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LG Releases First Smartphone With DAB+ Chip (thestack.com)

Posted by timothy on from the shortwave-is-next dept.

An anonymous reader writes: LG have released the first smartphone with built-in DAB+ circuitry,allowing users to listen to digital radio without consuming mobile data bandwidth. The LG Stylus 2 will initially be released in the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Norway, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands (perhaps not coincidentally these are among the highest-rate adopters of DAB/DAB+). Patchy coverage and often-poor bitrates have hindered the take-up of DAB/+, which has been in development since the early 1980s, and it's hoped that the shift from the motoring to the smartphone space will alleviate some of the coverage problems that users experienced with the push to DAB-based car radios. No benchmarks on power consumption of the integrated DAB+ circuitry is currently available.

7 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. Brilliant by zarr · · Score: 2, Funny

    So now you can listen to crappy bandwith radio while draining your battery at double speed. Nice.

    1. Re:Brilliant by ffkom · · Score: 2

      You probably never listened to real-life DAB+. The abysmal rates (32kbit/s to 64kbit/s) most stations use here (because it's just so much cheaper) sound like crap in comparison to the same stations via analog FM. Sure, DAB+ could _theoretically_ sound much better, if they weren't cheap on bandwidth, but they are.

    2. Re:Brilliant by zarr · · Score: 2

      In Norway channels are typially 80kbps, while some go even further down. Expect local stations to be among those when they make the switch, to save cost.
      Source (in Norwegian): http://www.lydogbilde.no/nyhet...

  2. Re:Worse power consumption than with FM by clonehappy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Because unlike FM Stereo, analog TV left a lot of room for improvement. FM Stereo, for most use cases, really actually is "good enough" considering the vast majority of people aren't audiophiles.

    Also, the sketchy RF environment inherent in mobile use (such as in the car or handheld device) isn't well suited for digital. Where an analog signal fades for a split second or you get a moment of static, the digital drops out completely, tries to re-sync the stream and has to buffer before it continues playing.

    Some things really are just better suited for a down-and-dirty analog connection.

  3. Re:Worse power consumption than with FM by squiggleslash · · Score: 2

    While in the US, digital TV is associated with HD, in Europe it was originally associated with "more channels", HD coming later. The "more channels" thing is also the argument for digital audio, and the US "equivalent" of DAB, HDRadio (urgh) is mostly about adding channels, with a minor quality improvement that's kind of noticable but most ears forget about after a few seconds of listening.

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  4. What a waste by Grishnakh · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What's the point of this? There isn't much to listen to on the radio these days anyway.

  5. You are wrong, the first digital radio receiver... by ffkom · · Score: 2

    ... for the "DSR" (Digital Sattelite Radio) service was presented by Telefunken on August 20th, 1982. The DSR service was officially launched in 1989. And yes, DSR is among the 4+ digital radio standards that already died while FM is still thriving (DSR was shut off in 1999).