Campaign Demands Telecoms Unlock the FM Radio Found in Many Smartphones (www.cbc.ca)

An anonymous reader cites an article on CBC: Your smartphone may include an FM radio chip but, chances are, it doesn't work. Now, an online campaign has launched in Canada, putting pressure on telecoms and manufacturers to turn on the radio hidden in many cellphones. Titled, "free radio on my phone," the campaign says that most Android smartphones have a built-in FM receiver which doesn't require data or Wi-Fi to operate. The U.S. arm of the campaign believes iPhones also have a built-in radio chip but that it can't be activated. Apple wouldn't confirm this detail. The radio chip in many Android phones also lies dormant. But the campaign says it can easily be activated -- if telecom providers ask the manufacturers to do it. In Canada, however, most of the telecoms haven't made the move to get the radio turned on. They'd prefer that you stream your audio, depleting your phone's costly data plan, claims campaign organizer, Barry Rooke.

Comments

Built into Windows Phone

[DogDude]

FM radio functionality is built right into Windows Phones. It's pretty great, so long as you use wired headphones. The phones use the headphones as antenna, so it doesn't work with Bluetooth, unfortunately.

Re:FM radio's last gasp?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello,

Public radio tends to be quite good. NPR in the states, France Info, Inter, culture (etc...) in france... and I assume similar chanels in other countries.

Cyrille

Re:FM radio's last gasp?

[fyngyrz]

Broadcast AM (@ ~1MHz) is somewhat tougher to receive without a considerably more substantial antenna as compared to broadcast FM (@ ~ 100 MHz.)

Re:Android implementation is crap anyway

[sbaker]

My ancient Moto-G phone has working FM radio - the reason it doesn't work with Bluetooth (well, sorta) is that FM radio's *need* a couple of feet of antenna - and the way the chip is set up is that it uses the headphone wire as the antenna. So if you don't plug in a physical set of wired headphones, it won't work.

The app I have tests that the headphone is plugged in and won't run without it.

Now, whether you can plug in a fake headphone wire and use BlueTooth for audio transmission - I don't know - it's not something I've tried.

    -- Steve

AM radio antenna systems

[fyngyrz]

So how are cars receiving AM without 160 meter long antennas?

While the whip antenna on a car is short, it has a substantial ground plane to work against (the body of the car.) This increases the signal level developed between ground and the antenna input. Sometimes the actual antenna is not as short as you might initially think, either; look closely, and on many car antenna systems, you'll see a fine wire that spirals up the outside of the whip; that's the AM broadcast band antenna, not the whip itself. The whip is just used as a mechanical support when receiving AM. This approach provides significantly stronger signals to the radio.

In order to obtain signals of a similar strength in a portable radio, the usual approach is to wind a lot of wire around a ferrite core and make it resonate with the appropriate matching capacitance. With proper design, this can result in a highly effective narrow-band (just a few channels), tunable, directional antenna capability.

Antennas aside, most car radios don't have very good AM sections. Just as with home stereo and theater receivers, manufacturers tend to not treat AM seriously. Historically speaking, there have been exceptions. For instance, Sansui produced an AM / FM tuner that had a pretty good AM section in it; early tube receivers also typically tried to do a good job. A good AM band receiver has control over IF bandwidth, and in a truly modern design, this is done with a software defined radio, so that the bandwidth is precisely controllable and essentially devoid of roll-off.

Re:FM radio's last gasp?

[TheRaven64]

FM is decent bandwidth.

You are correct, FM does use a lot of bandwidth which could be used far more efficiently.

FM is analogue, which means it degrades far more gracefully than digital

Sure, if you're comparing it to a digital signal with no error correction. If you use vaguely modern error correcting codes (as in, developed in the last 50 years), then digital signals can correct all errors long after analogue signals are indistinguishable from white noise to a human. The reason that this idiotic myth persists is that the switch to digital radio and TV broadcasts came with a slight decrease in range as a result of a huge decrease in transmitter power.

Ferrite effectiveness vs whips

[fyngyrz]

At low frequencies, yes, it is.

It has to do with the wavelength of the signal, and the approach to the EM field. A ferrite antenna (actually a particular case of a loop antenna) couples to the magnetic field. A whip couples to the electric field. You can learn more about loop antennas and the differences from whip and dipole and other antennas via Google, if you're really interested.

Re: FM radio's last gasp?

[Anonymous Coward]

> because they weren't liberal enough.

They fired Juan Williams because he said he was scared of Muslims on airplanes. The only place a blanket statement like that won't get you fired is Fox News, because that's their business model.

In the meantime, All Things Considered has weekly segments with David Brooks (a conservative editorialist) and frequently engages conservative lawmakers in their stories. They had Darrell Issa on back when the USDOJ was trying to force Apple to break into the San Bernardino shooter's phone; last week they had a GOP congressman on to discuss why he was endorsing Donald Trump.

You can say a lot of things about NPR, but one thing you cannot say is that they actively try to prevent or otherwise diminish the presentation of non-liberal viewpoints. And frankly the only people who do actually believe that are better off going elsewhere anyway because it's obvious they don't distinguish between news and partisan cheerleading.

Re: FM radio's last gasp?

[Crashmarik]

And I see the left once again has that complete lack of introspection.

If you want to see obvious propaganda from NPR on topics where it is easy to see they distort the facts

Check out their calling Brad Torgessen a white supremacist last year.

Info on Verizon and Sony FM Chips

[Kainaw]

I was just told about this thread - so this may be old. But, I've done a lot of research into Verizon and the Sony Z3V, which has an FM chip.

TLDR: The chip is not disabled. The OS is altered to mute FM output.

I have three Sony Z3V phones. All three have an FM chip. I can check to ensure the FM chip works by using the Sony diagnostics tool. Dial *#*#7378523#*#* and you get a diagnostics menu. Select hardware tests and test the FM chip. If it was disabled, it wouldn't work. It does work. Just type in the frequency to tune to and you get radio. The problem is that this screen will timeout. When it does, the radio goes away. Also, there's no volume adjustment. It is at max volume only.

In the original OS distribution, Verizon simply didn't include an FM app with the phone. You could download one (such as Spirit FM) and listen to the radio. With the 5.1.1 update, the radio stopped working. But, there was a catch. If you used Sony's FM app - which you have to download from a "trusted source" and install as an untrusted third party app - it still worked. You could listen to the radio. Then, there was the second update to 5.1.1. Instead of "disabling" FM, Verizon went another route. They mute the FM audio. So, you can download just about any FM app. You can run it. You can tune it in. You can see that it has a signal. You can see the over-the-air identification text, which is usually the song being played. But, there is no audio.

Now, controversy: Verizon has quoted multiple times that it would cost up to $100/phone to "enable" the FM chip in the phones. The chip is enabled. They are spending effort in muting it. Verizon has also quoted multiple times that an FM tuner interferes with normal phone operations. Before the upgrade to 5.1.1, I listened to the radio on my phone all the time and never had any trouble with any other operations. In my opinion, Verizon simply wants you to use data to listen to music. They don't want you to listen to music for free.