Lately I have been getting back in to internet radio, mostly via Elisa in KDE. Here is my favorite internet stream: https://hawaiireggaenetwork.com/
One killer feature for phone-sized portable FM radios is live sports!
Some sports that have TV broadcasts but no radio broadcast will pipe the broadcast audio over an FM channel within the stadium.
Of course for sports that have a radio broadcast, you can tune directly to it.
Depending on the sport, it's really nice to get player background info, or some sports have mics on players that get piped through the radio in your ear.
My Bluetooth pods have it. I'm not sure how well it's supported, I don't think I've ever entered a place that uses it (or I didn't notice), so I could never try it.
Also, I believe that is exactly the reason why FM tuners are being phased out.
Streaming services will nowadays give you uninterrupted playback pretty much anywhere, even in places like large buildings or subway tunnels, where radio coverage is nonexistent. Basically it all boils down to the fact that cell network coverage is much better today.
Who told you this? They are wildly different frequencies and encoding.
Even the OG Motorola Droid, of 2009, had the parts inside for an FM radio. They just weren't connected to an antenna and the default software stack didn't include any access to those parts at all.
Flagship Qualcomm-equipped Samsung phones up to the S20 or so tended to be ~similar: The FM tuner guts were usually in there, but they often weren't available to use, and even then they sometimes lacked an antenna.
This is not intended to be an exhaustive list. :)
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In my time, I've enabled FM radio on a few different phones that weren't advertised to have that function, sometimes with root-only hacks from grimy corners of the internet, and sometimes by just installing some software that just happened to have the right hooks.
I'm not here to argue, nor to support claims that I have not made.
https://www.mediatek.com/press-room/mediatek-announces-world...
https://pccentral.net/q1-2026-smartphone-soc-market-share-me...
https://www.androidheadlines.com/2025/03/mediatek-leads-glob...
"somewhat" as in the ballpark of a few cents, definitely less than $1, because it's already there in the reference designs and deliberately removing it would actually take extra work and cost far more.
I remember all the no-name/generic MP3/MP4 players had an FM radio, while Apple's iPods did not. They deliberately chose not to include one, and definitely not because of cost.
Ha!
Cellphones got cellphone emergency broadcasts before they lost FM radio, so they still show emergency broadcasts.
Cellphone emergency broadcasts turned out to be not reliable during the Hawaiian Island fires.
RDS in FM has a special mode for emergency broadcasts and some countries use them. As FM signals easily cover a 50-75 mile radius, the coverage area is huge versus cellular emergency broadcasts requiring the towers to be powered on which have also failed during natural disasters.
Which, if the motivation is to provide emergency notification, I also assume means mandating that users carry wired headphones?
Sliding down this slope looks fun...
Something-something antenna 1/4 of the wavelength physics. And FM wave is roughly 3 meters long.
When people carried antennas (headphone cords) around it was handy, but not a lot of people would carry antenna now
But every time I try it out, the stations are playing a loud advertisement.
Do flagship Snapdragon SOCs still have radio? Thinking about next GOS compatible Motorola-branded device, the first device GOS will support with Snapdragon.
Of course, it is a Chinese brand who haven't forsaken FM radios. Apparently, Europeans still prefer a FM radio on their smartphones that Chinese brands that sell in Europe still retain them.
Here in USA, people don't seem to care about radio.
FM radio support is a part of a Bluetooth chip, an audio codec chip, or even a standalone IC.
In modern high end SoCs, even the 5G modem is largely evicted from the SoC itself. Only the digital processing happens in the SoC - while ADC/DAC and anything analog lives in its own IC.