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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.
I wonder how much of this is actual consumer demand for listening to ads and the same songs every hour to avoid data overages vs. FM radio's last desperate gasp to remain relevant now that streaming is offering an alternative?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Well one would also need to buy a Windows Phone so...
Kidding aside, the headphones are required as antenna for Android as well.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
If it were the carriers, wouldn't Google's unlocked Nexus devices offer FM radio? Seems like there might be more to it than the evil carriers.
I do some safety consulting for disasters etc. This would be very helpful for disasters. You could even have an app that just tunes into the local emergency FM frequency. It's way easier to broadcast emergency instructions over FM to three million people in a metro area, than to support three million active streams over a data network, especially in an emergency.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
Sure, many integrated WiFi/BT chipsets also include an FM receiver. But turning it on, in a phone that wasn't shipped with it turned on, is not just a software matter. With the LO powered up, you'll need to repeat conducted and radiated emissions tests. And if the phone wasn't intended to be shipped with the radio enabled, the necessary passives to connect it to the earphone jack as an antenna likely won't be on the PCB. And in the case of Apple, since they absolutely never intended to use the FM capability, I'd be amazed if the relevant pads from the WiFi package are even led out to traces.
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
www.sjbaker.org
Not all phones have the FM Chips, but the campaign misleads us into thinking all phones have them, and the carriers just disabled them. I use a Nexus phone. There's no chip. My wife's LG does have a chip. According to the campaign website, Sprint already allows it, and T-Mobile has stated they will support.
If you purchase your phone and it is unlocked, the carrier is irrelevant. You can do what you want with it (provided it has the chip). If you bought a locked phone through a carrier, then you're at the whim of what they want to allow you to do with your device. Why is this news?
I may be missing something here, but I don't fully understand the emergency beacon type responses. Yes, of course I understand that the more options available for getting emergency information out the better. Of course that makes sense. But I get emergency beacons every once in a while on my phone today through either text or SMS (I've never investigated the mechanism). OK - now I've done 13 seconds of google-fu, and they apparently are not text messages and are specifically designed to not be bogged down during emergency periods with high congestion:
https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/...
Are WEAs text messages?
No. Many providers have chosen to transmit WEAs using a technology that is separate and different from voice calls and SMS text messages. This technology ensures that emergency alerts will not get stuck in highly congested areas, which can happen with standard mobile voice and texting services.
So having FM radio for emergency broadcasts would be good. But we already have emergency broadcasts using our cell phones - even the ones like mine that do not have an FM chip. The argument for carriers to unlock because it's a security concern seems a bit like fearmongering. It might just work, and I would applaud if all carriers unlocked the chips so we can use them. But we did sign contracts with our carriers when we bought the phones, and they control what we can do, so I'm not sure what leg we have to stand on. Unless you paid full price and bought an unlocked phone.
It can be a decision made by the carrier.
For instance, the Galaxy S7, definitely a higher end device, has FM receiver hardware. Sprint enabled it when the S7 was shipped; T-Mobile enabled it during an S7 system update; Verizon has not enabled it as of this posting.
And of course, I enjoy FM, and my S7 came from Verizon.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
havent seen a phone with a working FM chip in the states
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Because I like listening to the DJ's of my local rock station, that's why. They're interesting and funny and talk about local events and stuff.
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.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Instead of campaigning for vapid, advertising filled pop music, how about a campaign for NOAA Weather Radio? This could actually be useful as during severe weather, cell service is easily knocked out. Listeners could be alerted to severe weather events in their area: tornadoes, flooding, etc.
You can do this, after app updates. I had a 2013 Moto G, and you can listen to FM radio on Bluetooth, as long as you have a wired headphone plugged in.
I've tried with an audio cable without headphones, and it works; but perhaps because the connector is low-quality, the phone thinks I'm pressing the headphone remote button, which makes the radio randomly pause.
This is specific to Motorola, which seems to record the analogue radio output, and then sends it through Android's audio system as digital audio. The app can also record FM broadcasts. This does sometimes mess up the system audio output, but stopping the radio app Activity usually fixes it.
I also remember that installing CyanogenMod on the Nexus One would enable its FM radio, but there is no recording or Bluetooth functionality.
Then why are phones more expensive if you buy them from a mobile network provider?
Until about 2013, buying a phone separately and using it on VZW, AT&T, or Sprint was hundreds of dollars more expensive because there was no discount for not taking a subsidized phone. The carrier would still add $20 or so per month to your bill even after the contract ended or even if you brought your own device. T-Mobile's "Un-carrier" ad campaign in 2013, which promoted the fact that T-Mobile itemizes the service and the installment payment for the phone separately, forced the other carriers to adopt similar price cuts. (T-Mobile had already been doing this for years under the name "Even More Plus", but it wasn't well promoted.)
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.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.