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FCC Chairman Wants It To Be Easier To Listen To Free FM Radio On Your Smartphone (recode.net)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Recode: Your smartphone has an FM radio in it, only it's unlikely that you're able to use it. That's because in the U.S., less than half of phones actually have the FM tuner turned on. But FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who just recently assumed the top position at the regulatory agency under President Trump, thinks that should change. In remarks made to the North American Broadcasters Association yesterday, Pai said that it's a public safety issue. Both the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Association and an FCC advisory panel on public safety have advocated for turning on the FM radio capabilities in smartphones, since radio is a reliable source of information when internet or cellphone networks go down in severe weather. Although Pai thinks smartphones should have the FM chip turned on, he doesn't think the government should mandate it: "As a believer in free markets and the rule of law, I cannot support a government mandate requiring activation of these chips. I don't believe the FCC has the power to issue a mandate like that, and more generally I believe it's best to sort this issue out in the marketplace."
It requires the use of wired earphones because the wire acts as the FM radio antenna. The FCC cannot change that.
http://nextradioapp.com/suppor...
My hands are tied - honestly! I just tied them myself!
He says he wants FM on all capable phones, and in the same breath says he doesn't "believe the FCC has the power to issue a mandate like that". Well, Ajit, you slimy fuck, I have news for you: your alleged belief doesn't mean shit, you do have the power, and any assertions you make to the contrary are simply inept and sophomoric bullshit politicking. Being a liar is bad enough - being incompetent at it is just diarrhea icing on the crapcake you're trying to get people to swallow.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Honestly, I don't even use the radio in my car anymore. It's been ten years or more since I listened to the radio.
On the other side of the atlantic pond, radio in cars tends to be used a lot, specially for traffic information.
Last time I listened to the car's radio has been lat time I drove it :
the car automatically suspended the music we were listening to announce some traffic jams and incident on the highway.
Most GPS (specially the in-car built-ins) are also able to leverage the digital information (TMC signal on the RDS on FM radios) to also display and take into account such traffic information.
So radio on portable devices can be useful for such traffic informations.
The only thing is, as far as I know, most smartphone with disabled radio chips only have *FM*-Radio (i.e.: plain old analog. Sometimes not even with support for digital metadata over RDS).
Whereas lots of European regions are moving to DAB/DAB+ Radio (digital radio, transmitted as MP2 or AAC digital stream respectively), which is not directly supported on purely FM chips, and would be quite taxing on the battery life if attempting to decode on CPU in software (SDR - software defined radio).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Not really. Find your local college radio station. They usually have diverse and interesting programming. I find most of my new music now adays from eclectic DJs on small university transmitters. And there are never any commercials on CBC radio. So you have options for sure.
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
The biggest trouble with AM is the wavelength.
Typical FM stations have wavelength of order a few metres, so any sensible length of wire (eg a headphone wire) will make an OK 1/4-ish-or-close-enough wave antenna. So headphones as antenna wire + some fairly trivial demodulation in the existing chipset and you're good to go.
AM bands have wavelengths from around 300m-600m, so forget using the headphone wire - you'll need some sort of tuned resonant loop / ferrite rod or similar for even half decent reception. That means more weight, extra power consumption, increased cost and added circuit complexity (you really can't just smash AM with a DSP hammer the way you can FM) for a feature that would (probably) get even less use than the FM receiver.
That's why you just don't see AM receivers in phones.