I maaaay have taken my phone on an accidental trip in a pool and was given an old phone to use as temporary. Has a headphone port. Saw the radio app and realized how do many of my smart phones even had radio access even though they all are capable. Bastards
I may be wrong here, but it sounds like it’s using the wire in the headphones as an antenna. Hence the specific need and the general absence on modern phones as they don’t have a means of reliably receiving that form of signal.
Bongo. It used to be that when phones had the 3.5mm jack, many included the FM module because it was cheap and easy. But with the disappearing of the jack and the headphone wire with it, there’s no viable way to receive that FM signal. Most OTA analog wireless signals need a wire to propagate along in order to (for lack of a better term) collect enough of the signal to reproduce. It’s the same reason old analog cell phones had the antenna and extending it while wandering around or climbing up on something helped the call come in clearer. Digital signals don’t have that same issue, the signal is either on or off.
I still can receive a few clearer stations without the headphones plugged in. But just barely. The app I tested on allows you to listen to radio without plugging headphones in.
You must be close to a station. I think normal fm stations are expected to work at least 40km away, but I doubt you can receive it without a good antenna at that distance.
It’s not very far but it’s also a national broadcaster with especially strong signal I think
No, you’re right.
That is precisely the reason.
Aren’t there loads and loads of radio stations which livestream through the internet?
Some do. I even have an absolutely amazing radio station app that I don’t want to ever change so I don’t and won’t tell anyone for fear it will get ruined.
But Internet radio isn’t FM radio. Killing the headphone jack killed having a device that should play music without needing to pay for anything other than the device.
Losing FM radio helps then track you and spy on you, even if it’s redundant for many of you, it doesn’t change that they took that functionality away so you had to pay dollars for access.
Until access to free universal wireless data is the same as access to FM radio then they continue to take music away from us
Its just an observation, you might even consider it a worthless distinction, I’m simple sharing a truth that I wouldn’t have realized had I not been using this old phone that still had that functionality.
And I’m old enough that I used to have a “walkman” so it’s perhaps something that you may not care in the slightest about
I may not understand what point you are trying to make and if so my apologies
Losing FM radio helps then track you and spy on you,
;_; inescapable
Still worth documenting the ways they accomplished the inescapable situation we now how, in my opinion anyway
You can still buy cheap tiny portable fm radios, old or new, if that is your thing.
Yes but that’s not really the point though.
This is about enshittification.
You now HAVE to buy a separate device instead of the wireless communication that uses radio frequency and is already in your pocket
It was a hardware feature that existed simply because it was the hardware they put in the phones to do other things as well. A onus feature that gave you increased value, until they removed the headphone jack that was and is still a contentious
Yeah esp if tracking is the core issue.
Did you know wifi signals can now be used by providers to track your discreet position in your own home
It just gets worse and worse for privacy, and I’m not even close to the deepend of the privacy concerned people
This is the reason I keep a dumbphone with radio in an emergency bag. Battery lasts forever, I can call and text and, well, radio! Any cheap pair of headphones will work with it.
Something I found out, at least where I live, even without a SIM your old phone can still make emergency calls. Even your old smart phone can be useful in an emergency bag. Battery would be the issue but if there’s a decent power Bank that can stay charged for long periods that might work too
Recently there has been a movement for “3g shutdown” in some parts of the world, but I guess it will spread with time too. So unfortunately it will stop working at some point.
Does emergency call go through 3G? I thought it was something lower.
It’s just a name you can google, it’s not specifically 3g only. In practice what they want to do is to remove all voice services that are not VoLTE, which includes the older systems too. In Australia they even started to ban phone models that are not able to do emergency calls over VoLTE properly.
Yep, it was nice. Free music, at any time, all you needed was a charged battery and a cheapo pair of cans. Hell, I still have an MP3 player. It’s no larger than a Zippo lighter, MicroSD support, full radio with wired headphones as the antenna.
*Well, free as in you paid your “subscription” when you did your taxes, standard radio fare.
Free music
There’s advertisements
Yes, which is why it’s a good thing the internet we pay for has no ads!
That is why it is free!
I’ve long thought that it was ridiculous that radio tuners are not standard in every cell phone. While we’re at it, they should all be able to broadcast on the FM band so that you can ditch the Bluetooth receiver
That would clutter the fuck out of the airwaves, and is insecure to boot. You don’t wanna pick up someone else’s signal.
They already make devices that do it. Usually it’s not a strong enough signal to get past the metal panels on your car, but strong enough for the radio to pick it up on an unused station
Yes, and it’s easier to keep something like that confined to a car. There’s more space and a sizeable natural buffer.
Now imagine a train car full of people using this.
It’s an important thing to have in an emergency. The remaining cell towers will probably be overloaded, but you will likely still be able to hear an FM broadcast station to find out if you need to evacuate and where to go.
Radio tuner, and a basic audio recording application.
But why would you want to listen to radio? Feels more like they helped us weening off this terrible medium.
Handy in disasters
If you know you know
