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Comment by Mendenhall | Hacker News Reader

I am sure I am missing many points in understanding this, but it seems like it would almost be a competitive advantage to now release a phone that had "free radio" on it. I would use it all the time, and it appears it would be easy to do if I am not too far off.

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I would guess that the reason for this is that most smart phone makers have online music stores or streaming music services they would prefer to steer users to.

I must ask where you live that there is FM remotely worth listening to?

Around here the only thing at all decent is NPR, and that content is all available via podcast with much better audio fidelity, and seeking.

Could be useful for emergency alerts in natural disaster situations where cell coverage gets knocked out.

Check the low end of the dial. Most cities have one or more community/college radio stations, which tend to be the most experimental/well-curated/interesting sources of audio one can find.

UK? Majority of BBC is nationwide and high quality.

I am often in remote areas that do not have cell coverage but do have FM.

Also in emergency type situations it could be helpful.

My 12 year old ipod has fm radio, I think a smartphone could do it.

At least some Windows phones have this. It works fine on my Icon - fm radio is a default app. I assumed it was a holdover from the Zune days, where that was a selling point.

The Android default FM app is terrible, isn't there something better? I searched the store, but it's all adware ridden crap.

There is a default one? Because I don't have any and can't find one for Cyanogenmod on my Galaxy Note 2. Samsung's rom had one but it refuses to install under Cyanogenmod.

I think the only one that's an actual FM radio app is Spirit2 by Mike Reid. There's a GPL3 version of it in F-Droid as well.

Yes, although I hear MS is pulling the FM Radio app from future versions of Windows 10 Mobile. I have no idea why :(

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