The FM Radio Inside Your Pocket, and Why You Can't Use It (2015) | Hacker News Reader

The FM Radio Inside Your Pocket, and Why You Can't Use It (2015)

npr.org

29 pointsthunderbong27 comments

My time listening to the radio was low to start, mainly listening to CDs/MP3 CDs when I started driving, and promptly fell to 0 when I got an iPod and stayed there after I got an iPhone. Why would I want to listen to ads and DJs talking over the music when I can listen to exactly what I want to listen to?

Maybe I'm in the minority but I've never once considered my data usage when it comes to music/podcasts or even radio. There were plenty of apps to stream radio if that's what I really wanted.

I would never buy a smartphone based on whether it could receive FM radio, and if I had a smartphone that could, I would probably never use it. But the article makes the point that FM radio can work just fine in emergency situations where the mobile network is overwhelmed, and having that capability available could be life-saving.

Radio isn't valuable to listeners or competitive because of the music. Even top 40/pop stations are "relevant" to their listeners because of in-person events, giveaways, sports coverage, etc. Hence why the biggest stations in my area are now glorified mouthpieces for sportsbooks

> Why would I want to listen to ads and DJs talking over the music

Do you really think that is the entirety of terrestrial radio?

Your comment has little to do with TFA - why the FM chip in smartphones is often deliberately disabled by the vendor with no explanation or opt-out for the owner of the phone.

I’d like to echo this sentiment. Every new technology is a refuge from the advertising on the previous mature technology

I've seen the best minds of my generation wasted on trying to build ad technology. The previously mature technologies provided superior ad technology: untargeted, semi-regulated, sue-able (for truth in advertising, for false advertising, for disinformation). Every new ad technology in my lifetime keeps getting worse for the user and worse for the advertiser but is making lots of money for the tech companies who spend it on a lot of smart people wasting so much of their time continuing to make things worse so that it makes more money.

I'd rather go back to FM radio ads and newspaper ads and broadcast TV ads, personally, if there were an easy way to kill today's ad tech companies.

I listen almost exclusively to non-commercial radio, but every so often I'd scan the dial and sample the commercial stations. Most of the commercial stations in my market have evolved to only interrupt the programming once per hour with ads.

I think the scale is tipping. The only way to listen to music now without a subscription and without ads every few songs is actually old-school FM radio.

There are still some radio stations with heavy advertisement loads. But most of the dial is not as hard to listen to as it was 10-years ago.

Try non-commercial streaming, such as WFMU or KEXP.

DJs with knowledge, taste, and access to big big collections.

Are they available on IHeartRadio?

Beats me

I remember my old Windows Phone used the headphones/headphone jack to give you FM radio.

I had a Nokia phone like this too!

FM radio in North America has long stopped being simply a slice of frequency spectrum devoted to analogue broadcast stations. The widespread iBiquity IBOC system (better known as ''HD Radio'', now owned by DTS) features multiplexing of 2 or 3 digital subchannels per station across the existing band. This means that a simple FM receiver in a smartphone will only get the analogue portion of the signal, unless/until the smartphone manufacturer licences an HD Radio demodulator and accompanying software. Unlike in modern automobiles, which have integrated HD Radio playback through the usual speaker system but with no digital output, smartphones might be feared by broadcasters and content providers to be potential piracy devices if any of those HD Radio digital signals were able to be captured or retransmitted. Is that fear real? Beats me, but it might cause integrated smartphone FM radio receivers to be analogue-only.

there is an app [NextRadio] being proffered to unlock FM module.

the radio is often associated with the modem.

if this is a nonproblematic flip of a setting, the next need is an antenna.

usually wired headphones provide this.

if the headphone jack is discontinued, then you need surgery to get antenna.

NextRadio doesn't work in Android 11, and it isn't being updated because the group behind it crashed and burned.

Since there isn't a universal way to access the FM chip, your only hope is a vendor-specific app, which has its own problems, such as FM receivers being illegal in some of Europe: https://itigic.com/in-2021-fm-radio-is-removed-from-all-mobi... and https://radioinfo.asia/news/europe-mandates-compulsory-digit... (France requires that digital radio be included in a receiver, so a device that is only capable of receiving FM is illegal)

My phone has the FM chip enabled, using a 3rd party app, works fine to listen to local radio. The problem is I like AM talk radio, so streaming sounds better than regular non HD radio.

I really wish there was an HD Radio chip for phones. almost all the stations in my area have HD radio stations on both AM and FM.

Also, I still use a headphone jack to output my phone to my car. I'm on the edge about upgrading my phone just because of this.

well I also suspect you hit the reason why nobody has them enabled.

if you don't have a headphones jack, you have no antenna. without an antenna you may as well leave it disabled lest you have a bunch of customer unsatisfied that the advertised feature doesn't work (very well).

that's my guess at least.

On most of my old android phones you just needed an app (Next Radio iirc) and wired headphones to listen to the radio.

I’m not clear on why I can’t use it. (I mean other that “it’s turned off”) The argument seems to amount to “you don’t want to”. I’m sure that’s not a reason to prevent me from using it.

I think we can extract a grain of truth from the bullshit of the final quotation:

> "What Americans really want is the ability to stream, download and customize music playlists to meet their personal preferences," Carpenter said

The carriers who get to decide (for some reason) if the hardware inside your phone gets turned on are also in the business of selling a directly competing product: bandwidth, especially for streaming.

Often, there's no antenna for FM in the devices, even though they might be able to theoretically receive, and may even have an RF frontend for it. Older phones often used the ground of attached headphones as a makeshift antenna, and would refuse to operate, or just fail to receive anything.

IIRC, the Microsoft Zune promoted its inclusion of an FM receiver and that the included earphones were the antenna.

Many Windows Phones in the WP8/8.1 generation supported that, too, and it worked semi-well with just about any headset plugged in not just included ones.

Whatever it means to be dead on HN some "dead" guy made a genuinely good comment I shall echo

Is there a hack to turn on the chip for yourself?

Prior to Android 11, NextRadio worked. I don't think it does anymore.

My current phone came with an FM Radio app, so it's a non-issue for me.

My new Huawei P30 still has it enabled, and comes with the Chinese FM Radio app.

Is there a hack to turn on the chip for yourself?

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