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Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

wired.com

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Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#141

Post by pjmlp »

vertex-four wrote: post #99
OJFord wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See https://play.google.com/store/search?q=fm%20radio&c=apps

All of those apps are not actually FM radio apps - Android does not have a standard API for accessing FM radio. The apps you linked are actually just misleadingly named Internet radio players that only play from stations that also broadcast over FM. Any phone which has FM radio will only be able to access it through an app distributed with the phone. Apparently Sony-Ericsson have some phones which have such a thing?…

Both the S3 and S4 do support FM radio.

As does the Windows Phone I own.

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#142

Post by joelthelion »

wodenokoto wrote: post #96

To answer the question in the headline: Because it is better to have no function, than a crappy function. It's another useless app, another menu item to browse through and for the company, another source of complaints and support cases.

That certainly doesn't deter carriers from bundling tons of crappy, impossible to disable apps with phones.

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#143

Post by ddalex »

frigo_1337 wrote: post #131
echelon wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a world where all content is loaded over XHRs and the DOM serves only to load Javascript. This is becoming an increasingly prevalent pattern. I really miss the document-oriented web of the late 90's / early 00's.

Honest question: Why? I don't understand why people inherently dislike Javascript (aside from, y'know, creepy ad networks).

Because we want the information to be free. If the web server is serving a document, you can do all sorts of stuff with it - you can index it, you can transform it, you can save it for later.

If the web server is serving a DRM-ed program, that loads the human-viewable data over non-standard interfaces, all that breaks. Only humans in front of the web browser will be able to see the data.

Or sufficiently dedicated people to run a headless browser to run the Javascript and re-build the content and work on the rebuilt DOM. But also we now need NoScript, JS blockers, 3rd party blockers, and the publishers invest in anti-adblocks. It's a neverending arms escalation between those who want to restrictively publish information, and those that want the information without restrictions. So all this JS-based workaround to try to DRM things only brings more work for everybody involved, with minimal results.

NOTE: when I say DRM, I actually mean Digital Policy Enforcement - the publishers want to maintain their policies around access to their information (e.g. you cannot see this article without seeing this ad) using digital means. But DRM has a nicer twist to it - the uninformed may mistake the R for My Rights.

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#144

Post by briandear »

abalone wrote: post #130
pjc50 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple didn't want you to have an FM radio, they wouldn't put it on the phone. It's the _carriers_ that oppose it.

Again, nearly all FM stations are available on the iPhone. Carriers haven't blocked it. Apple hasn't blocked it. They are there.[1] The entire premise of the article is false. [1] http://www.igeeksblog.com/best-radio-apps-for-iphone-and-ipa...

"Apps" -- that means streaming data. The point of the article is that FM would work when cellular signals won't. The entire internet is available except when it's not. This article is about receiving FM signals.

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#145

Post by klibertp »

tyfon wrote: post #58
siddboots wrote: post #2

What's going on with Wired? This page has an autoplay video ad below the article text and an anti-AdBlock full-screen subscription nagger that pops up a few seconds after page load.

I clicked back instantly. It's idiotic to have a video spew out high volume sound automatically. Almost woke our one year old. So no more clicking on wired links for me!

That's why I always have the sound muted in my laptop. I, of course, use an adblocker, but there are some sites I had to whitelist which cannot be trusted. Disabling the sound makes it much better: even if something decides to auto-play, so what? Most of the time I don't even notice when this happens: such videos are frequently at the bottom, and by the time I get there the video already stopped playing.

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#146

Post by morb »

frigo_1337 wrote: post #131
echelon wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a world where all content is loaded over XHRs and the DOM serves only to load Javascript. This is becoming an increasingly prevalent pattern. I really miss the document-oriented web of the late 90's / early 00's.

Honest question: Why? I don't understand why people inherently dislike Javascript (aside from, y'know, creepy ad networks).

Because js-heavy sites are slow on a bit older pc's that are otherwise perfectly capable for most of the other tasks.

See idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#148

Post by angersock »

frigo_1337 wrote: post #131
echelon wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a world where all content is loaded over XHRs and the DOM serves only to load Javascript. This is becoming an increasingly prevalent pattern. I really miss the document-oriented web of the late 90's / early 00's.

Honest question: Why? I don't understand why people inherently dislike Javascript (aside from, y'know, creepy ad networks).

I recently found d a stash of web pages I had saved locally over a decade ago. They still load...a modern one wouldn't.

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#149

Post by Aaargh20318 »

WalterBright wrote: post #116
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's handy when the internet fails, or when you're nearing data caps, or just want to run it all day without interfering with download speeds So basically it's useful if you have really shitty internet.

I suppose. There's a long chain of things that can go wrong with the intertoobs. My switch could die (it has), the router could die (it has) the cable modem could die (it has), the comcast street equipment on my block could fail (it has) trees could fall on the wires (happens regularly).

I haven't had an outage in years. I've never had a switch or any network equipment die on me either. We also bury our cables here (everything except the high-voltage power distribution network) so there is no risk of trees falling on wires.

Seriously, why would you run cables on poles, that seems super fragile to me.

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#150

Post by [deleted] »

blowski wrote: post #113

> [On the iPhone 6] the wireless chip is a Murata 339S0228 which houses the normal flavors of 802.11 wifi, Bluetooth, and has an FM transceiver. ... > What we're missing is an appropriate antenna and an amplifier chip dedicated to driving that antenna. Unlike the murata chip that doesn't take up any extra space, those things /would/ take up extra space in the phone. While I'm of the opinion that Apple could have fitt…

[deleted]
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