The hidden FM radio in your pocket and why you can't use it
npr.org
npr.org
I wonder if the people whose job it is to make these sorts of patronizing arguments privately feel embarrassed when doing so.
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 I'm an outlier, Spotify still has a free tier. Why would I go back to the radio? That would be like trading Netflix back in for Blockbuster Video. shudder
Strangely enough, I only have a problem with net neutrality violations when you're charging me extra for certain packets, not when you're giving me certain packets for free. Go figure.
Not all data is equal, spectrum is limited, and I'd rather users be permitted to get music bits that don't count towards their cap than some twit using spectrum for bittorrent. I would pay more because of T-Mobile's disregard for net neutrality in this case, because it benefits me as an end user. I've never seen Comcast, Verizon, or any other throttling of video content benefit someone (while at the same time they not being constrained by shared spectrum bandwidth limitations).
I don't know if that is the case or not in this situation, but it could be. Not everything becomes a violation
Not to be the "analogy not exactly right" guy, but it would be like closing Blockbuster Video just because "NETFLIX IS SO MUCH BETTER AND IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT THEN TOUGH SHIT".
No, I don't think they feel embarrassed at all. This the human-level equivalent of promulgating botnets, and involves a similar principle - that if people are too passive to harden their systems against such obviously lame exploits, then they deserve whatever they get. I find this an obnoxious argument, which is why I have so little sympathy for the 'black hat hackers help people improve security' argument sometimes floated here on HN.
I actually think it's true that most people are ignorant or possibly even stupid, and that they won't adopt good security (or critical thinking) practices until they've learned the hard way - by being exploited for someone else's gain. But going from observing this fact to actively leveraging it is precisely the point at which one is making the world a worse place.
/GRAR
It's about the same as a politician talking about proposed legislation with the phrase common sense.
The goal here is to paint people who oppose your view as out of touch with the average American or acting nonsensically.
Motorola shines again btw. Not only do they not cripple their phones but also include a simple FM Radio app by default.
FM radio requires a large antenna. It will not work without one. The 5th generation iPod nano (2009) was the first iPod with an (enabled) FM radio. We used the headphone wire as the antenna. It worked well enough. While there was a tiny speaker in those iPods, headphones were the only practical way to listen to audio.
That's not the case with phones. People listen to the built-in speaker, and they listen over bluetooth and WiFi. It's becoming less and less common to plug headphones into these devices. That being the case, including an FM radio feature would just be a horrible experience for the majority of users: they'd hear nothing but static, all the time. I don't know about the other smartphone makers, but Apple will not ship something that will likely be a horrible experience for most users. Couple that with very low demand from users (as the article points out) and there's no FM radio on iPhones.
[citation needed]
All the smartphones I'm aware of on the market still include a headphone jack.
Hell, the new Macbook with the USB-C connector has two plugs. A USB-C connector, and an audio jack.
For iPhone users, who never took their headphones out of the box, or lost them months ago, or simply left them at home today... it's less reasonable.
The fact is, most iPhone users don't have their headphones with them most of the time. That means the vast majority of launches of the Radio app would go straight to the "Please plug in your headphones" screen, at which point the user would be frustrated because they don't have headphones to plug in.
Whether it's worth it to include a feature that would result in frustration for many users, but yield utility for some users, is always a tough call. It's not black and white.
Never mind the fact that not all users would use headphones not suitable for use as an FM antenna (too long or short, wrong impedance matching, etc).
> "But the mobile industry, which profits from selling data to smartphone users, says that with the consumer's move toward mobile streaming apps, the demand for radio simply isn't there."
They are positioning the mobile industry so they look as if they're trying to profit from denying users FM radio.
It's sad that a news agency that prides on being for the public and independent so easily turns to straight up propaganda when it's to push their own agenda.
"In contrast with commercial broadcasting, NPR's radio broadcasts do not carry traditional commercials, but has advertising in the form of brief statements from major sponsors which may include corporate slogans, descriptions of products and services, contact information such as website addresses and telephone numbers."
They have a revenue of about 180 million.
I don't actually think they're doing this for the money, they are a non-profit after all. I believe them when they just want the public to have access to FM radio. All the more reason for them not to engage in dirt writing like this.
No other reasons required.
I was on the same boat as you, and then I found out that these FM receivers are only disabled in the US. Seriously, the same models have perfectly enabled FM receivers in other countries.
When I open the FM radio app on my Z3, it goes "please plug in your headphones to listen to the radio, they act as a necessary antenna", and refuses to start otherwise, and that's that.
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, forcing phone manufacturers to include a radio won't save the radio industry. Radio audiences are declining for the same reason broadcast TV audiences are: it's a one-size fits all product on a strict schedule that's overflowing with ads. It was in decline well before the smart phone.
https://recodetech.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/arbitron-1980...
And regardless of NPR's motives, their "it's needed for emergencies" argument is a pretty good one.
Instead of getting the FM receiver component enabled, you're more likely to have Apple et al tell & pay the radio chip makers to remove FM capability so they don't have to deal with some third party abusing the police power of the state to compel the manufacturers to make something do what they didn't want it to.
It seems like they're citing manufacturers as well as carriers. Since many major carriers order variants of phone models specific to their network, it's not out of the question that either could be responsible for the lockout, even if it is at the hardware level.
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 a Bluetooth one.)
I guess, they could have the FM app tell people that they need to plug in the correct type of headphone for this feature.
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.
You'll listen to the radio ads instead of the streaming services' ads; mobile carriers may have special ad-revenue arrangements with such services.
Plus, Google or another company has to pay an engineer to write an app for it, and test it against the hardware in the phones, etc. etc.
Usually this functionality is a byproduct of some random other chip on the phone that is multifunction, usually Bluetooth. So people who don't use Bluetooth get confused/upset/paranoid/tin foil hat when their FM Radio app tells them that Bluetooth needs to be enabled to use it.
Many users who really want FM can already do it today, but it involves rooting their phone and installing something like Cyanogenmod.
So users are why we can't have nice things.
Also, on Nokia N900 they simply didn't do an app at all. Lots of them were quickly written by community and everyone was happy.
Exactly why are these chips being included and disabled, as opposed to not including them in the first place? No one seems to be questioning this part.
Can anyone shed light on this? What is the back story here?
Fun fact: at least for small orders you can get PICs cheaper than 555s.
I don't want an FM radio on my phone because the internet is a superior system 99% of the time. If Apple doesn't want to make an FM radio then they shouldn't have to. It should be the people creating technology who decide the features, not lobbyists using threats of force through government based on clearly biased political interests.
Do we really need a law for this? If people wanted it they would just demand it from manufacturers and/or carriers
> "Smulyan's lobbying has prompted the Indiana Senate to urge mobile carriers to activate the FM chip."
Total newspeak. Government bodies don't "urge", they force.
> "When the power grid is out, the only lifeline for the American public is having an FM tuner"
If you can't afford a battery powered radio, you can't afford a cell phone. And BTW if the FM tuner is your "only lifeline", you might want to reevaluate your preparedness for anything serious at all.
> "Every time you buy a phone, you've paid for that radio," Smulyan says.
Probably not true. In all likelihood the cost of the chip has no bearing on the cost of your device, and even if it did it would probably cost more to design separate chips (one with and one with the tuner) for separate markets, and that cost would get passed on to consumers
> "What Americans really want is the ability to stream, download and customize music playlists to meet their personal preferences," Carpenter said, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "and that's not what the traditional FM radio offers."
What an arrogant asshole. His condescending presumptuous attitude aside, neither of these options precludes the other and what consumers probably want is every option at their disposal.
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 Android?
There is a lot of stuff that people want to hear that only comes over AM, like baseball games, for example.
1) You will have to integrate that antenna somewhere in the device, and you can't really make it "smaller" than a certain size. 2) Even if you could integrate the antenna, it is directional; with a use case for mobile devices, unless you are getting an exceptionally strong signal, you'll get varying results out of it.