Slashdot Mirror
Does Lack of FM Support On Phones Increase Your Chances of Dying In a Disaster?
theodp writes "You may not know it," reports NPR's Emma Bowman, "but most of today's smartphones have FM radios inside of them. But the FM chip is not activated on two-thirds of devices. That's because mobile makers have the FM capability switched off. The National Association of Broadcasters has been asking mobile makers to change this. 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." But FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate says radio-enabled smartphones could sure come in handy during times of emergency. So, is it irresponsible not to activate the FM chips? And should it's-the-app-way-or-the-highway Apple follow Microsoft's lead and make no-static-at-all FM available on iPhones?
Let us know how that data service is working when a serious disaster strikes.
Ok, you are not aware of the "if the headline asks a question, the answer is invariably 'no'" meme.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'd take a built in HAM radio.
Hmm... can the phones only receive or also send?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In a post about half a page down from this article, Norway is going to kill off FM in favor of digital (DAB) as the only broadcast method.
So there you are.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
So FM on Microsoft iPhones is of no use in Norway.
Which is sort of the *opposite* of open anything (;-))
davecb@spamcop.net
I think the article is either miswritten or FEMA/NAB misdirecting their blame. I highly doubt the manufacturers of the phones (LG, Samsung, etc) are the ones pushing for the disabling of the FM chip but requirements from the mobile service providers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, etc) who as the article noted are far more inclined to rake in profits if customers use data services instead of over the air reception and have a long history of locking down phone features for their own enrichment. FYI I tried to load the app National Association of Broadcasters is noting in this article (NextRadio) and I couldn't, apparently even though FM is enabled on my phone their app is only supported on a a select set of phones.
Many stations have emergency generators, as people use radio to get information during natural disasters (;-))
davecb@spamcop.net
Why do you assume they wouldn't be? Broadcast facilities usually are engineered with disasters in mind; it doesn't mean they are invincible, but there are almost always backup batteries, backup generators, and alternate transmission sites available. Your typical 3G tower is not as well engineered and can't be as reliably counted on for disaster communication.
Just look at previous desasters and see who was saved by having a cellphone with FM and who dies because they did not have FM on their cellphones.
You should also take into account who dies becase of FM and who lived because they did NOT have when no disaster was going on.
And how often do emergencies happen? In all my life I have NEVER been in a situation where my life depended om having an FM radio.
And those people who are worried about some major collaps (people who burried themselves in 2000, you can come out now.) will have HAM radio licences and what not.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
At least I'm honest about it. :P
Seriously though, lack of FM is not a safety risk. That's absurd. if they're really concerned, then have them blast out a text message if there is an issue. I'm sure the telecos would be happy to do that because txtmsgs take up just about zero bandwidth.
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As a blackberry user, I do enjoy listening to FM radio from time to time. We here in Canada are "fortunate" that our wireless providers do not choose to disable these functions.
http://docs.blackberry.com/en/smartphone_users/deliverables/61598/lsy1385304237085.jsp
I don't know how much good it will do to listen to a 'local' radio station since most of the time its just a recording anyway.
What you need to listen to is the NOAA weather radio - around here its 162.500 megahertz, and the voice was recorded by Stephen Hawking
"I'm too cheap"
Hehehe, Define cheap. I spend about $25 every 4 months on one of those pay per minute/mb plans (Page Plus). Of course I should note that they have limited support, you buy your phone (either through them or independently) and I don't have my head glued to the thing like some. A far cry from the $200 I spent every 4 months with one of the major carriers (AT&T) so I could have stacks of minutes I never used. I've played with radio on my phone but I need to get some portable earphones that don't use earbuds, never been able to get used to stuffing small, cold, uncomfortable speakers into my ears.
That's one of my purchase criteria. Samsung used to have it, now Huawei does. I use it several times a week, and a lot when on trips w/spotty data.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
While I don't think the lack is a safety risk - and I do think the headline is just the usual sort of attention-whoring we expect from the media these days - having an FM radio is very useful if there is a regional emergency. And since most people are usually carrying a phone anyway, locking out that ability does them a disservice.
Personal anecdote time: back in the big blackout of 2003 that shutdown the Northeastern US, nobody's phones were working because the networks were jammed by millions of people suddenly calling each other, everyone trying to figure out what was going on. Nobody knew anything except that the lights were off and there was an increasingly nervous tension; as this was only a couple years after 9/11, the word "terrorists" was on everybody's lips. I happened to have an MP3 player with FM functionality on me, and that made me very popular, because I could relay news to everyone around me. The temper changed from twitchy nervousness to reassured cooperation, from a fearful me-first attitude to one where informed people worked together to get through the disaster.
I don't think having that radio made me any safer, but it made me - and those around me - happier because we were not cut off from the rest of the world. I still carry that little MP3 player with me, solely for its radio functions even though my phone is one of the rare devices that does have FM functionality (the phone needs a charge every day, but the mp3 player, which is only the size of a thumb-drive, runs seemingly forever on an easily-replaced AA battery).
I'm sorry, is it just me? What kind of information are you going to put out over FM to cell-phones, in an emergency, that will be life-saving? How many cell-phones are still going to be running on day two of whatever disaster either because people have turned them off because they "don't work" because the local cell is down or because the batteries are flat? How many of those that aren't would be captured by an initial text message anyway? How many people are going to crowd around the only working phone in the area and turn on the radio to tune in and then hear something that might save their lives?
And what are you going to tell people that they don't know already (but should) and which will directly contribute to saving their lives better than, say, common sense?
Maybe it's just because I live in a country where emergencies don't really happen on this scale (no seismic activity, little flooding, no drought, no tornados or extremes of weather, no civil unrest, etc.) , but I'm one of those people who reads up on anything risky before I do it, and I'm still struggling to fathom what could be sent that would make that much difference?
Shelter locations, possibly? Surely the best is word-of-mouth and going and finding those people in need of shouting at with a big shouty-device? Like the first thing we do in any such disaster, send the police round and the helicopters over to give out such information? And anyone in a dangerous area, in need of shelter, will move away from the danger and can then be corralled and treated once they are in a safe area, any safe area? And, again, a simple text message serves the same purpose and probably uses the same power given the "always on" nature of cell connections on modern phones.
What's a real scenario where one-way FM radio on a cell-phone would be a real life-line for anyone but the completely ignorant and inexperienced?
Cell towers also have emergency generators.
Good, then there will be more redundancy.
I've gone through enough hurricanes to watch even land-lined phones becoming a luxury. Cell towers are useless, and their backups wouldn't even last a week. FM is old stable tech and easier to use to give out information.
Even from the consumer perspective, using FM would likely reduce the power consumption compared to streaming from a web service.
If I have a cell phone without an FM radio, it's exactly the same as having no cell phone at all, for the purposes of the question being asked. Not having a built-in taser increases my chances of being mugged, too.
--Jim (me)
Its coverage. One single FM transmitter can cover area within a hundred miles, while cell towers can handle only a few miles. To have the same coverage as an FM tower, you need a lot more cell towers. What is easier to keep running ? One FM tower or hundreds if not thousands of cell towers ? Furthermore, FM transmitters are a lot simpler than cell transmitters.
Not everything is a 'phone'. My very nice clock/radio/alarm receives AM and FM. I'd be pretty pissed off if I had to replace that (and all the other FM receivers in the house) with some new digital doodad.
You do realize that for less than the cost of a burger and fries you could stop by a dollar store and pickup a half dozen headphones and distribute them throughout your life (home, work, car, etc) in case of emergency? No doubt that the chances of it actually being necessary aren't all that high but I can't think of any cheaper method of disaster preparation either. By the way a radio is #3 on the FEMA disaster preparedness kit right behind Food and Water.
http://www.ready.gov/kit
Yes, the audio cable works as an antenna. It also works with portable, wired, speakers.
No one listens to music while walking the dog or jogging, or have they all switched to bluetooth? Headphones are very popular with commuters who crave a reason not to strike up conversations with random travellers!
I must buy one of those gamer headsets that cover your ears. I find bud-style earphones annoying as they inevitably fall out when the wearer inadvertently yanks at the cord.
Also while the cell phone infrastructure is controlled by four large companies, anybody can send out a fm signal with the right (cheap) equipment. Also, strong fm signals can go 100 miles.
While I'd agree that the dying in a disaster due to lack of enabling the radio is a silly stretch, if it can receive FM, why not?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
By the way a radio is #3 on the FEMA disaster preparedness kit right behind Food and Water.
More important than shelter!
AM is even better, because of the range. So, keep an AM/FM radio with your emergency supplies. If your emergency supply is only a cell phone, you're screwed anyway.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
However, not having FM support on my cell phone does significantly decrease my chances of hearing lite rock and smooth jazz.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The radio in my car, nor the clock radio next to my bed, does not receive txt messages.
It's not just about phones not working, but about capacity. If there's a big enough emergency (eg the London tube/bus bombings) the number of people using their devices will max out the network, even if every single transceiver is still up and running. Many people's first reaction in such situations is to stand for half an hour on redial trying to get a phone call out. FM would mean being able to "broadcast" information to a lot of people at once, and discourage them from clogging up the network.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Even dumb-phones have FM in their radio chipsets.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
It has to use the wired headset as the FM antenna.
I've been through three weather events in the last decade that brought down land line service, two of which were hurricanes. The cell service stayed up for all of them without dropping. Even when the power was out in a large part of the area for a week, they kept the backups at the cell sites fueled, and brought in some extra backup generators just in case (some were sitting idle and not in use). The only time I've seen cell service go out was after an earthquake during work hours, when everyone was trying to call family at work or home. I guess your mileage may vary depending on where you live though.
If you live in an area with hurricanes though, you shouldn't really depending on the cell phone at all, fm or data, and should have a dedicated weather radio, which is cheaper and lasts much longer on batteries. Even without that though, you usually have at least a day's notice and should have some idea what is going on before it hits. After it hits, there is much less need for immediate info unless a second storm of some sort is coming by. At that point, a cell phone for making calls is much more useful, as you're more likely to have a problem with some sort of accident requiring contacting emergency services than simply needing a small info blurb.
The point where emergency announcements are useful, as in last minute ones and not stuff that has been on the news for several days, are things that can be harder to predict, especially with tornadoes, but possibly severe thunderstorms, flash floods, etc.
Really, at the moment I have voice-only on a smartphone, through a third-party provider. I use wifi for data, but would welcome FM for such purposes.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
So let me get this straight... text messages aren't reliable, but someone with their cellphone tuned to the emergency broadcast channel on their cell phone is something you'd rather rely upon?
Allow me to roll my eyes at you dramatically.
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so you want to mandate that all cellphones have a built in FM radio?
There has to be a way to accomplish the same thing with the existing antenna that handles phone calls and text messages. You want a different protocol on the same frequency just for emergency broadcasts? Fine. Sounds stupid but its less obnoxious then requiring every phone have an antiquated communications protocol imposed on it simply because no has bothered to think of a robust communications protocol that could go over the existing antenna.
I would sooner opt for every phone to have a satilite antenna rather than an FM antenna.
And what is more, there is no way the FM antenna is going to do ANYTHING unless someone turns on the FM tuner. The text message would get someone whether they were listening for a disaster report or not. Your FM idea would only help people that were actively listening.
What is the alternative? Keep the FM tuner on constantly? Battery life on these smartphones is already shit without forcing the FM tuner to be on all the time.
This is a bad idea.
Make your alert system work on the existing 2G antenna or - "no". Just no.
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It's just another bad slashdot summary. The missing piece of information is that, despite what movies might tell you, the FM EM spectrum works just fine to put away zombies. So, if you care about your brains, do yourself a favor and take their advice.
"I decided I could write something better than everything out there in two weeks. And I was right." - Linus Torvalds
.. because we had a very heavy thunderstorm down here in South Tx and the power went out, net and cable tv were down, even the cell towers were off. No service .. all around. Its not a big deal for us here - we're used to dangerous weather conditions (hurricanes, tornadoes) so we keep emergency stuff handy. But 10 hours without pretty much everything helps to think about that question. Radio can be a life line (and yes, we were able to listen to FM stations on our battery powered radio) and in emergency situations its pretty much the only reliable way to get information out to the general population. I also know from first hand experience, that cell towers are easily overwhelmed when people are trying to call or to access the net in emergency situations. I am sure we all have experience with situations where we really needed the (mobile) net and it just didn't work. I wouldn't rely on anything digital when the shit hits the fan. A radio, a flashlight and plenty of batteries - everybody should have a little emergency box stuffed into a closet.
Its a kit, besides a small tent "shelter" isn't exactly something you can stuff into a duffel bag. And its a FEMA list, no one said it was perfect. Though I'd guess that the intent of most preparedness lists/kits is for immediate survival & getting out of the disaster area. Shelter would be provided afterwards by emergency services, in theory.
I've gotten Amber Alerts on my phone without using any data service. If the RF protocols that kind of emergency broadcast, I am sure they support more traditional ones as well.
...and work great when everyone tries to use them at the same time.
Quote the bit where I said they shouldn't make emergency broadcasts over FM radio. Do so now please or admit that you just tried to straw man me.
What I am saying is that if you have a cell phone... it doesn't have to have an FM radio built into it by law just for your fucking emergency broadcasts.
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The on-chip FM radio requires a WIRED headset. Not bluetooth, not using the phone speaker or earpiece. The headset lead is used as an antenna. Without it, the radio doesn't work. Generally won't even turn on, just gives a warning.
So it won't work for most users. And was probably costing too much in support calls about why it wasn't working.
Some can send, like my Nokia N900, but only on very short distance.
Because these FM transmitters:
1. Have a much greater range. In most cases you will be able to hear a station transmitting from tens of kilometers away, in some cases, hundreds. Cell tower range is limited to single digit kilometers in most cases due to optimization for speed over range. Towers over less populated areas will be optimized for range, but even those barely cover ten to twenty kilometers in best case scenarios. Also, see 4.
2. Are typically designed to have backup power in case of an emergency, and are generally often hardened against many disasters because they are supposed to be used to transmit emergency messages.
3. On a final note, most FM receivers also have AM receiver function. That has range of hundreds of kilometers, thousands during the night due to skywave effect. This is the best technology for emergency broadcasts, as one station can cover up to thousands of kilometers radius around itself.
4. Are one way transmitters. That means they don't rely on phone's weak transmitter's ability to reach the tower.
A jack plug with just the cable will also work, no need to have anything attached at the other end of the cable.
Why do you assume FM transmissions would still be working?
Because they continued to transmit during disasters in the past. The best predictor of future performance is past performance.
I've gone through enough hurricanes to watch even land-lined phones becoming a luxury.
Well, it seem to me, that living in a hurricane zone increases your chances of dying in a disaster.
So, if you are worried about lack of FM support on phones . . . just move somewhere else.
Jokes aside, most of us live in areas that are not prone to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, or Godzilla. If you do choose to live in such places, it is important to be prepared, and have an emergency kit. In which you can just pack in a good ole' FM battery.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Here in freedomland we have something called HD Radio. I guess its like DAB but I've never seen an actual physical receiver or known a person who has one.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Because when the police jam cellular, they don't jam FM. http://gawker.com/5830458/san-...
I am a ham radio operator, I have a significantly higher chance of survival than the rest.
If people really cared about safety they would take the time to learn CPR, basic First Aid, and things like ham radio or gain knowlege in how to increase their odds.
Dancing with the stars and Americas got Talent are far more important to the general population.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
WRONG!
1. Global Warming has increased the amount of hazardous weather. Such weather can affect infrastructure such as Power, telephone, and cell service.
2. Data plans are expensive. So they are used sparingly. You are not going to waste it streaming audio, digital data also takes more power off your phone.
3. Your local radio stations (notice that we have that in plural, even in remote areas they are multiple stations available) being that they are local they have information about your local community. Google will not cover the fact that the river overflowed on Route 7 and it is closed. As well they can give you real time data.
4. Radio is usually in your car. A lot of people do not have normal radios.... Everyone has a phone, the fact that they can support FM, and using the FM chip uses a lot less power. Makes it valuable.
Sure the real intent is so Radio Stations don't loose to the global streaming market... But the fact is we need local services as well. We don't have emergencies every day. But the phones have the feature and I am sick of the greedy Cell companies blocking features just so they can milk more money from me.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
>FM would mean being able to "broadcast" information to a lot of people at once, and discourage them from clogging up the network.
GSM had this feature many years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast
"Cell Broadcast is not as affected by traffic load; therefore, it may be usable during a disaster when load spikes (mass call events) tend to crash networks, as the 7 July 2005 London bombings showed. Another example was during the Tsunami catastrophe in Asia. Dialog GSM, an operator in Sri Lanka was able to provide ongoing emergency information to its subscribers, to warn of incoming waves, to give news updates, to direct people to supply and distribution centres, and even to arrange donation collections using Celltick's Cell Broadcast Center, based on Cell Broadcast Technology."
But even though it is many many years old, it is still in an infant stage in actual implementation on handsets and MNOs, e.g. local MNOs implemented CB over 3g networks in 2013, still nog 4g support for it.
to radio?
Won't matter much if the links are cut. A radio station could at least install a temporary antenna if it doesn't have one on its roof.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
AM would be better but can it be done on a chip?
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
is why it is turned off
if the question were "why should a phone add all this expensive hardware for negligible benefit" then the answer should obviously screw FM radio
but if the functionality is already there, why isn't anyone angry that you are being denied something for free simply so your phone carrier can squeeze more cash out of you?
i look at the other posts here and their priorities and their rationale, and i can't understand why this thought doesn't rank higher
and while we're at it, get us a tv tuner too, like in japan:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Androi...
why aren't television and fm radio industries banding together to demand inclusion on smartphones? nevermind as a safety feature, you can make arguments for that, but even if you think that's a contrived concern, do it simply because it's a fucking industry of content, that you can get FOR FREE
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That's because mobile makers have the FM capability switched off. The National Association of Broadcasters has been asking mobile makers to change this. 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."
It's not the mobile makers (excepting Apple) that don't want FM turned on, it's the carriers who want you to upgrade to a plan with more data.
The summary reads like an NAB astroturf campaign. Their "free radio on my phone" ad campaign is a beautiful example of fear mongering. One of their radio spots even invokes 9/11 and insinuates that the aftermath would have been much better if only there had been some way to broadcast information to the masses. The amount of FUD they push is appalling.
The unfortunate part is that they're probably right, that having everyone already carrying an FM receiver probably would be at least marginally beneficial in a disaster situation. But that's not really the reason they're doing it. They're just self-serving assholes using fear to prop up their faltering business model as people abandon broadcast FM for streaming. This isn't about public safety, this is about the loss of revenue and using FUD and conspiracy propaganda to get it back.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
You remember that super derecho that came through here a few years ago? We - and the cell towers - were without power for some time. Several days, in some parts of town. But my little Sansa MP3 player does pick up FM, so I was able to listen to local news in spite of the power outage. (Though not 100% sure why the radio station had power and the cell towers didn't ...)
Would not hearing the news cost my life after a disaster? Probably not, but allowing people to hear the news does make life easier for your local emergency management officials.
Even from the consumer perspective, using FM would likely reduce the power consumption compared to streaming from a web service.
Only if you are dumb enough to use the phone like a radio.
Sane people would expect to receive broadcasted SMS, which would use even less power than having the radio turned on continuously to catch the emergency broadcast, and keep paying attention so as not to miss anything important.
While a received SMS can be read at your own pace, and re-read as needed.
That's fine. I'm not saying FM radios are stupid and anyone that uses them is an asshole... am I?
No. I'm saying that the government shouldn't require cell phone makers or carriers to have FM radios built into the phones.
Now that said, one thing that does annoy me is when the FM radio feature is disabled by the carrier for no fucking reason. Often to make people want to buy their streaming music service more or something equally pathetic. THAT is fucked up. And I'd pass a law against that any day.
But don't force people to put an FM radio in the phones. Get real.
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As to 2G, it isn't for phone calls and text messages.
And even if it were, that would again mean that you should run your signal over whatever the prevailing protocol is at the time.
one fellow was saying "but what if everyone tries to make calls at the same time and it overwhelms the system"... a text message won't overwhelming anything. In fact, during emergencies if they restricted communication to text messages the system would never get congested. Ten million people could all send texts at the same time over and over again and the system would hold.
No, we should go back to carrier pidgeons because what happens if your towers lose power?
or I don't know, we could have a guy taken around on the back of a donkey screaming the news to people.
The FM system is retrograde. If some people still like it, fine... keep it active for them. But don't impose that shit on everyone else. There are a million ways to make the existing cell network perform the relevant function without forcing them to put in an FM antenna.
Unless you want an FM antenna for music and you're pissed that the carriers keep disabling them even if they are in the machine. Then I understand your point.
But on a health and safety stand point? Laughable.
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It's not a meme, it's a law.
Betteridge's law of headlines
moox. for a new generation.
Jokes aside, most of us live in areas that are not prone to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, or Godzilla. If you do choose to live in such places, it is important to be prepared, and have an emergency kit. In which you can just pack in a good ole' FM battery.
I dunno, a large fraction of America is under threat from the first three of those natural disasters.
Hurricanes can strike essentially the entire southeast quarter of the country with devastating force, and can even hit further north along the Atlantic coast. They're possible on the Pacific coast, too, but much less likely, I believe.
Tornadoes are common in more or less the middle third.
Earthquakes are only highly common in California (that I know of offhand), but can be something of a threat in other areas as well (the more so with all the fracking that's been going on).
But there are other natural disasters to watch out for, too. The one that comes most readily to mind is wildfires, which affect the entire west, particularly now that it's been in a severe drought for years.
So that leaves the inland Northeast, and some of the northern Midwest and Rockies. I don't think "most of us" live in those areas.
(I do, though, and I'm very happy that the closest thing to a natural disaster I have to deal with is the occasional—read, about once every decade or so—2-4 foot snowstorm.)
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZN414
I think the psychological reassurance of just knowing what's going on during a disaster is probably the most helpful part.
Even if you can't DO anything about it, it's still better than cowering in fear because you are in the dark both literally and figuratively.
Most (all?) phones send all audio out the headphone jack when something is plugged into it. What good is having an antenna, when you can't hear anything?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Jokes aside, most of us live in areas that are not prone to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, or Godzilla. If you do choose to live in such places, it is important to be prepared, and have an emergency kit. In which you can just pack in a good ole' FM battery.
It would be much wiser to pack in a good ole' hand-crank FM radio. Prices range from just a few bucks on up. Around $30 will get you a halfway-decent radio/flashlight combo.
Of course, $5 will get you a hand-crank cellphone charger...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
During an emergency. These stations are also running on bare bone staff. Many of them may not have a web developer on hand to update the site every 5 minutes... While there is an announcer and reporters are there as key staff.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's not about ANNOUNCING the disaster, that's what sirens are for.
AFTER the sirens have gone off, and AFTER everyone is hiding in fear, wouldn't it be nice if they knew WHY they were hiding?
They can't call or text anyone to find out, since the towers will be overloaded.
Now, they could use the FM radio that is ALREADY BUILT INTO their phone, unfortunately the US carrier they bought it from specifically demanded that the FM radio be disabled.
A specific example of where this would save lives: A tornado pops up, the sirens go off, and everyone heads to the basement. Meanwhile the high winds have knocked down power lines everywhere, and started fires everywhere. The town is quickly burning to the ground (with people still in their basements), and nobody knows because they can't hear the local radio station talking about the fires.
Most cell phones turn off the internal speaker when there is anything plugged into the headphone jack....
I have a phone with an FM receiver active (it uses the headphone cord as an antenna) and this thread got me wondering about things like emergency radio, "scanners", etc. I ended up finding some old threads in other forums with people who found that this phone model's FM rx is in a chip that also has tx capability. But Broadcom doesn't want to share the pin outs and it looks like the threads all died. HTC EVO 4G if anybody's interested. This is along the lines of transmitting for a number of meters, of course, not for communication at a distance.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think most cell phones don't have the power supply to transmit FM broadcast band several miles away, let alone the antenna. And if you can't reach across several miles then what is the emergency purpose of the FM rx/tx capability? Anybody nearby is probably going to be similarly affected by said disaster. If you're worried about being separated from loved ones during a tumult, then you're probably going to want to be able to scan for them over a large area.
I'm just not sure what the argument is for having a bunch of underpowered FM rx/tx going on in the middle of a disaster.
Now, if you really want this to go through, what you have to do is find a disaster where all of the following can be clearly shown to be true:
a) numerous people died
b) there was an internet or mobile outage or lack of signal
c) it can be shown that the lack of internet or mobile outage of lack of signal contributed to the untimely deaths
d) it can be shown that a little FM rx/tx would have saved their lives
Just one such occurrence could actually get you want you want. No company likes to be the actual literal bad guy, and these dormant rx and tx capabilities would start showing up a lot more often.
Still I don't think it will get any better than walkie-talkie across a few dozen meters.
Let's say there's a rescue team after you and you need to transmit your location details. If they're that close, you can yell. If you're under a bunch of debris, you're not transmitting very well any way. If you're thinking triangulation and mapping a bunch of blips of potential victims, well they already have GPS operating.
I'm just not seeing the point.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Already worked. Unlike FM radio, Amber alerts and storm warnings show up.
Only problem for broadcasters is I'm not listening to their sponsors all day. That is the beef, not a missed alert.
The truth shall set you free!
Well, except it's not a law ... not a natural law, not a man-made law ... it's an observation, that's about it.
You can call it a law all you like, but that doesn't make it true.
Ergo, meme.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Why do you assume FM transmissions would still be working?
In multiple emergencies, I have seen electricity go out, cell service go out (or get overloaded), cable TV go out, but I have never seen FM or local Television go out.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
There is no additional drain unless you are actively using the FM receiver.
Also, your phone people already has the chip, it's just disabled.
This isn't about mandating an FM chip in every cellphone, it's about mandating that the existing FM chips not be disabled (which only happens in the US versions)
Carriers would never allow P2P cell mesh networks. If you can use P2P during an emergency, someone will find a way to use it all the time, and bypass the carriers completely.
A text message blasted out by the phone company would do the trick.
Most cell towers have battery back ups so they'll continue to operate even when the power drops. Cell networks do tend to work even in brown outs. Just like your FM transmitters. For the same reason. Battery backups. I think the FM towers also have onsite generators.
As to carriers disabling the FM transmitters... how many flying fucking times do I have to specifically say that I specifically think that is specifically fucked up?
I can't be any clearer. It is literally impossible for me to be any clearer. You're killing me.
Again, I'd sooner put a satellite receiver in the phone then I would an FM receiver. The sat receiver is at least useful for more than getting shitty progressive rock. I might be able to get a clean digital signal from space.
Here is one thing they could do that would improve my impression of FM, do the same thing to FM that they did to over the air TV. Make it go digital. Absent that... no.
And again... YES, they shouldn't turn your FM radio off if it is already in the fucking phone. 100 percent with you. You want to line the carrier executives against a wall and shoot them in the face for that? Signed. I'll go for that. Shoot them in the eyes. I won't stop you.
But don't tell me EVERY phone has to have an analog FM receiver in it. Give me a fucking break.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
AM is even better, because of the range. So, keep an AM/FM radio with your emergency supplies. If your emergency supply is only a cell phone, you're screwed anyway.
While AM has a better range it is next to worthless during a storm. Lightning strikes interfere with the signal making it impossible to hear the broadcast.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I don't have a data plan so I can't stream. And the 20$ portable radios you buy from Target break after a few months. I'm not sure I foresaw the smart phone revolution, but I did think they'd try and jam as many features into them as they could. Sad they have the FM feature disabled. I listen to www.KLOVE.com radio all day long. It isn't as great rhythmically as old 60s-70s classic rock and 90s alternative, but the lyrics are enriching.
God spoke to me
The FM app usually has an option to switch the audio from the headphones to the speaker.
The problem is, AM generally requires a big ferrite bar antenna, which isn't generally going to fit into a typical smartphone. Also, it's really susceptible to noise from the computer bits that it would be sitting right next to.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Whoosh.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Hurricanes can strike essentially the entire southeast quarter of the country with devastating force, and can even hit further north along the Atlantic coast. They're possible on the Pacific coast, too, but much less likely, I believe.
Due to the temperature along the eastern Pacific, it is physically impossible for a hurricane to really hit the US West Coast (minor exceptions in CA, but they're mostly just strong rain by the time they hit the shore).
If you are stopping by the dollar store to pick up a bunch of headphones for emergencies, then you might as well buy some cheap AM/FM radios instead along with a bunch of AA batteries and you'll be far better off. I've seen digitally-tuned radios complete with headphones for about $6 at the dollar stores, and they will go many hours on a battery, which doesn't need to be charged.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Hurricanes can strike essentially the entire southeast quarter of the country with devastating force, and can even hit further north along the Atlantic coast. They're possible on the Pacific coast, too, but much less likely, I believe.
Due to the temperature along the eastern Pacific, it is physically impossible for a hurricane to really hit the US West Coast (minor exceptions in CA, but they're mostly just strong rain by the time they hit the shore).
OK, thanks. All I was sure of was that I couldn't recall hearing of a meaningful hurricane hitting the Pacific coast.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Where I live I get much better reception and many more channels on FM then AM during the day, at least on my emergency hand cranked radio.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Strictly speaking a Pacific storm is termed a typhoon so hurricanes are almost impossible (one could cross Central America and continue on). The last major one was Typhoon Freda, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1... which caused significant damage and deaths along the Pacific coasts of America and Canada.
Here in BC and south of us we also get some major winter storms where the winds hit hurricane strength and can cause quite a bit of damage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Norway is eliminating FM, but about 60% of listeners in the country are already getting the same content via DAB. Broadcast isn't going away, it's just a format change, same as the transition of TV from analog to digital in the U.S.
In-chipset DAB demodulation wouldn't be any more difficult than FM, and if the demand is there, it'll be added.
Real FM radio, not streamed internet radio.
Of course you do. Anybody who can think clearly would want this. You have already paid for it. It is available on the phone, you should be able to listen to it. FM radio offers local entertainment, sports, weather, traffic and news. The FM receiver will give you alerts from the Emergency Broadcast System. The FM receiver uses a tiny fraction of the battery that a full time data connection requires, and of course, the one that makes the carriers disable it, FM doesn't require you to pay huge sums of money to the carrier for a data plan.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
If you were not listening to it, I don't see how there would be much additional battery drain. It kind of depends on whether they have disabled it at the hardware or at the software level. If it is at the software level, then it is already draining your battery. However, if you look at it in perspective of FM versus streaming radio, then you are talking a SAVINGS of battery by orders of magnitude.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Because the article is very misleading.
Smartphones MAY have a chip in them that is capable of receiving FM transmissions [probably as part of the Qualcomm/whomever chip for processing cell phone signals].
But not a matter of 'just turn it on' and everything magically works.
You need an antennae/other external hardware that receives those signals properly. I'm not an antennae engineer, but you either need a separate antennae [which would totally be a non-starter] or you have to compromise the design of existing antennae, because now it has to work for more frequencies.
You also need the software side to work. Since the signal is [most likely] coming from the cellular chip, it also affects the separate baseband software, as well as the main OS.
Then they need to see how it affects battery life with an additional radio turned on, as well as how it affects cellular, wifi and bluetooth reception/transmission.
And don't forget that NONE of the wireless carriers in the US would want the phone to have this feature, because it means the user can be listening to music that they are streaming to their phone FOR FREE, and the carrier would be making no money from it at all. They would rather the user just have the choice of 'do without or preload the music on the phone or pay for streaming music on the phone by paying the carrier extra money] (and they would really prefer to prevent that middle option, but that would have been a really tough sell earlier and impossible now].
Finally, these whiners wouldn't stop at just 'enable the FM reception' capability. It would be 'automatically detect an emergency broadcast and switch to FM automatically when one is broadcast'. Which means another radio always be on. And if that happened...how many days before an FM station sent a fake signal that would trigger this feature without really sounding like an emergency broadcast signal, so the phone would automatically switch to their station for a few minutes. And they could just say it was a bug in the cell phone, that they didn't broadcast a full, real emergency signal.
Anyway, Apple never did this, because they want people to get their music from the iTunes music store, and everyone else doesn't because the carriers won't let them [at least here in the US].
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
All FM stations are required to be part of the Emergency Broadcast System. If you were in an emergency, it wouldn't matter which one you listened to. I am no t sure how you could have missed this information, since this is even taught in grade schools that you should watch local news or listen to local radio in an emergency.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Even phones that have the FM feature enabled don't have an internal antenna, because it would be too small to be useful. FM band is very roughly 100MHz (actually below that). Do the math of what a quarter wave antenna looks like at that frequency. That's why phones that support FM require you to have earphones attached;-they use the cable as the FM antenna. Ironic that this story surfaces at the same time as Norway announces an analog FM sunset date. Probably in ten years there won't be any FM stations in first world countries at all.
Jokes aside, most of us live in areas that are not prone to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, or Godzilla. If you do choose to live in such places, it is important to be prepared, and have an emergency kit. In which you can just pack in a good ole' FM battery.
I dunno, a large fraction of America is under threat from the first three of those natural disasters.
Hurricanes can strike essentially the entire southeast quarter of the country with devastating force, and can even hit further north along the Atlantic coast. They're possible on the Pacific coast, too, but much less likely, I believe.
Tornadoes are common in more or less the middle third.
Earthquakes are only highly common in California (that I know of offhand), but can be something of a threat in other areas as well (the more so with all the fracking that's been going on).
But there are other natural disasters to watch out for, too. The one that comes most readily to mind is wildfires, which affect the entire west, particularly now that it's been in a severe drought for years.
So that leaves the inland Northeast, and some of the northern Midwest and Rockies. I don't think "most of us" live in those areas.
(I do, though, and I'm very happy that the closest thing to a natural disaster I have to deal with is the occasional—read, about once every decade or so—2-4 foot snowstorm.)
Dan Aris
Then there is the Pacific Northwest (Seattle Tacoma Olympia Portland) area we have a descent number of volcanoes and earth quakes tsunami are all risks. Also it floods fairly regularly in certain areas around here.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
You need an antennae/other external hardware that receives those signals properly. I'm not an antennae engineer, but you either need a separate antennae [which would totally be a non-starter] or you have to compromise the design of existing antennae, because now it has to work for more frequencies.
For a decade or so mobile phones have been using headphones as the FM antennae. (Some have an FM antenna built in?)
It is what it is.
FM radio request here, no more FM broadcast yesterday:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
Because the article is very misleading.
Smartphones MAY have a chip in them that is capable of receiving FM transmissions [probably as part of the Qualcomm/whomever chip for processing cell phone signals].
But not a matter of 'just turn it on' and everything magically works.
You need an antennae/other external hardware that receives those signals properly. I'm not an antennae engineer,........
Since I have some phones that have the FM radio enabled all that is needed is headphones.
The antenna is the wires of the headphones.
That is not to say that the pin for the antenna is connected to the headphone connector.
It is also not clear what the regulations domestic and international are for testing the
FM radio for unwanted interference and matching the national band allocations.
But the original question is interesting. Local radio is invaluable in a disaster. The power budget
and infrastructure (transmitter towers) for FM radio are much more available. The service area of
a single FM radio tower could cover hundreds if not thousands of cell towers. Cell towers also depend
on digital backbone and data connections (routers) that also need uninterruptible power.
Local emergency management need only contact the radio station and the radio station only needs
a single generator. Radio is part of the emergency broadcasting system and disconnecting the FM radio
is disconnecting the EBS.
Having said this I recall waiting on the local FM radio station to announce school closure on one
especially nasty blizzards winter morning. There was no announcement... the school system could
not connect to the station by phone and the roads were so deep in snow that direct contact was
impossible.
Legislatures in earthquake, tornado, blizzard, hurricane disaster risk areas (the entire US) should
be paying attention to this. Because of the EBS link your representatives should be demanding internal
communications that fail to enable this important service. Disconnection and de facto dismantling
of the EBS in favor of pay for service revenue should be blocked.
Then there is: "As Radio.no notes, Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) will provide Norwegian listeners more diverse radio channel content than ever before. Indeed, DAB already hosts 22 national channels in Norway, as opposed to FM radio’s five, and a TNS Gallup survey shows that 56% of Norwegian listeners use digital radio every day. While Norway is the first country in the world to set a date for an FM switch-off, other countries in Europe and Southeast Asia are also in the process of transitioning to DAB." (gizmodo-dot-com)
Thus I also want DAB support in future phones...
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
[probably as part of the Qualcomm/whomever chip for processing cell phone signals]./ Since the signal is [most likely] coming from the cellular chip
It's apparently part of the bluetooth module in a lot of phones, rather than the cellular radio..
You need an antennae/other external hardware that receives those signals properly.
This is generally accomplished by using headphone wires as antennae.
Hardware-level support for FM is apparently present for some fairly popular devices, but not activated in software. I don't think that the difficulties (power requirements, technical difficulty of implementation, etc) are as serious as you're making them out to be.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
So I would say, no, if FM is nearing end of life in general.
Which is why the National Association of Broadcasters is the entity mentioned in the summary. This isn't about emergency preparedness - this is an attempt to breathe a little more life into their dying business model.
Incidentally, as I understand it the FM receiver built into these phones is pretty useless since it's not really attached to any type of supporting circuitry.
#DeleteChrome
So, for a bunch of people, the FM feature would never work, because they don't use wired headphones.
"Please plug in a wired headset to enabled this feature".
A non-trivial number of people:
-just use it as a hand-held device, holding it up to their head when using it as a phone
-have a wireless headset
And it can't be great for those that do, because you don't know how long the antennae is, or how it's terminated [or even more fun, splitters so the port drives two sets of headphones].
These problems aren't insurmountable, but it all takes a bunch of time and effort [so it would add to the cost of every phone], along with competing goals of two separate wireless industries [FM Radio vs cellular providers]. And given that the cellular providers are a much bigger industry than FM Radio in the US, it seems unlikely that FM Radio will be able to give a large enough 'contribution' to Congress and/or the FCC to make this happen [and there definitely doesn't seem to be enough actual end users clamoring for this to get them to do it].
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Sorry, wrong mod. You're, of course, insightful.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
The antenna matching is obviously crude, but what it amounts to is a butterfly net to catch the signal instead of just holding out your hand and saying "here, butterfly". My comment about antennas was more related to the earlier poster's talk about how you'd have to degrade the cell antenna to enable FM reception. You wouldn't use a single antenna for this anyway, cellphones have multiple antennas properly matched for Bluetooth, GPS/GLONASS, WiFi and cellular (often more than one cellular antenna too). So IF you were going to enable FM reception, you'd add an antenna, BUT that antenna would be almost useless which is why approximately nobody does it. (If you override the app warning with some tweakery, you can sometimes pick up extremely strong stations just with leakage into the frontend, no actual antenna. But it's basically useless).
Well, it takes a bunch of time and effort to implement and test it, and the primary middle man [the carriers] have a vested interest in not having it, for a feature that can only work for some users [people who use wired earphones].
And the carriers are working on get at least some emergency messages to get sent to cell phones via SMS's, which everyone with a cell phone can get [and you may even get them if you don't have a working cell phone account, same as making a 911 call], which works on the vast majority of phones, regardless of what happens to be connected to it or what mode it's in [except airplane mode, but FM would also be disabled in that mode]. And the phone normally is configured to alert the user they have received a text message.
And hours after the initial 'event' most people will have moved to where a radio and/or tv will be to learn more about it.
So, IMHO, this is really just a made-up issue [presenting it as a safety issue] by an industry that is losing listeners and ad-revenue.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
the great achievements of the Greek and Romans,
Where would we be if Plato, Archimedes and Socrates were paywalled?
On the other hand, could we please have Sophocles sue Microsoft for misappropriation of his IP?
Have gnu, will travel.
since most phones don't even have the hardware connected.
On the other hand, you pretty much need to include an Fm receiver in phones sold in India. And since manufacturers don't like managing multimpel hardware configurations, I suspect that the few connections needed (like to an antenna) exist in their 'standard' hardware version.
Have gnu, will travel.
The iPod Nano has had an FM radio for a while. So the performance with respect to battery, signal reception, etc should be known. I don't have one myself so I can't comment.
Because the article is very misleading.
Smartphones MAY have a chip in them that is capable of receiving FM transmissions [probably as part of the Qualcomm/whomever chip for processing cell phone signals].
But not a matter of 'just turn it on' and everything magically works.
You need an antennae/other external hardware that receives those signals properly.
Of course. But since they have FM radios of this size, I'm pretty certain that the needed archectecture would be possible to construct to support the chip hardware.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Even phones that have the FM feature enabled don't have an internal antenna, because it would be too small to be useful. FM band is very roughly 100MHz (actually below that). Do the math of what a quarter wave antenna looks like at that frequency. That's why phones that support FM require you to have earphones attached;-they use the cable as the FM antenna. It must be really confusing for you to look at small AM Broadcast radios, which at the low end has a wavelength of almost 1780 feet. I mean how do they pack all that antenna inside those little radios?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The average smartphone will die in a day if you run FM radio, a real battery powered FM radio is the thing to have when things go to Sh!t
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I lived in Aptos, CA when the Loma Prieta earthquake happened. My home was about 10 miles from the epicenter.
My home came through it okay. Our cats were pretty freaked out but I don't think we even had any broken windows. (I've heard that the waves increase in amplitude as they get further away from the epicenter, so perhaps we were lucky to be so close.)
We were without power. I think phones were down but I'm not sure.
We didn't have much else to do, so we spent a lot of time listening to the radio. We learned some useful stuff:
* stay at home; the roads should be clear for emergency services.
* Cook and eat the contents of your freezer and fridge before things go bad.
* don't drink the water without boiling it, but it's okay to flush toilets.
* (Later) Okay, the water lines tested out, so go ahead and drink the water.
Also, we heard updates about the freeway bridge that collapsed, the destroyed buildings in San Francisco, etc.
But for the most part, the people talking on the radio didn't have anything too important to say. They filled a lot of airtime with repetitions of the above points, comments like "oh this is terrible", etc. So we stopped listening after a while and read books.
Still, in any future emergency, I will want a radio. The Internet could be down but the radio will still work. Lower-tech old-fashioned solutions are great in an emergency.
Just get a low-tech radio, rather than relying on a radio feature in something complex like a smartphone. Bonus points if you have solar cells and/or a crank to power the radio.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
he summary reads like an NAB astroturf campaign.
This. This is the terrestrial broadcasters trying to stay relevant in a world where they increasingly are not due to streaming. Just like the electric companies fighting solar tooth and claw, broadcasters are having to deal with Netflix, Hulu, and so on.
"Screaming, 'We're too important during emergencies to not have around!' worked for ham radio," the broadcasters must be thinking, and the FCC, at least, seems to agree. For FM, at least, they don't have to worry about encumberance from cell phones, unlike UHF TV.
Personally, though, I think almost all terrestrial broadcast is a waste of bandwidth, but I know that's not the popular opinion even here on /.
Uh huh. And look at the VOLUME of that AM antenna. Also observe that that antenna design doesn't scale well for FM (1MHz vs 100MHz), which is why AM/FM radios have a rabbit ear (or ears) for FM in addition to the internal ferrite+coil AM antenna. MEH.
You know, I'd be curious to see what a high-end antenna design CAD package would do if you asked it to create a patch antenna for the FM band, or even better for the AM band. You could likely use it as a thermal blanket to keep warm around the paraffin lamp during the putative emergency situation we've been discussing.
Here's a list of devices and carriers that are supported now.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Jokes aside, most of us live in areas that are not prone to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, or Godzilla.
I have to ask where you found an Eden untouched by man-made or natural disasters. Where there is drought there is fire. In a warming world, storms may be fewer but stronger and farther reaching.
The radio you have in hand is more useful than the one you shoved into the glove compartment last winter with batteries now deader than dead.
Central Europe.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
which is why AM/FM radios have a rabbit ear (or ears) for FM in addition to the internal ferrite+coil AM antenna. MEH.
Yes you are right. It would simply be impossible.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
That's fine... you can sit down with your crank powered FM radio during the appocolypise. I wouldn't dare take that away from you.
However, don't expect me to support you if you want EVERY cellphone to have an FM radio built into by law simply so you can do it on your cell phone.
Which as we all know would have run out of power from lack of charging LONG before the towers actually died.
How pray tell are you charging your cellphone? Hand crank? Personal diesel generator? Wind mill? The Force... that jedi thing?
The towers last as long as the cell phones themselves do which is the point. If it is the end of the world, the dead have risen, the sun hangs red in the sky, and the Elder Gods have risen... then by all means, listen to radio reports on your FM radio. But we're talking about a probably traditional radio set top which can take regular batteries unlike your cell phone, or has a built in hand crack, etc.
Name a REASONABLE situation where after days of no power you still only have your cell phone and yet need to get access to these FM radio transmissions?
There isn't one.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
"Seriously though, lack of FM is not a safety risk. That's absurd. if they're really concerned, then have them blast out a text message if there is an issue."
I merely commented to the fact that a text message device is not always available.
Having a dedicated radio as well is of course a good idea but if its inconvenient to carry some headphones you're not going to carry around a dedicated radio and keep good batteries with it.
Wait, there's phones that *don't* let you listen to FM radio? In 2015?
This is making me seriously reconsider whether I should be upgrading my phone any time soon.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Neither is anything else always available.
Pigeons don't work in a hurricane.
Everything has a context. FM radio is better at some things then other forms of communication. However, those things are not justification for requiring that all cell phones have FM antennas.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Which MP3 player do you have, if you don't mind me asking?
It's an old 1GB iRiver iFP-895 MP3 player. Its ancient and battered, and I don't really use it except as an "emergency radio" these days, but at the time I quite liked it. Come to think of it, I think it was somebody on Slashdot that originally recommended the device in the first place ;-)
As I mentioned, my phone actually has FM radio enabled but I have no confidence that it will have the necessary battery life should I actually NEED to listen to the radio. But AA batteries last forever and replacements can be found anywhere. Nowadays, the the tiny storage space (1GB) is too limiting, so my phone serves as my primary music player but the iRiver lurks at the bottom of my daybag, with a spare AA battery... just in case.
>
And don't forget that NONE of the wireless carriers in the US would want the phone to have this feature, because it means the user can be listening to music that they are streaming to their phone FOR FREE, and the carrier would be making no money from it at all.
Which explains why I can't just copy MP3s directly to the flash memory on my phone. Oh, wait. I have about 30GB of ripped MP3 files on my phone.
Of course the reason I carry a large portion of my music library with me is to avoid having to listen to FM radio.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Even phones that have the FM feature enabled don't have an internal antenna, because it would be too small to be useful. FM band is very roughly 100MHz (actually below that). Do the math of what a quarter wave antenna looks like at that frequency. That's why phones that support FM require you to have earphones attached;-they use the cable as the FM antenna. Ironic that this story surfaces at the same time as Norway announces an analog FM sunset date. Probably in ten years there won't be any FM stations in first world countries at all.
I used to have a phone that would receive FM radio. It used the wired headphones as the FM antenna. Didn't work very well with Bluetooth headphones...
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
The common link is Sprint and Next Radio. They raise this issue to support marketing their products. If you must rely on Sprint during an emergency, you are well and truly screwed.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
But not a matter of 'just turn it on' and everything magically works.
Good technical summary, but there's another point you missed: Why would I want to use my retina-display facial-recognition streaming-video touch-sensitive camera phone as a freakin' 1930s-vintage wireless set? My phone (Chinese-made) has the FM radio componentry in it, but the only thing I've ever done with it is remove the icon for it to stop it cluttering up the desktop.
Asking the Betteridge's-Law-confirming "Does Lack of FM Support On Phones Increase Your Chances of Dying In a Disaster?" is equivalent to asking "Does Lack of a Wagon Singletree (for horse-hitching) on a Car Increase Your Chances of Dying In a Disaster?". For both cases there's probably some form of specially-constructed disaster you can come up with for which the answer is yes, but in practice, the answer is no.
No, no, you've got it wrong. Living in a hurricane zone is OK, it's dying in a hurricane zone that you want to avoid.
But the original question is interesting. Local radio is invaluable in a disaster. The power budget and infrastructure (transmitter towers) for FM radio are much more available. The service area of a single FM radio tower could cover hundreds if not thousands of cell towers. Cell towers also depend on digital backbone and data connections (routers) that also need uninterruptible power.
But the thing about the cellular network is that it's incredibly resilient. Some years ago we had a major earthquake here that wiped out significant chunks of a city and the surrounding area. No power, no water, nothing. The cellular network partially functioned (on banks of lead-acid batteries at many cell sites) until crews got generators in as a priority (which included, among other things, competing cellphone providers servicing and powering each others' gear), and cellphones themselves were battery powered and kept going while (mostly) mains-powered radio receivers went silent. So the cellular network, while overloaded due to the scale of the disaster, continued to provide service. For the subset of radio stations that were still operating, very few people were able to listen.
Anyway, Apple never did this, because they want people to get their music from the iTunes music store, and everyone else doesn't because the carriers won't let them [at least here in the US].
My older iPod nano has an FM radio built in for listening to music. (It does not have any Internet connection; iTunes is via USB.)
there's send but it's only for stuff like playback through car speakers and such.
not too many phones have that these days either, some fully loaded models. my old nokia 808 had it but it was fully loaded.. fm receive with rds too
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
for majority of areas it seems a police radio would be more useful.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I completely agree. I think I went so far as to say I'd approve on the spot executions of any executive that did such a thing. Just blow raspberry jam all over the walls and move on.
Okay? Is that enough for you? I fucking hate that shit as well. I've had the misfortune of having one of those phones as well. I don't really use FM radio but I'd like to be able to use it if it is already in my fucking phone. TOTALLY with you.
But just as it is a dick move to turn that thing off it is also a dick move to force people to put it in the phone.
I agree with you they shouldn't disable it if it is there already. HOWEVER if it isn't there at all... leave them alone.
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fm radio is a lot easier than dvb-t or whatever. or the mobile dvb that was tried and killed off already. seriously, nokia had model(s) with digital tv ages ago.
even analogue tv is much easier and cheaper. that's why all those chinese clone-fake-gsm-2-sim phones have analog tv support.
what the fm radio needs is couple of traces and a cap on the board.. even if you put an extra chip on there it would be easy and cheap to do. people just don't use the fm receive functionalities in the phones that have them so people don't give a shit. tons of cheapo nokias had fm-receive for 10+ years now. it's just a 20 cent functionality.
nobody just gives a shit about fm radio when shopping for a new phone if the phone has enough gizmos to play spotify. that's just the way it is.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Here I thought we were having an adult discussion on disaster scenarios and you want to talk about bullshit internet memes.
It's not an internet meme it's Betteridge's Law and has been around for ages and is mainly in reference to newspapers. But you look, practically any headline that asks a question, the answer is no.
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Well, except it's not a law ... not a natural law, not a man-made law ... it's an observation, that's about it.
You can call it a law all you like, but that doesn't make it true.
Ergo, meme.
Was Betteridge not a man? And it is a law just like Moore's. Maybe not in a ratified this is in the legal framework and there is a punishment for those that write a headline that can be answered yes but it is a law in the way every non-actual law is a law,
Wanna buy a shirt?
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From personal experience in a rural setting, where the FM transmitters were tens of miles (or more) away, there was virtually no FM reception on my Moto G unless I had my earphones plugged in to act as an external antenna. So I guess add in a set of earphones to your Go bags.
It is also not clear what the regulations domestic and international are for testing the
FM radio for unwanted interference and matching the national band allocations.
Oh that is clear. There's very little. FM must not transmit (and I don't think any mobile chipset does), and it just has to receive in a certain frequency band which is mostly common throughout the world with no further consideration to interference. An analogue radio receiver is about the least regulated radio device you can build.
The WiFi chip is FM capable. Or at least, the BCM4334 it's based on is.
I was responding to your comment that you "distribute them throughout your life", not that you carry it around. One at home, one at work (no need for the car as you probably have an FM radio there). Anywhere you were going to stash headphones. Alkaline batteries last several years, so that shouldn't be an issue - in any event they are more likely to have many hours worth of charge left compared to your half-dead cell phone. If the cell towers go down, it will suck itself dry in no time flat unless you are smart enough to know this and put it in airplane mode.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
> Let us know how that data service is working when a serious disaster strikes.
Exactly as well as the FM stations.
But we're arguing about which of two solutions is best. That's called the fallacy of the excluded middle. We don't want to debate whether FM or cell is better for emergency broadcasts, we simply want to know what's the best way to send emergency broadcasts.
So what is the actual problem? We want to
* provide rapid emergency information to people over a city-to-country sized area
* have that information appear on their cell phones even in the event of a natural or man-made disaster that takes out the infrastructure
* we want that to happen using the technology we already have in the cells phones
Ok, so now lets look at what technology we have in the cell phones:
* various cell receivers
* maybe an FM receiver, but it only works with an external antenna
* GPS and GLONASS receivers
And suddenly anyone who suggests that this should work using FM receivers looks like an idiot. The obvious solution to this problem is to define a few standard messages and stamp them with time, time-to-live, and geographical area-of-effect and send them into the GPS bitstream. John Deere's been doing this for years with Starfire.
> Have a much greater range. In most cases you will be able to hear a station transmitting from tens of kilometers away
Well yeah, because they're broadcasting tens of thousands of watts. What, did you think this was due to some magical properties of the waves?
> Are typically designed to have backup power in case of an emergency
So do lots of cell towers. And since cell towers are in the hundreds of watts they are much easier to power and the total power needed to cover a particular geographical area is much smaller (see inverse square law). To the point where there was an article here only a day or two ago about solar powered towers. Know any FM stations that cover 20+ mile range that are solar powered?
> most FM receivers also have AM receiver function
Which require an antenna several meters long. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chu–Harrington_limit
> That means they don't rely on phone's weak transmitter's ability to reach the tower
Keep thinking inside that box. Meanwhile the same cell phone is receiving GPS signals FROM SPACE.
I haven't seen a smartphone with onboard FM hardware in a while. They aren't simply "disabling" it - an FM receiver costs more, requires board real estate, and as you said, has the additional challenge of an antenna.
It's cost for a feature very few people use. FM is deprecated and obsolete - it's been dead in Europe in favor of DAB for years, and in the USA, satellite radio is the go-to for vehicles and streaming is the go-to for anywhere with wired Internet access (the backhaul for wi-fi in 95%+ of cases is wired DSL, cable, or fiber).
The NAB should look at themselves before complaining about others. FM is no longer a desirable feature for most people thanks to Clear Channel abusing every loophole in station ownership rules (There are various rules that are supposed to prevent one company from owning too many stations, among other things to promote a diversity of content.) The end result is that the content of FM stations is utter crap. The last time I drive without XM, on a single 4-hour drive I listened to one song at least three times, I think it was four. There were numerous other repeats. Meanwhile, if I do that drive with my XM subscription, it's rare that I'll hear even a single repeat.
Simply put, if a phone has FM now, I see that as a reason NOT to buy it, because that is paying extra for hardware that I'm NEVER going to use.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I think you didn't understand what you linked to when you stated, "is apparently present for some fairly popular devices, but not activated in software"
The problem is that since FM is a highly niche feature, there's no standard for FM HALs in Android. This means that those manufacturers that do implement FM do it in their stock firmware in whatever way they want. With one exception (STMicro's implementation used in many Sony devices), they never document this methodology. (STM's HALs were supported in CyanogenMod for a while, but was eventually dropped because while STMicro documented the basic HAL interfaces, there was no opensource reference HAL implementation, and thus the interface only supported older Sony devices with blobs supported by that HAL.)
You'll note that:
1) All of the devices that app supports are older devices.
2) All of the devices that app supports DID support FM in their stock firmwares. The only issue was that if you replaced the stock firmware with an AOSP derivative, you lost FM, because it was a niche feature and no device maintainer had the time to work on it, partly due to the lack of any reference implementation of an STMicro HAL. I speak from experience in this - I was the CyanogenMod maintainer for the original Galaxy Note from Spring 2012 until I left CM in August 2013 - the Note had FM, but all of my time was consumed reverse engineering core functionality and not niche functionality.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Yeah. I've only seen CB used very recently - I think I first saw an alert for it in early 2013. At least once, an Amber Alert went out by CB which really freaked a bunch of people out because they'd never seen a CB alert before.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
http://www.hollywoodreporter.c...
Norway is discontinuing FM transmission entirely.
So... I think that shows you that I called this perfectly. FM is retrograde. It is on the way out. Mandating that phones have FM reception in that context is goofy and more than a little out of touch with the times.
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1. In part, yes. Laws of physics dictate how far each wave length will carry the signal before it gets garbled. That's why your phone can talk to base station a kilometer away, your WiFi will not carry over about 100m and bluetooth peripherals barely have 10m range.
You obviously need power as well, but with sending out a signal, you also need for it to be able to carry the message for entire distance as well.
2. Meters long? AM receivers? What? Are you telling me that this old walkman I have in my hand which is only about 10cm long and has a built in AM/FM receiver doesn't actually have AM functionality?
3. Correct. Because GPS sends on wave length that is relatively clear from other signals and that is able to carry the weak signal over the necessary distance. Of course GPS, like FM is single-directional transmission and not packet data that requires two-directional transmission like actual 2g/3g/4g mobile phone communications are.
Because a $50 emergency FM radio with a hand crank to charge the battery over the course of a week is so much more expensive than a $600 smartphone with 3 hours of continuous use per charge. With 3 backup batteries at $50 a pop...you're still not getting to the level of the hand crank radio. A lot of times those crank radios will also have AM, Shortwave, and WX stations available. That said, if the manufacturers are adding the cost of putting the radios into the phones already, why in the hell don't they just activate it instead of shipping the phone with dead equipment? Or, just leave the radio out since no one can use it, and charge the same price for the phone; instant margin increase for taking away a service that no one can use anyway!
Perhaps somebody has a patent against using a cellular wireless chip to tune FM frequencies?
It's weird, because my old Samsung flip-phone had a nice FM tuner which worked with the headphones, but here (Canada) I haven't seen any such thing in newer smartphones.
(eom)
Errrr.... this is more or less exactly what I was saying :)
The northern Midwest and Rockies are blizzard territory, aren't they? I'm northern Midwest (apparently not part of "most of us") and we get the occasional blizzard. Those things are dangerous. I've felt buildings shudder when hit by straight-line winds, and they have this nasty habit of blowing trees over now and then. It's not completely safe here.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The lower frequency cell phone bands have the same problem with antenna size and efficiency with the added complication of also being used for transmission. The same solution involving active tuning applies to integrated FM broadcast band antennas:
http://www.silabs.com/Support%...
Wire loop length can be as short as 10 centimeters:
http://www.silabs.com/Support%...
I noticed a couple years ago that switching capacitor tuning solutions were showing up for cell phone handsets that use the lower frequency cell phone bands which recently became available.
They also rely on not too many people using them at once. To borrow a quote concerning the evacuation of a major city, "It does not matter if the freeways are usable because millions of people will be trying to use them." SMS is the exception because it operates asynchronously like email but I wonder how well IP based messaging protocols will work during emergencies.
We have seen how well that worked out in recent wide scale disasters. Even if communications is maintained while the generators are operating, they run out of fuel in hours to days.
DSL and Cable at least where I am in no better however. We have a backup power supply which came with the DSL modem which also provides phone service but if the power goes out, the connection is lost upstream making the modem no more than an expensive and poorly performing switch/router/AP for the local network. I gather that there was a requirement that the modem be backed up since it provides phone service but guess that the same rule does not apply to the rest of the network.
A broadcast band AM receiver can be integrated to the same extent that a broadcast band FM receiver can be but it requires a loopstick antenna. Broadcast band FM can get by with an actively tuned 10 centimeter loop.
The FM broadcast band is 87.9 to 107.9 MHz and weather radio has several channels in the 161 to 163 MHz range. I will not say that using the same compact antenna for both is impossible but it would require an extra switched tuning circuit for acceptable performance.
My Samsung Omnia from 6 years ago and Motorola Droid X from 4 years ago both had a working FM receiver, then 2 years ago I get a Samsung Note II and discover that it has a receiver, but it was disabled by either the manufacturer or the carrier. At first I thought it was mostly because Verizon wants us to listen to streaming radio and use more data so they can make more money. Then I read on some forums that any device with an FM receiver must undergo additional testing to meet FCC requirements, with cost proportional to the amount of spectrum used. So on a carrier with a large amount of spectrum (Verizon), neither the manufacturer (Samsung) nor the carrier wants to pay the fees. Sprint offers same model phones with working FM radio and the NextRadio app, which receives the FM signal, and optionally a small amount of bandwidth for the album cover and a link. Recently I saw a coworker on Verizon demonstrate a working FM radio on his HTC One M8, which means that HTC must have paid for the FCC testing to leave the FM radio functioning on a Verizon phone. The NextRadio app did not work on a Samsung S5. Most carriers will say that FM listeners are declining because of streaming and MP3s, so why bother with it.
Yes you need headphones, or a line in to your PC, or even a chopped off 3.5mm pigtail to receive the signal. Many people in the stores do not know the difference between an app like TuneIn and an FM receiver. I thought we might see HD Radio in phones by now, but it's proprietary so I can see why we might not. I was up for a new phone two months ago, but refuse to purchase one that contains a disabled FM receiver. I'm not switching carriers because of it, but it will be a deciding factor in which phone I purchase next. Then I can stop carrying around this Insignia HD Radio.
Beware of the Redittor who loans you a Sharpie.
I think you didn't understand what you linked to when you stated, "is apparently present for some fairly popular devices, but not activated in software"
Ah, I wasn't aware that the stock firmwares for all of them included support. What I understood was that they were all from product lines that I've heard of and know people that own them (using "well-advertised" and anecdotal evidence as a heuristic for "fairly popular") and that the maintainers of the app had to reverse-engineer support for the hardware. On the latter point, I didn't really know *why* they had to do that, and I appreciate the more knowledgeable perspective.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
PS: "Antennae" is plural. "Antenna" is singular. Several antennae (or antennas); one antenna.
http://undecidedgames.blogspot.com
> Laws of physics
Ahhh, this is always a good start...
> That's why your phone can talk to base station a kilometer away, your WiFi will
> not carry over about 100m and bluetooth peripherals barely have 10m range.
With only very minor corrections, like the last 10 metres or so, all of these are due entirely to radiated power. The two corrections are near field effects, and building materials.
> 2. Meters long? AM receivers? What?
The limit for practical efficient antennas is about 1/4 wave. A 100 kHz AM signal is 3 km long. An efficient antenna for AM is about 750 meters long. The typical car antenna, at about a metre long, has a gain around -20 dB, around 1% efficiency. That is one of those "laws of physics" you claim to understand. The only reason you can hear anything on AM is because they broadcast tens of thousands of watts. Here, read something:
http://www.antenna-theory.com/basics/gain.php
> Because GPS sends on wave length that is relatively clear from other signals and
> that is able to carry the weak signal over the necessary distance
No, it's because the quarter wave antenna at 1575 MHz is about 5 cm, which fits quite nicely in a cell phone. While a car AM antenna has a gain around -20 dB (and a Walkman is probably down around -25 or less due to the antenna being the earphone which isn't exactly straight), the typical cell phone GPS antenna has a gain around -9 to -2 dB.
http://www.antenna-theory.com/design/gps.php
Recall that dB is logarithmic; this represents and improvement of two orders of magnitude, meaning that the ~250W of radiated power from the GPS is received at about the same power density as 25kW from AM. Actually more because of the physics of AM:
http://fas.org/man/dod-101/navy/docs/es310/AM.htm
There are minor adjustments throughout, but this is good to an order of mag, or better.
Really, you should make sure you know what you are actually talking about before you try to quote physics to the /. crowd.
So in other words, you do in fact understand that AM receiver antenna can be only a few centimeters long.
If you do understand it, why did you claim otherwise in your initial post? Posting a wall of related physics to demonstrate that you're not a total idiot was required here I suppose, since you did manage to make an utterly ridiculous claim, but it doesn't nullify your original claim in any way.
This was your exact quote:
"> most FM receivers also have AM receiver function
Which require an antenna several meters long. "
And while you have demonstrated that you understand that you emitted a total brain fart there, you could at least admit to it if you're going to demonstrate understanding of underlying physics after you're called on it.
Because it's always good to have less features?
While I'd agree that the dying in a disaster due to lack of enabling the radio is a silly stretch, if it can receive FM, why not?
And then what? Cue the episode of Southpark where The Internet went down. And the emergency broadcasters didn't know what to report because the bloody internet was down.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
It is also not clear what the regulations domestic and international are for testing the
FM radio for unwanted interference and matching the national band allocations.
Oh that is clear. There's very little. FM must not transmit (and I don't think any mobile chipset does), and it just has to receive in a certain frequency band which is mostly common throughout the world with no further consideration to interference. An analogue radio receiver is about the least regulated radio device you can build.
It is still not clear.... the FM block has a local oscillator. The bluetooth, the WiFi 2.4&5GHz, The Cell system, many bands... as well as the display, processor, memory etc... interact. Part 15 is almost easy in isolation but the RF complexity of turning on a tuner that sweeps the FM local oscillator and that might interact with passive traces, as well as other active systems is "interesting".
Having said this Motorola has it on two of the phones I have owned. Thus, It is possible and to me it is a reasonable expectation for this system to be enabled and active.
I feel strongly that the emergency context has been ignored. It is astoundingly easy to overspend or underspend on emergency systems. Emergency system managers have apparently missed this erosion of a worthy component. Combined this with the demise of plain old telephone services with its legal framework for battery power (etc.) that the cell system and internet does not have and Houston we have a problem.
These are systems and interconnected in poorly understood ways. Changes have consequences some good some bad most unintended. Media coverage wants to reduce important issues to a two team sporting contest and this is just wrong for understanding systems.
Programmers know how difficult "make" rules can get and some know /. geek centric forum).
why "makedepend" gets it wrong at times (this is after all a
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
That's not "not clear", that's just an engineering problem. Heck every digital device on the market has a "local oscillator" many devices have multiple local oscillators. Getting a passive receiver complaint with any kind of standards is orders of magnitude easier in both requirements and solving engineering problems than a transmitting device, and even those are quite easy; case in point: every mobile phone or $30 UHF radio.
That and the fact that it's a known engineering problem with a known engineering solution which has been implemented many times before. The Galaxy S had FM, so did the S2, so did my old Saegem dumb phone, so did my not iPod, and my Sony Walkman. Oh and so does my $30 UHF radio.
It is not a problem, the only reason these devices aren't used because there's very little market for it. Heck even in my car I use Pandora via phone instead of FM. Most of commercial radio is a joke, and for the odd occasion when I do tune in I use a digital radio which gives me a far wider option for radio stations locally then the usual shit (40+ stations instead of the 10 or so local ones). FM in the phone is dead because people in general don't want it.
That's not "not clear", that's just an engineering problem. ......
Quite so... yet in this tenth of a penny pinching engineering world
it becomes a cost and a decision. In this case the resultant degradation
of the EBS seems to be unmanaged or over managed at much greater
expense and complexity.
Not all engineering problems have known solutions yet this one does
and that puts us in agreement.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Indeed. That it's a penny pinching problem puts us in even more of an agreement.