio hardware are very specialized, and won’t work on frequencies or technologie they are not meant to.
Correct, not the same technologies. It’s a much simpler circuitry. Very specialized doesn’t mean very complex. A hammer is very specialized too.
I read somewhere that SoC boards on today’s phones still have FM tuning capabilities, but they just don’t use them.
I’ll try to verify that, though.
Edit: this link seems promising: makeuseof.com/…/how-to-unlock-fm-radio-hidden-sma…
Not sure if this is still the case, but in the past the FM radio functionality essentially came “free” as part of either the SoC or modem. Since it used headphone wires as the antenna, the death of the headphone jack pretty much killed any purpose for including it.
There is no such thing as “free” functionality in hardware. Old SoC may have had this functionality, but it was at the cost of some die space, that has since been reclaimed by other function more useful to most users.
Hence the quotations around “free”. Qualcomm isn’tgoing to tape out a custom chip without it for you just because you don’t want that block.
This was my uncertainty, do you know for certain that they don’t include FM functionality on their chips anymore or are you just guessing? The public facing documentation is not exactly detailed enough to tell for sure.
Modern SoCs still have it…
Further we’ve moved to Software Defined Radios in general… So it’s all programmable.
The functionality is, in fact, still there, and basically every phone with a headphone jack turns it on.
No, but it’s so immaterial it hasn’t really been worth the effort to exclude it yet
I wholeheartedly agree, but I don’t think there’s any saving it at this point. Car manufacturers are dropping it from new models and that’s the only actual AM/FM radio most people actually buy these days.
Same thing happened to the phone network. It used to actually be possible to call 911 when the power was out. The central stations all had battery banks and diesel generators. Unless the lines were cut, you had service.
I wanted to tag on to your post. I’ve been without power for weather stuff too a few times and one thing i learned was that my cheapie 40" TV would only pull 10-15watts with backlight all the way down. With a small battery bank you can go a good while on that and tune into your local station via OTA. It was very watchable especially given the only light around was my candle.
For a couple more watts you watch shows off your memory stick as well once the event is over and you are just waiting for the power lines to get fixed… my phone drained nearly as much but to be fair i left the radio enabled so it was hunting for a tower.
Just something to consider for your gear if you live near the coast or in Texas. Battery banks are pretty cheap.
This is still a feature in some major brands though. I have a Moto g power from a relatively recent model year and it comes with a built-in FM Radio app that uses wired headphones as an antenna. It also still has a headphone jack so I don’t know how indicative it is of the broader US market.
One of the reasons why I picked the Xiaomi Poco X3
I don’t even remember the last time I listened to FM radio. I just don’t like listening to the same 20 songs on repeat with annoying ads
They’re all run by really cheap computer programs now, they have been terrible since they fired all the djs.
They don’t even play good music
Can you pick up any community radio in your area? We have one and every couple of hours it’s a different type of music. Blues, Rock, Hip-Hop, Reggae etc. All music chosen by the person you hear on the air.
Why not make cases with FM radio built in?
Even most cheapo mp3 players have this functionality built in
I miss when MP3 players were popular. There was a lot more variety in consumer tech before 2013-ish
I love my Surfans F20 got it 3 years ago and its still going strong after quite a few drops and nicks. I wish they made a updated usb-c version but otherwise as a big music guy that hates music streaming, downloads everything, and prefers the convinence of a dedicated digital audio device its just awesome.
That thing looks old as hell in the best possible ways haha, I love it
That thing looks super nice!
Looks vaguely like the older Zunes
I’ve come to the realization that the phone I want is a Nokia 3310 “brick”.
You can buy one right now.
You mean like a 20 year old one? Would it even work?
Yeah. It’d probably still have charge too.
Wasn’t it like 2g cellular?
I mean how many g’s are strictly necessary
I mean as many gs as the network still strictly supports…
In the US we recently shut off the 3g network so, at least 4.
Many operators around the word are ditching 3g but still keeping 2g.
It is main/backup connection in so many iot and older automation devices that it won’t be going away anytime soon.
And yes, both my 2110 and 3310 I alternate in my cars glove compartment can still call emergency services number without sim card.
Even when they shut down 2G access it will probably just be commercial use but they’ll keep it for emergency service. It still has excellent coverage and the infrastructure is more trouble to remove than it’s worth.
I found one in the back of a drawer a few weeks ago, it turned on straight away. I didn’t have the right size SIM card to try and use it fully sadly.
Come the apocalypse there will just be cockroaches and old Nokias.
Don’t forget the twinkies!
You cold dredge one up from the bottom of the ocean and it would still pick up a signal.
If a signal exists. Those blazing fast 2g towers ain’t super common nowadays
Well it is a Nokia so…
The device itself is not the concern as much as the network connectivity
Depending on where they are in the world 2G networks might still be active. In Europe they’re still on for a few more years in most countries.
It’s anybody’s guess but if the battery hasn’t crapped out it probably would.
I have a bunch of old Nokia’s whose batteries puffed up and I can’t use them anymore but I also have some that are still ok.
Oh and they’d have to also find the charger for it.
No. I don’t know of anywhere that a 2G network is still available to use. Some still operate it for emergency calls but that’s it.
You can deploy your own 2g base station with openbts and some cheap software-defined radio hardware. Don’t crank up the signal though so you won’t run afoul with the government agencies that regulate radio spectrum in your country.
Dr Who vs Daleks. I think it’s krobot on linux.
T9, back when you could text and drive without ever taking your eyes off the road.
Oh you still can with Swype 🙂
You still can, and nowadays we even have a word for it: distracted driving.
Everyone talks about how great Nokia bricks are, but you actually do have to be careful not to drop them or you might damage the floor.
Some of these I get, but I don’t get the T9 thing. T9 was so bad! It took ages to type many words. Today’s predictive keyboards are miles better.
Also, no software updates? Sure, every now and then there’s a shitty update, but most updates are great. New features and especially bug fixes are amazing. Used to be that if something had a bug, you just had to deal with it. There’s no guarantees it’ll be fixed today, but many companies do fix their bugs at least eventually. The ability to iteratively develop is huge for software quality. These days, unless you’re developing something that absolutely cannot fail (like a mars prober or radiation therapy machine), it’s widely agreed upon that iterative design is superior to “waterfall” design of trying to plan it out all ahead of time. Part of why is so you can get feedback continuously instead of only after you’ve committed to months of tech debt.
When T9 was all we had, we got real good at it.
No software updates mean they have to get it right the first time, which they always seemed to manage.
Why? So I can listen to local dealership and furniture store adverts? No thanks
“My use case is the only use case in the whole world!”
Is there any place in America with fm radio that isn’t shit? I’ve been to over half the union and haven’t seen it yet
Anywhere with public access college radio.
Sure. Because America is the whole world!
I know you didn’t read the article, as per usual, since like the third line says this: "I’m mostly focused on the United States here, as FM radio access and laws vary from country to country. "
Oh. Heh.
Read the article much?
College radio stations. For example, 90.7 WFUV.
ETA: I also like public radio, such as WNYC 93.9.
Every time I get in a car without Bluetooth or an aux and have to listen to the radio, I’m quickly reminded that I’d actually prefer to listen to road noise than ads and turn it off.
It has always baffled me why the need for headphones (to be able to use the radio function at all), let alone the total lack of an fm antenna in devices.
I never listen to radio. I stopped when it stopped being an option on my phone.
Mine still does. puts on shades
Certain phones have it, but use your wired headphones as an antenna while leveraging your Bluetooth… In Japan they had phones with TV tuners
Not my phone Mr. NHK man.
.
my kids dont understand the concept of entertainment that isnt on demand. like at all. even if its one of the rare occasions we will put something on FTA tv they act like why cant i just watch it later, they simply dont comprehend the idea that you have to watch/listen to somethng at specified times otherwise you miss it
I have an SiliconLabs HDHR attached to my Plex server. I have OTA tv available for streaming to all my devices in my household (along with DVR capabilities of course). When the kids fight about what to watch (they’re not allowed Youtube) I just put on normal TV and let them stew on it.
.
Are you in the EU? Here in the US phones haven’t had FM in a long time, or at least have access disabled/restricted
My LG V600TM has an FM Radio and it works fine other than the fact the radio stations in my area basically no longer exist. I’m in the US. The phone came out in 2020.
The statement here is “all standard phones should have radio”. Is yours standard? And if you would be oh so gracious could you also give me the brand and phone type so that I might look it up myself?
Not OP but my Samsung Galaxy M21 has it, too. It’s slightly hidden as you don’t find it on your home screen or app list, only when you search for it inside the app list.
I’ve not heard of this feature for over 10 years… what phones do you have that have it?
This 2022 Nokia has an FM radio. I had a look at the app and it says ‘Please plug in your headset to tune’. It’s not impossible that the USB C port is wired so wired headphones plugged in through an adaptor act as an aerial I suppose.
Yes they do, and it’s amazing to "tune the radio. Those wires are soo finicky you can hear high school physics!!! Not sarcastic btw. I really do enjoy those damned finicky cables xD
Phones still do. Xiaomi phones for example.
Almost any mid-range phone with headphone jack
Why? ClearChannel has all but ruined it.
There is a conspiracy with the iHeartRadio music festival.
How many people do you know who get hyped up to go see an amalgamation of 6-15 year old bands with no new music?
ClearChannel (and therefore iHeart) sells advertising enmasse so that messages and products can be pushed the largest groups. They hype up the music festival like its a great big deal, and then they give away tickets.
I genuinely wonder how many people paid for tickets vs. “won” tickets from one of the 9 different radio stations that cover their area.
I’ve had family win and go to the event. I don’t recall what they thought about the event or which bands were there… But the event definitely happened.
Oh it happens. But very few people buy tickets. They win them because iHeart Media packs the event with giveaway tickets. They spend months hyping up the event, and then say that the tickets sell out in minutes. It’s false hype and false demand.
Ah, got it. I misunderstood your comment a little bit. Makes you wonder what they gain from it at all then no?
They included that in their reply:
Basically, the bands and holding the event are cheap (the bands selected are not in high demand and thus cheap booking) in comparison with the profits of hosting a subliminal ad show with a (happily) captured audience.
Note that this is my interpretation of the other poster’s message I thought I’d chime in with, I have no first or even second hand knowledge on this topic.
You should listen to Pitchshifter’s Infotainment album here’s a link Infotainment
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Infotainment
YouTube version
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Remember, not everyone lives in the US.
Fair, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before it’s ruined elsewhere also.
So glad that mine does.
Maybe if you live somewhere with good radio stations… the radio is pretty much dead here. Nothing but Christian talk and static.
This is tangential to the conversation but have you heard of Radio Garden? You can listen to radio stations around the world. As for "good radio stations," I'm partial to college radio stations like 90.7 FM in NYC. They have a lot of freedom with their playlists.
Yeah, but you use the Internet for things like that; not an actual FM radio.
I listen to those stations in my car or on my alarm clock at home. But I suggested Radio Garden in case you wanted to listen to stations not in your area. Do you have public radio or college radio available?
Would be great for an apocalypse
Careful now, that same kind of wishing gave us a plague, lol.
And ads… You forgot ads… Never ending ads…
I switched to satellite years ago (when there was two competing services) because I once had an hour long drive and didn’t hear anything but ads the whole way. I was fed up with it.
I now pretty much use Spotify because XM and Sirius merged, so now there’s only the one service, and they immediately cut features, introduced ads, and jacked up prices. So I cancelled.
You mean as soon as two competeting companies merged to create a monopoly it caused massive problems? Who could have guessed!
FTC had no problem with that, but Microsoft buying Activision possibly making Call of fuckin’ Duty an Xbox exclusive was something they got all in a huff about.
God damn jackasses. 🤦♂️
I bet when you canceled you got harassed for years after with weekly letters in the mail begging you to sign up. Every time I’ve bought a car I’ve had to deal with this same bullshit.
I canceled my satellite radio subscription in, oh, 2017 I think?
Yep, 3 years of harassment.
I’m sad that my Asus Zenfone 9 (it has a headphone jack) can’t get FM radio. The app I use (NextRadio) can’t detect a FM tuner on the phone.
You might like radiogarden! It pulls streams for any radio stations that clone their feed online. You won’t get everything but you have the option to listen to radio from anywhere in the world!
.
We have NPR news and a separate NPR classical channel. I listen to them both. That’s it, though.
NPR is the only good radio left.
Why? Have you heard radio? Every station is just a glorified shitty playlist that they cycle through a dozen times a day
Because if the cell networks fail, right now there’s no backup method to get crucial information to everyone’s hands.
Radio are an easy secondary, really long range mechanism to get information INTO disaster stricken areas when normal means of communications have failed.
And crazy levels of advertising to boot.
Back home we had a local station, felt like a way of tuning into “the city.” Very few breaks outside of their pledge drives once/twice a year. Listening to the Jazz station here on short drives these days. Very few ads, and some pretty gnarly shit. College radio stations are also pretty easy to find and escape that ad insanity.
Don’t let radio and broadcast TV die quite yet, it’s still very viable, especially as we sort out net neutrality and failsafe systems in cases of emergency.
That’s what happens when we “removed regulations” and allowed Clear Channel (aka iHeartRadio) to buy up most every major station in the country.
However you can still do short range FM transmissions yourself, as a lot of people do with elaborate Christmas light displays, plus it’s useful in emergency situations.
Yes, in case of emergency, tune to a Clear Channel station so they can tell you how the emergency is the fault if the Woke Left.
Which country?
Probably the US, since they just assume everyone would know they’re talking about the US.
Emergencies that would normally sever other means of communications. Think natural disasters that interrupt internet access. Usually radio stations are the first to come back up, and priceless at times where information is key.
Where I am we’ve got the BBC local radio network and they’ve got some amazing local music shows for each region granted all is available via their now locked down sounds app
In Atlanta we have a pretty nice jazz station (WCLK). The station that NPR took over (Album 88) was a university station and they still play stuff in the evening I think. There can be good content but it is heavily reliant on where you live. Come to think of it, WCLK is a university station as well. So I guess you have to have universities around.
Bring back PTT! Miss my Nextel.
That was a horrible gimmick, mostly useful for annoying people. But I believe iPhones have it, or at least Apple Watch does
I was in my late teens and annoying AF! But the ability to speak quickly with my most frequent contacts without having to dial was really convenient.
I just looked, the app I used to use for a Nextel replacement still exists, it’s called Voxer. Cannot speak to it’s quality anymore but I did use it a lot back in the day.
Fuck no, commercial radio is a fucking cancer
At less than 10$/watt, I can get a transmitter, haul it up to the top of the water tower and transmit to my whole town.
I hope they like doom metal
With all the blackouts I had these past 2 years, YEA PLEASE. Hell, I was a out to relearn how to make a homemade AM radio. Haven’t done it in 28 years.
A lot of posts in here complaining about shitty commercial radio. Do you all not have local radio stations? I love my local stations.
We have a dozen local stations…all owned by clearchanel.
The high school the next town over has the best music in the whole city. Unfortunately I live right on the edge of the broadcast range so it cuts out at home.
Local radio sucks.
It’s nothing but ads. I’ve tried listening to a couple of them and the music selection is horrendous bracketed by lengthy ads. Bad to worse.
You have shitty local radio. I have an indie station that’s mostly listener supported that plays tons of obscure stuff.
Good for you.
My comment pertains to the USA, but regardless of where you live, there is a very strong likelihood that your local commercial stations are owned by a company like iHeartRadio and much, if not all, of the content is syndicated.
The only exception might be a local nonprofit radio station. You probably have at best one local station in this case, unless you live in a major city broadcast region. Keep in mind I mean one local station that plays music. A local NPR station is probably separate from this. Even most of NPR is syndicated, however.
If you’re lucky, a local college might still have a radio station broadcasting over FM, but so many have moved online since you then don’t need an [expensive and volatile] FCC license.
I had read this in another thread, but radio was one of the first (if not first) media form to be entshittified. Decades before we even had a term for it.
Hell yeah!
I’ve never bought a phone without FM radio. I regard it as an emergency tool.
That doesn’t help much if your country has shut down FM broadcasting though.
wtf
I didn’t even know that DAB exists.
It would be very, very hard to make old and rural people switch in my country. We still have analog tv for the same reason. 🇨🇱
Oye weon que andai haciendo acá jaja
Haciendo acto de presencia
So long Radio Free Europe
Shutting down FM broadcasting doesn’t mean shutting down radio; if you read the link, you’ll see that DAB is taking it’s place in those places.
Thanks for clarifying, I didn’t understand that in the article.
Well, that’s surely something to consider, but it’s still not a fact. I wouldn’t even expect that to happen in my country any time soon. I know radio is struggling right now, but I also know I can stream live FM radio stations from all over the world.
In any case, if DAB can replace FM even for emergency use, that’s what I’d want in my phone.
Wdym again?
Wait, you guys don’t have FM radio on your phones?
Most scrappy overpriced phones doesn’t have mini jack so no antenna to get radio
The one headphone adapter I have doesn’t seem to work, and I don’t think there was one with the phone. Finicky is probably right!
Coming late to this part but Umidigi phones still do FM radio and don’t even require headphones to be plugged in any more.
Digital FM? Analog is a piece of crap
Why not both? Digital is obviously better but analog is painfully simple hence it’ll probably be the medium used for transmitting emergency alerts
Because analog takes up the wavelength bandwidth
You don’t have to worry about bandwidth when you’re 1:many sending out critical information. We’re talking about emergency service here, not the everyday “I want 750 different channel options, no commercials, and free”
Not long ago I decided to buy a radio just for emergencies. I guess having it in my smartphone would be better yes.
OTOH I bet the radio would last a lot longer.
For a while, a lot of the software designed radios already in phones could be hacked to play FM. I remember a friend doing it back in 2010-ish on his Nexus One.
I got myself a proper camping radio. It lets you charge your phone on it too, and recharges with solar panels AND a manual dynamo hand crank where working it for ten minutes gives you an hour of radio.
What’s the price point for something like that?
This one is a Sangean MMR-88 (cost me 1000 SEK). I think the price range is wide and it’s cheaper outside Europe.
Thankfully my Cardo headset supports FM radio because my Fairphone doesn’t and I like to have radio when I’m on a ride.
Mobile carriers are worried about “congested mobile broadband” right? Surely they’d want something like this implemented if it could cut down on peak usage and not have to force their hand to do that awful throttling they must hate so much?
high end ones dont even have headphone jacks for starters
That’s not a big deal. There are many external DACs that work great. And there are many DACs built into phones with headphone jacks that are awful.
My old Motorola X4 used the headphone cable for its FM antenna. The radio didn’t work without it.
My current Moto G works the same way.
I can’t think of a phone I’ve owned that hasn’t done this, even as far back as my O2 Ice
Google realized they aren’t good enough at software development to prevent their phones from randomly stopping audio playback when using headphones, so they removed the plug for them in hopes no one would notice.
That’s a weird claim. Do you have a source?
I think it’s a joke
My source is that I made it the fuck up
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For emergency purposes, mandate cell tower batteries with solar supplement.
And generators for bigger hubs.
Cellular internet is critical infrastructure now.
Same for ISPs. My internet wifi has battery backup, so as long as the ISP stays up we are good.
Cell towers nearby all went down during the last big power failure. I could hit one distant tower that still had power, but the signal was weak, and the tower was swamped. It could barely push data.
Next big earthquake will be a total shitshow if that’s not fixed.
I have battery backup for my modem and router as well. Also my doorbell has a battery (for installation without access to wiring). This means I can still get motion alerts while my power is out lol.
Now I’ve got in my head “I’m on a Mexican, radio…”
The real question is, are you a racist, if you enjoy that song?
Am I?
Lol I don’t know, I was honestly asking.
…The song about listening to foreign radio stations by Wall of Voodoo?
Yes, I believe so.
I would think not, but these days, with hypersensitivity about racial prejudice I wasn’t sure, which is why I was asking.
That song, and “Illegal Alien” by Genesis, are the two that come to mind.
FM was switched off in 2017 (Norway), but a DAB chip would’ve been nice.
only time i ever used phone FM was camping. not often lately. car has fm but radio commercials assault my nerves, use mp3s on a stick or streaming w/$10/mo
for police/fire scanners openmhz.com
low end MediaTek ones often do
FM radio is terrible. At least Sirius XM is putting out music people want to hear.
But why?
If only there was a link to click that explained that ;)
The last couple major power failures we’ve had in my area, information was by far the most difficult thing to come by.
The power goes out, and shortly thereafter so does cable internet. My UPS usually keeps my cable box up longer than the service itself lasts. That puts everyone on the cell network, which is immediately overloaded. So the internet is essentially worthless during most hours.
FM radio stations are similarly worthless. I remember a power outage last winter where there was going to be a press conference, I think the governor was going to talk about something…couldn’t get coverage. The local FM station was up and running, they were broadcasting just fine, but they were trying to patch into the press conference via Facebook, and the internet wasn’t up to it. They apparently don’t have their own radio uplinks anymore.
The local television station would have been more help…if I could get an antenna high enough to hear it.
And during normal business hours most broadcast FM stations are IHeartRadio transmitting the same 20 songs intercut with the same 90,000 advertisements. Or broadcasting The Two Retards Named Chris show three times a day.
No thanks. I listened to radio the other day (not in my car) and it was all ads and a shortened version of a song so they can do more ads.
I didn’t realize radio got so bad.
It’d be better if it had fm transmiter, so you van turn car radio or normal old radio into a useful wireless speaker