31–40 of 112 posts
What's the downside of turning this on? From the article it just seems like it would mean more capabilities, more consumer choice. Is the only "downside" that it allows you to bypass cell networks when getting content?
You'll listen to the radio ads instead of the streaming services' ads; mobile carriers may have special ad-revenue arrangements with such services.
Am I going crazy? One day I woke up and could not find the Android app "FM Radio" (even had a shortcut on my home screen.) Looked and looked and looked and could not find it anywhere. Eventually I verified the apk was included in the original install. Did my provider (Sprint?) or my manufacturer remove this during an update? Did Gooole remove this during an update? Side note: anyone know of a good FM radio app on And…
But Jot Carpenter, vice president of government affairs for CTIA-The Wireless Association, resists the move to turn on the FM chip..."What Americans really want is the ability to stream, download and customize music playlists to meet their personal preferences," Carpenter said... I wonder if the people whose job it is to make these sorts of patronizing arguments privately feel embarrassed when doing so.
I work at a telco that constantly makes ridiculous patronizing arguments. The people making those statements are drinking so much kool-aid they honestly don't even know they're talking nonsense. They actually believe it to their core.
Even if the chip supports FM, does the phone have an FM antenna? I seem to remember that my old pre-MP3 devices used the headphone cable as the antenna. Would it be easy to have good reception in a smartphone without using a headphone cable? Given how I use my smartphone using Bluetooth speakers for music and seldom headphones, I doubt that the FM chip would work for me. (And if I did often use headsets, I would get…
Since FM operates around 100 MHz, cellular around 1GHz, and Wifi from 2-5GHz, you'd need a pretty "flexible" antenna to talk them all at once. To say nothing of the capacitive footwork you'd need to undertake to adjust the electrical length properly to tune the sucker.
Couple this with how FM Radio is seen as niche for smartphones and it makes sense to have an external antenna requirement.
There is no requirement for the radio app to output to the headphones that are being plugged in for antenna reasons. The built-in app for my BlackBerry Z30 has no problems reassigning output to a speaker.
This is poor journalism, particularly coming from NPR. The NAB (including NPR) are lobbying to force all phones to include an FM radio. Since they can't say, "we want this to increase our ad revenue," they're using the tried and true, "it's a must for national security" approach. They've previously tried to get language added to Homeland Security bills that would force phone manufacturers to include radios. Besides,…
This article is misleading. While it is true that almost every smartphone has an FM radio on the SoC, it's not true that it's always up to the carriers to enable the radio. Many unsupported phones are lacking the trace between the FM input to the headset jack, meaning this issue can't be fixed in a software update.
"This article is misleading." ^Yes this is NPR's classic bias against corporations.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to listen to FM radio all the time. I personally think podcasts are way better and would not be surprised if most consumers agree.
I have one remark about live sports, I like the idea of listening live events that have no data costs associated.
I would argue that analog FM radio has a pretty bad user experience, and I completely understand a manufacturer not including it because of that. The audio quality is usually poor, it's location and environment sensitive, and the system for distributing and the RDS text is slow to update, and often incomplete.
What's the downside of turning this on? From the article it just seems like it would mean more capabilities, more consumer choice. Is the only "downside" that it allows you to bypass cell networks when getting content?