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

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

#251

Post by schlowmo »

6stringmerc wrote: post #238
schlowmo wrote: post #226

There's possibly one reason why carriers (and probably vendors) haven't much interest in FM radios which the article and (if I don't overlooked) no comment mention: digital dividend. At least here in Germany carriers awaiting the moment when FM broadcast is finally declared dead and their frequencies become free for sale. The VHF band between 87.5 to 108.0 MHz is of big interest especially for rural areas.

Great point, and I would imagine that spectrum / bands will be the next big "war" like patents have been recently for large entities. Lightsquared really tested the waters - and failed due to simple engineering and existing neighbors overlap (aka "No, you can't build a dirt bike track in the middle of a suburban neighborhood and next door to an Elementary school"). Getting access and legal approval will be quite a su…

I wasn't aware of Lightsquared. But it seems like they were a "new player". If you look at the winning bids of the "Digitale Dividene (= digital dividend) I" and "Digitale Dividende II" in Germany it's easy to see that you have to be a big player to have real chances (or being even allowed to bid) in those frequency auctions.

"Digitale Dividende I": six 5 Mhz wide bands (always in "pairs") each between 570.849 and 627.317 million €. Winners: O2, Telekom, Vodafone. (source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitale_Dividende#Frequenzver...)

"Digitale Dividende II": thirty-one 5 Mhz wide bands (some of them "paired") each between 39.011 and 255.967 million €. Winners: Telekom, Vodafone, Telefónica (formerly O2). (source: http://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/cln_1432/DE/Sachgebiete/Tele...)

Further I know of some radio stations (especially community radios) which refuse to accept special offers from broadcast carriers for digital radio (DAB+ and DVB-T(2)) broadcasting because of the fear that this could be used as another argument against them having an own analog FM frequency.

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

#252

Post by emodendroket »

DigitalJack wrote: post #247
jon-wood wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the BBC have such a wide range of music stations I can never comprehend why commercial radio is still a thing, and still so popular here. I'm probably not the target market though, since I also get irritated at the way all radio stations have about 15 minutes of music per hour, and the rest is filler from some smug DJ pretending to be your friend, and people calling in because they've got no one better to talk t…

I can't speak for the UK market, but in the US, public radio is biased left. I'm biased right, so it annoys me, but I love the stuff that isn't political, like Click'n'Clack (did that come back or is it being rebroadcast?). Commercial Radio has a non-government business benefactor, and so they cover what is of interest to them. Public Radio has government as it's benefactor, and so they cover their interests. Now it'…

There are no new episodes of Car Talk being recorded since the brothers both retired and one of them is dead.

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

#253

Post by angersock »

imtringued wrote: post #210
angersock wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You should create screenshots instead.

Why? So I can fuck around with OCR later?

The data is already structured.

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

#254

Post by zyx321 »

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?…

There are a few "true" FM radios hidden in there, but each works only on select devices, and most of them require root access.

Just a fun trivia fact ;)

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

#255

Post by teh_klev »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #233
WalterBright wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trees cut the lines here about 1 to 4 times a year. The longest outage was 10 days, the shortest was about 3 hours. Most everyone in my neighborhood eventually buys a generator. The power company told me it costs $15,000 per span to bury the wires. They find it cheaper to send a repair crew out to rebuild the wires regularly.

> Trees cut the lines here about 1 to 4 times a year. It's that bad ? Why don't they just bury the cables like we do here ? Maybe the initial costs are a bit higher but it can't be cheap to have to send someone out to fix the cables that often.

> Why don't they just bury the cables like we do here ?

In rural areas it's just not economically feasible to bury cables. Sure, some cables are buried and follow the roads between population centres, but they also need to cross fields, go up hills and span the wilderness to get to many places that would take many miles of detours of twisty roads and tracks.

For the power companies and telcos to bury cables where we live they'd need to rip everything up and start again, and even then there's a fairly good chance that some piece of agricultural equipment would rip the cable out of the ground. Burying stuff is hugely expensive.

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

#256

Post by mwexler »

I find it hubris on the point of the device makers. Like, "what? you don't have unlimited streaming everywhere?" As a commuter in the NYC area, streaming is in fact not available consistently everywhere on the ride in... but my fm radio on my ipod never stutters. (Of course, some static here and there...)

And as more information sources move to the terribly named "HD" channels of radio, I worry that my current ipod will start to have even less content available.

When I think of all the features I never use on my expensive phone, having one I want to use already built in but disabled is somewhat frustrating.

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

#257

Post by sethd »

jrockway wrote: post #42

More interesting would be getting the weather radio signal (not on the FM broadcast band, it's AM around 160MHz), and having the phone change which SAME code it's sensitive to as you move around. I know you are supposed to get an SMS or something whenever there is a severe weather event, but after a million amber alerts and a flood warning a few states away, that's the first thing I turn off when I get a new phone. I…

What you are referring to is called WEA (Wireless Emergency Alerts, used to be called CMAS), which originates from FEMA based on an FCC spec. It doesn't work off SMS, it's a separate protocol that basically delivers alerts that are affecting the area of the cell towers you are connected to at that time.

The system had a lot of issues when it was first rolled out but it's been improved and seems to work well these days, although there are still carriers/towers that don't support it yet.

They are actually working on expanding it with many additional alert types and increasing the amount of content an alert can contain. However, I have a feeling this will lead to even more people turning them off for good.

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

#258

Post by tremon »

expertentipp wrote: post #123
laurent123456 wrote: post #81

I don't get it, why do manufacturers bother adding an FM chip if they never activate it?

Each European country has a national broadcaster and collects radio/TV license fee (some are less strict about it than the others). I wouldn't be surprised if national broadcasters or fee collectors were pushing for presence of this chip in mobiles so no one can use the excuse "I don't have radio/TV so why should I pay the license?".

The national or regional broadcaster is also a designated news source in case of emergency. If this were true, I would rather expect the rationale to be about emergency coordination than broadcast licensing.

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

#259

Post by orbitur »

rplst8 wrote: post #185
WalterBright wrote: post #19

I just bought an internet radio for my stereo (yes, I'm that old, I have a stereo). I was surprised to discover it also had a wire in the box that turned out to be an FM antenna. I thought with internet radio, who needs an FM tuner? (all the local stations have streaming URLs) Turns out I actually like it. It's handy when the internet fails, or when you're nearing data caps, or just want to run it all day without int…

> I suppose long term FM is dead, but meanwhile it has its uses. If true, this is really unfortunate. I've written about this before, but FM is a really great technology, and in a lot of ways it's only suffering because of the content. The sound quality of digital "equivalents" (XM Radio, HD Radio, Internet Radio, etc.) doesn't even come close to a clear FM station. Not to mention there are millions of vintage radios…

As an aside, I got a free SiriusXM trial with my new car, and the sound quality is terrible compared to FM. I was honestly reminded of the MP3s I got from Kazaa and burned to a CD in 2003, you can hear the aggressive compression.

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

#260

Post by mikhailt »

Aoyagi wrote: post #129
gambiting wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter. If you have an iphone then US carrier can send a command to it that completely disables tethering, I believe the option actually disappears from the menu. With android phones it's not as clear cut, some phones will respect that command some will not, obviously you can always make it work by rooting your phone, but most people don't do that.

I see. Is that a command sent via SMS? I know T-Mobile sent one (and when I didn't open it, a second) of those, but I've never opened them. But this is a Lumia, not an iPhone...

No, it's part of the cellular settings that your phone must download first and be configured by the network.

APN for an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_Point_Name

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