Slashdot Mirror
Future Samsung Phones Will Have a Working FM Radio Chip (androidpolice.com)
A few months ago, LG announced a partnership with NextRadio to unlock the FM chip in its smartphones. Now, Samsung is doing the same. Android Police reports: NextRadio made the announcement, rightly explaining that FM radio is essential in areas with low connectivity and in emergency and disaster situations where a connection might be difficult to obtain or maintain and where access to information could be a matter of life and death. With the chip unlocked, users will be able to listen to local radio on their phone using the NextRadio Android app. The press release mentions that "upcoming [Samsung] smartphone models in the U.S. and Canada" will have the FM chip unlocked, however I did find several existing Samsung devices with their FM chip enabled on NextRadio's site.
That's nice but if the carriers disable it (I'm looking at you, Verizon) what's the point?
I just tried it on my Samsung Galaxy S5, and it works, but it appears to be using WiFi. How do I know if it's using the FM chip?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
The real reason is less interesting. The FM radio needs a reasonably long antenna to work, so wired headphones are required. Market research supposedly showed that nobody wanted to have an FM radio in their mobile phone.
Pretty much every mobile phone sold since the late 1990s has had a fully implemented, but disabled, FM radio chipset but no provisions for an antenna and no way to turn it on.
Kriston
Seems to have been a US thing. A lot of phones released in Europe and the US differed in the mobile chipset (bands, GSM/CDMA) and that the FM radio was available here.
More recently phones have had world band chipsets so Europe gets disabled FM as well.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC