
Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio? - prostoalex
http://www.wired.com/2016/07/phones-fm-chips-radio-smartphone/
======
WalterBright
I just bought an internet radio for my stereo (yes, I'm that old, I have a
stereo). I was surprised to discover it also had a wire in the box that turned
out to be an FM antenna. I thought with internet radio, who needs an FM tuner?
(all the local stations have streaming URLs)

Turns out I actually like it. It's handy when the internet fails, or when
you're nearing data caps, or just want to run it all day without interfering
with download speeds, or you don't want the NSA to know you like disco music
(Edit: oh.. crap!).

I suppose long term FM is dead, but meanwhile it has its uses.

~~~
Frondo
It's funny, I really like listening to a number of local stations for the
variety of music I get introduced to; but somehow, the fact that there is a
real person curating it makes me enjoy it. Listening to spotify, it doesn't do
it for me. Something about having someone come on, make a little human
conversation, that's part of the experience for me. Algorithms don't cut it.

~~~
alsetmusic
It's strange to me to read a positive comment about terrestrial radio
broadcast amid so many complaints about ad blocking on the web. I stopped
listening to radio many years ago and now I have an irrational resentment when
I hear car stereos blasting pointless, noisy ads at traffic stops. I always
wonder what allows people to mentally tune them out rather than decreasing the
volume until music resumes.

This is in no way pointed at you; just something that struck me while browsing
comments.

~~~
LeoPanthera
It really depends what country you're in. In the UK, by far the most-listened-
to FM stations are from the BBC, which are of course ad-free.

Radio 1 (for younger people) and Radio 6 (for less-young people) are great
places to listen to new music. And you can stream them over the web, for free,
even if you're not British:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio](http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio)

~~~
jon-wood
When the BBC have such a wide range of music stations I can never comprehend
why commercial radio is still a thing, and still so popular here. I'm probably
not the target market though, since I also get irritated at the way all radio
stations have about 15 minutes of music per hour, and the rest is filler from
some smug DJ pretending to be your friend, and people calling in because
they've got no one better to talk to about their deathly dull morning.

~~~
DigitalJack
I can't speak for the UK market, but in the US, public radio is biased left.
I'm biased right, so it annoys me, but I love the stuff that isn't political,
like Click'n'Clack (did that come back or is it being rebroadcast?).

Commercial Radio has a non-government business benefactor, and so they cover
what is of interest to them. Public Radio has government as it's benefactor,
and so they cover their interests. Now it's not necessarily blatant, but
whoever pays your bills, you have a self interest in seeing them in a positive
light. If you are unable to do so, I'm sure you would move on to someone who
you can see in a positive light. Bit of selection bias going on there, which
is another slant maker.

I am fine with NPR, for example, having a bias to the left, but I wish they
would stop pretending they didn't. Recognizing self bias is incredibly
difficult, so it's not surprising when people don't see their own. This
difficulty is as old as the bible (cf Matthew 7:3), and probably as old as
thinking (I haven't read Plato or Aristotle but I would be surprised if they
didn't talk about it.)

I have the same problem with Fox news, and really all the major news networks
pretending to be unbiased, stating opinions as fact. I cut the cord a long
time ago.

The more certain you are that you understand something, the less likely you
are to examine it in depth. Do yourself a favor today, pick one of your
beliefs, and take some time to examine why you believe it. Seek out some
opposing positions, see if there is something to learn from them.

Do your best to find something other than "common sense" as the basis for
believing what you believe.

~~~
emodendroket
There are no new episodes of Car Talk being recorded since the brothers both
retired and one of them is dead.

~~~
DigitalJack
That's sad. Now that you brought it up I think I remember hearing about one of
the brothers dying. They were so much fun to listen to, really made me smile.

------
smegel
Australian here, also find it bizarre that this is a problem in the US.

Biggest problem I have in my Android phone requires the head-phones to be
plugged in to listen to FM...as it acts as the aerial.

~~~
donretag
I do not think the issue is with the US, but with iphones. Every Android phone
I have owned has always had an FM radio app.

~~~
crummy
My Nexus 6P has no radio app, and when I just downloaded one (NextRadio) it
said my phone didn't have the required software.

------
mwexler
I find it hubris on the point of the device makers. Like, "what? you don't
have unlimited streaming everywhere?" As a commuter in the NYC area, streaming
is in fact not available consistently everywhere on the ride in... but my fm
radio on my ipod never stutters. (Of course, some static here and there...)

And as more information sources move to the terribly named "HD" channels of
radio, I worry that my current ipod will start to have even less content
available.

When I think of all the features I never use on my expensive phone, having one
I want to use already built in but disabled is somewhat frustrating.

------
abalone
Apple isn't activating it because it "might undermine Beats One"? Oh give me a
break. You can stream just about any FM station you want with apps like TuneIn
Radio.

~~~
pjc50
If Apple didn't want you to have an FM radio, they wouldn't put it on the
phone. It's the _carriers_ that oppose it.

~~~
culturestate
I think iMessage proved that Apple could give a damn what the carriers want.

~~~
lostlogin
This may be a failing of mine or a regional thing, but what does this comment
mean? I read it literally as saying that Apple has done what carriers want and
has made iMessage to suit carriers. I suspect that this is the opposite of
what is intended though, as iMessage disempowers carriers imho. How does
culturestate's comment work?

~~~
phreaky
"Could give a damn" and "couldn't give a damn" can be used as synonyms in
American slang. Or it might just be the South.

~~~
lostlogin
Thanks, now this says something that squares with what I would expect it to
mean. Strange how dropping that very key word leaves the same meaning. Still,
English has many strange quirks.

~~~
DigitalJack
It's super annoying but it has to do with misunderstandings and
mispronunciations finding their way into common language. Another terrible one
is "I could care less" vs "I couldn't care less." Both mean the same thing in
the common language, but if I hear someone say the "could" version, they lose
a lot of respect in my eyes.

Languages evolve, and mostly it irritates me. I hate that the English
Dictionaries used to be an authoritative source, and are now just a reflection
of common usage.

Yet at the same time I recognize the need for languages to evolve as life does
not stand still.

~~~
mikeash
Are you also irritated by all the changes that happened before you were born,
or is it just the new ones that bug you?

Dictionaries as an authoritative source really just means that they reflect
older common usage. It just makes them slow, not somehow better.

~~~
DigitalJack
So the "Urban Dictionary" should really be called the "Fast Dictionary."

------
jrockway
More interesting would be getting the weather radio signal (not on the FM
broadcast band, it's AM around 160MHz), and having the phone change which SAME
code it's sensitive to as you move around.

I know you are supposed to get an SMS or something whenever there is a severe
weather event, but after a million amber alerts and a flood warning a few
states away, that's the first thing I turn off when I get a new phone. I've
never seen it work, either.

~~~
smcl
Is this just an american thing? I haven't heard of it over here

~~~
cr1895
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA_Weather_Radio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA_Weather_Radio)

I remember one of my parents' old cars (mid-90s) having a WX channel on the
radio. More recently i've only ever seen it available over VHF radio while
boating.

Also, most airports will have weather broadcasts, but I think this is only
accessible with an aviation-band VHF radio:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_airport_weather_stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_airport_weather_station)

------
OJFord
Wow, news to me.

News that people in the USA can't, that is!

I won't say it's a particularly common thing to do, but here in the UK you
certainly can listen to FM radio on your phone, provided you plugin earphones
to be uses as an antenna.

~~~
geocar
I'm in the UK and I have an iPhone. How do I do this?

~~~
OJFord
iPhone may or may not have one, or may be locked just as it is in the US. I've
never owned one.

On Android though a majority have a built-in FM radio app, and more available
to download on the Play store.

You could have a look in the app store (make sure it's not lying about being
FM and using your data) but if not maybe it's only possible if you jailbreak,
or not at all.

~~~
vertex-four
As a fellow Brit, I've never seen a smartphone that does FM - though my
feature phone does.

~~~
OJFord
See
[https://play.google.com/store/search?q=fm%20radio&c=apps](https://play.google.com/store/search?q=fm%20radio&c=apps)

~~~
vertex-four
All of those apps are not actually FM radio apps - Android does not have a
standard API for accessing FM radio. The apps you linked are actually just
misleadingly named Internet radio players that only play from stations that
also broadcast over FM.

Any phone which has FM radio will only be able to access it through an app
distributed with the phone. Apparently Sony-Ericsson have some phones which
have such a thing? Samsung might've done in the past, but not with their
current flagships.

~~~
zyx321
There are a few "true" FM radios hidden in there, but each works only on
select devices, and most of them require root access.

Just a fun trivia fact ;)

------
blowski
> [On the iPhone 6] the wireless chip is a Murata 339S0228 which houses the
> normal flavors of 802.11 wifi, Bluetooth, and has an FM transceiver.

...

> What we're missing is an appropriate antenna and an amplifier chip dedicated
> to driving that antenna. Unlike the murata chip that doesn't take up any
> extra space, those things /would/ take up extra space in the phone. While
> I'm of the opinion that Apple could have fitted them in if they wanted to,
> it doesn't change the fact that there's no hardware based solution for FM
> radio on the iPhone.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/32vp1l/question_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/32vp1l/question_is_there_a_way_for_a_jailbreak_tweak_to/cqfk0be)

~~~
jandrese
Apple is obsessive about using every square mm inside of an iPhone case. I can
definitely see them saying "that chip would take up room we don't have for a
feature few people ask for", and drop it from the design.

The next version of the iPhone probably won't even have the headphone jack so
there won't even be the possibility of using the headphone jack antenna trick.
Not unless they engineer it into the lightning connector (ha!).

------
schlowmo
There's possibly one reason why carriers (and probably vendors) haven't much
interest in FM radios which the article and (if I don't overlooked) no comment
mention: digital dividend.

At least here in Germany carriers awaiting the moment when FM broadcast is
finally declared dead and their frequencies become free for sale. The VHF band
between 87.5 to 108.0 MHz is of big interest especially for rural areas.

~~~
6stringmerc
Great point, and I would imagine that spectrum / bands will be the next big
"war" like patents have been recently for large entities. Lightsquared really
tested the waters - and failed due to simple engineering and existing
neighbors overlap (aka "No, you can't build a dirt bike track in the middle of
a suburban neighborhood and next door to an Elementary school"). Getting
access and legal approval will be quite a subject for lots of different
modernized and modernizing countries to consider!

~~~
schlowmo
I wasn't aware of Lightsquared. But it seems like they were a "new player". If
you look at the winning bids of the "Digitale Dividene (= digital dividend) I"
and "Digitale Dividende II" in Germany it's easy to see that you have to be a
big player to have real chances (or being even allowed to bid) in those
frequency auctions.

"Digitale Dividende I": six 5 Mhz wide bands (always in "pairs") each between
570.849 and 627.317 million €. Winners: O2, Telekom, Vodafone. (source:
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitale_Dividende#Frequenzver...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitale_Dividende#Frequenzversteigerung_2010))

"Digitale Dividende II": thirty-one 5 Mhz wide bands (some of them "paired")
each between 39.011 and 255.967 million €. Winners: Telekom, Vodafone,
Telefónica (formerly O2). (source:
[http://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/cln_1432/DE/Sachgebiete/Tele...](http://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/cln_1432/DE/Sachgebiete/Telekommunikation/Unternehmen_Institutionen/Frequenzen/Projekt2016_Frequenzauktion/projekt2016-node.html))

Further I know of some radio stations (especially community radios) which
refuse to accept special offers from broadcast carriers for digital radio
(DAB+ and DVB-T(2)) broadcasting because of the fear that this could be used
as another argument against them having an own analog FM frequency.

------
yyyuuu
That is quite strange ... Here in India, most people own an android. And Radio
App is pre-installed in almost all those phones. You just have to plug-in your
earphones to start using it. I expected that behavior to be universal.

~~~
baq
'in India' is the key here. Market segmentation at its worst.

~~~
yyyuuu
Sorry but I don't really get it ... what harm would enabling radio on a phone
would do?

~~~
unwind
It's all over the article: it lessens the demand for streaming media over
Internet, which of course means income for the telcos.

------
djhworld
I've recently returned from the British Grand Prix and resented the fact that
my smartphone doesn't have a radio feature.

Had to invest £10 in a cheap plastic thing they sold at the circuit, while it
did the job, I thought smartphones were supposed to be an end to having to
carry around single function devices, in favour of the all-in-one solution.

~~~
Eutow
How about that Verstappen, eh?

What was the general feeling in the crowd while they puttered along behind the
Safety Car for so long?

I want to attend one of the races in Europe next season and I've whittled my
options down to Silverstone and Spa. How highly would you recommend the
British GP?

Also, which smartphone do you have?

~~~
djhworld
Yeah Verstappen was great, safety car start was disappointing but once the
race started it was a good atmosphere, especially towards the end when
Hamilton was driving his win home.

This was my first GP, so couldn't say really but I found everything at
Silverstone great.

Spa would be a great race to go to as well, but I don't know what they are
like for facilities.

I have a Nexus 5 from 2014, it does the job, just a shame about the radio
really.

------
CarolineW
Doing a quick search has surfaced an item on this issue from a year ago. That
article had this:

    
    
        But Jot Carpenter, vice president of government
        affairs for CTIA-The Wireless Association, resists
        the move to turn on the FM chip.
    
        At a NAB convention in Las Vegas this week,
        Carpenter said there would have to be demand
        by smartphone consumers for mobile carriers to
        consider switching on the FM chip.
    
        "What Americans really want is the ability to
        stream, download and customize music playlists
        to meet their personal preferences," Carpenter
        said, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal,
        "and that's not what the traditional FM radio
        offers." 
    

There were 100 comments on this submission:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9395944](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9395944)

And a further 6 comments on this one:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9396631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9396631)

It would be interesting to compare this thread with those threads from 450
days ago to see if anything has changed in the HN community mind.

~~~
jandrese
I'd like to tell him to stop telling me what I want.

And also maybe to recognize that cell data is expensive and overages can be
punitive.

------
ch4ck
In my country one has to pay to the regime for using/owning "radio/tv
receiver". That's why I am happy to have more devices without unblocked analog
FM. It means for me more choice without having to pay for the
brainwashing/propaganda.

~~~
Xylakant
if you're referring to Germany, you're obliged to pay anyways - whether you
own a device or not (it's per household/company since a while). It doesn't
matter how many devices you own though. And you're not paying "the regime",
you're paying an independent institution. It's not a tax by design though it
may feel like one. The government never gets to touch the money.

Now, there's a ton of things that are wrong with our nominally independent
radio/tv stations, but if I look around and see how things go in other states
on this little planet (hello fox news), I don't have any idea that works
better in principle. I'll take the german system over any alternative so far
offered (though the BBC is a close contender)

~~~
drdaeman
Here's the problem with this tax (or however it's called): you're basically
paying for some third party actions that you have no control over. Someone
emits some electromagnetic radiation that you may or may not care about, but
for some odd reason you have to pay for that. That feels... wrong.

Can't remember any other tax-like charges where one has to pay for something
artificial that they could be completely unrelated to, yet don't have any
control over.

~~~
kalleboo
If you remove the abstractions down to "someone emits some electromagnetic
radiation" then yeah it makes no sense. Just like saying "someone out there is
mixing hydrocarbons with rocks and dumping it on the ground that you may or
may not care about".

Most people would rather discuss it in terms of "funding an independent source
of media" and "building road infrastructure to move goods and services".

~~~
drdaeman
I'm not sure comparing radio with roads is correct.

For roads, maybe somewhere it's the same, but there are also funding ways that
work differently. If you use the road (have a vehicle) you (probably, depends
on where you are) pay the tax, either directly or included with the fuel
price. If you don't drive a vehicle but use the roads indirectly (because the
services you use, use that roads) you pay indirectly - trough your funding of
those services and their respective use of vehicles. E.g. you buy stuff in a
grocery store, the store pays to a transportation company, the transportation
company pays taxes for their trucks - everyone's paying for what they actually
use. So, it still feels fundamentally different from the broadcast taxes to
me.

~~~
Zak
Public schools or libraries are probably a better analogy.

In the US, various forms of taxation at the federal, state and local level go
in to providing funds for public schools. Everyone pays for schools even if
they have no children. The only significant exception is that in some places,
parents can receive vouchers to pay for private schools. Either way, the goal
is that everyone receives a basic education to make a better society.

Everywhere in the US I've had a library card, it was similar. Libraries are
funded by general taxes and their basic services are provided without charge
to users who live in their tax area (county, most places).

Whether publicly-funded radio stations are a valuable public good in this way
is reasonable to debate, but that's the model.

------
Aoyagi
_> Manufacturers can activate the chip, but the decision to do so typically
rests with carriers._

Um... carriers in US have any authority over hardware functions of people's
devices? Why? What the hell?

~~~
gambiting
Because of contracts. Every single phone on the market can turn itself into a
wireless hotspot, but in US carriers have an ability to disable that option
completely for users who haven't paid for a "tethering" package. It's crazy if
you ask me.

~~~
Aoyagi
I mean I knew American telcos were scum, but this is utterly ridiculous. What
if you buy a device from abroad?

~~~
gambiting
Doesn't matter. If you have an iphone then US carrier can send a command to it
that completely disables tethering, I believe the option actually disappears
from the menu. With android phones it's not as clear cut, some phones will
respect that command some will not, obviously you can always make it work by
rooting your phone, but most people don't do that.

~~~
Aoyagi
I see. Is that a command sent via SMS? I know T-Mobile sent one (and when I
didn't open it, a second) of those, but I've never opened them. But this is a
Lumia, not an iPhone...

~~~
mikhailt
No, it's part of the cellular settings that your phone must download first and
be configured by the network.

APN for an example:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_Point_Name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_Point_Name)

------
zakalwe2000
It's not free to design or sell, even if the audio parts used "have the
capability". If Apple thought they'd sell more phones, they'd do it.

Back when I was fighting the good fight against Apple, MP3 player vendors kept
adding FM (and eventually HD Radio) in the hope that it was what Apple users
were missing... The radio industry liked that strategy too.

P.S. Headphone antennas are kind of shit.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>It's not free to design or sell, even if the audio parts used "have the
capability". //

The chances are that the system was designed to enable it and the choice to
disable was made commercially. It seems most likely to be like hardware with
more memory or faster clock speeds where the manufacturer just cripples it to
make the cheaper model.

------
bshimmin
I always found this a weird omission from smartphones. I remember happily
listening to FM radio on my ancient Nokia 8210, and probably the 3210 before
that, and wondering why I couldn't do this on my iPhone.

~~~
kuschku
Well, you can on most Android phones - in fact, I'm listening to N-Joy via FM
right this very second on my Moto G (2014) while writing this comment.

It's just that iPhones seem to lack another substantial feature.

(Also, FM is infinitely cheaper than streaming - it's free, and works even in
areas where no 3G coverage is available. Which makes it a lot more useful in
countries with bad internet infrastructure, like the US or Germany)

------
wodenokoto
To answer the question in the headline: Because it is better to have no
function, than a crappy function.

It's another useless app, another menu item to browse through and for the
company, another source of complaints and support cases.

~~~
blowski
Firstly, why is the choice between no function or a crappy function? Why would
every FM radio app necessarily be crappy?

Secondly, why would it be useless when millions of people still listen to FM
radio? In the UK for example, according to RAJAR (the UK radio body) 56% of
radio listeners use FM compared to DAB or internet, which is around 26 million
people.

Thirdly, why does the hardware have an FM receiver at all if I can't use it?

If it allowed me to listen to BBC Radio 4 news on my train journey, which I
can't do using data because of a bad signal for most of the journey, then it
would be very useful for me.

~~~
simonh
> Thirdly, why does the hardware have an FM receiver at all if I can't use it?

It doesn't. One of the support chips happens to have an FM transceiver along
with the ones the phone uses, but it would also need an antenna and an
amplifier to be able to receive FM radio. And a bigger battery and a bigger
case (or less battery life). And more software. And more product QA and
support.

~~~
blowski
I just looked into the chip, and can see now that you're right. I agree that
Apple probably hasn't enabled it because the amplifier and antenna are
unfeasible.

~~~
scholia
Odd that they won't work in a £700 phone when they work perfectly well in a
£10 phone.....

------
justinlardinois
> So when a disaster knocks out power and takes down cell service—along with
> those government emergency alerts—you’re going to need a radio to know
> what’s going on.

Remember that Paul Graham essay about how most articles that aren't about
politics or war are pitched to the journalist by someone with a stake in the
matter? This is almost word for word what they say in the NextRadio app's
radio commercials.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Remember that Paul Graham essay about how most articles that aren't about
> politics or war are pitched to the journalist by someone with a stake in the
> matter?

Most articles about politics and war are spurred by politicians' and/or
governments' press releases, leaks, etc., and so are _also_ pitched to
journalists, often _en masse_ , by someone with a stake in the matter.

~~~
justinlardinois
There's a difference between putting out information for general dissemination
and actually contacting a journalist directly.

Not that the latter doesn't happen in politics. But government press releases
are pretty likely to be newsworthy just because of what they are.

------
jkot
Tablets sold in US also do not have voice capabilities. 8" table is an
excellent phone for daily use.

In some European countries you have to pay license for radio receiver. For
phone with FN radio you would pay $25/year, that is lot of money with national
average salary $8000.

~~~
Eutow
Wait, having to pay for a license to listen to radio? Where?

~~~
detaro
Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Sweden, ... Even more countries have
similar rules for TV. Generally to support public stations.

~~~
kalleboo
In Sweden you only pay for TV ownership, not FM radio

~~~
scholia
Same in the UK....

------
ocdtrekkie
Most of my Motorola devices on Verizon here in the US have had an FM Radio
app, or supported them if you install your own. My Windows Phone, also on
Verizon, also supports it. Yet this article suggests Verizon users get "tough
luck". Huh.

------
zuluwill
Is there a way to get radio on your iPhone? Could you "jailbreak" it? I'm in
the UK (EE is the carrier) and missed the Wimbledon final due to being on a
train, it would have been great to have radio...

------
tripzilch
Maybe a really stupid question, but how does this work out:

> Manufacturers can activate the chip, but the decision to do so typically
> rests with carriers. If you’re Verizon customer, tough luck.

If Verizon is the carrier, they just provide your SIM-card, right? You don't
_need_ to buy your phone along with your mobile plan. I bought my Samsung
Android S4 from an online shop, my carrier had nothing to do with that. I just
insert my (their) SIM for calls and texts and data.

So who decided not to enable the radio, here?

~~~
unclenoriega
It can be more complicated with US carriers. Verizon and Sprint (the 1st and
4th biggest carriers) traditionally have used CDMA technologies without SIM
cards. This is changing with LTE, but their non-LTE technologies do not use
SIM cards. Furthermore, these carriers will generally refuse to activate a
phone from another carrier or retailer to be used on their network. So, while
you can just put a Verizon SIM in a tablet for LTE data, you can't do the same
with a phone. (I'm not sure how this will work with VoLTE.)

------
stephengillie
I miss having the FM Radio app in CyanogenMod on my Droid Incredible. It was
hard to get good reception with the headphone antenna, but it was still fun to
play with and use.

------
vnwwilugrb
ROI
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo)

------
Qwertious
AFAIK this is something that needs to be activated at the software (or rather,
firmware) level, and is yet another argument for Free Software.

------
dajohnson89
FM radio, save NPR and the one or two classical stations, is 99% ad-ridden
garbage. Just like cable and network television.

~~~
nacnud
Not everywhere in the world.

~~~
dajohnson89
Fair point, my comment was too US-Centric. I love the BBC...I had an app for
streaming it, but it was buggy and suffered from frequent buffering.

------
babuskov
It's very simple. Apple doesn't want you to listen to the radio, they want you
to buy music on iTunes.

------
tangue
Besides the debate, I've ditched smartphones (for productivity and ecological
reasons) in favor of a Nokia featurephone and I'm surprised by how much I'm
listening to the radio on it. Not knowing what you're going to hear is a
pleasant experience in these days.

------
zenexer
To anyone who's been able to get this to work: can the radios be tuned to
arbitrary frequencies, or are they restricted to entertainment? A cheap,
unlocked Android phone would make for a nice police scanner. Trunking could
likely be handled via an app.

~~~
hguant
You can buy radio cards that can scan police (and, well, all) frequencies for
much less than an android phone.

[https://sites.google.com/site/policescannerhowto/](https://sites.google.com/site/policescannerhowto/)

------
laurent123456
I don't get it, why do manufacturers bother adding an FM chip if they never
activate it?

~~~
expertentipp
Each European country has a national broadcaster and collects radio/TV license
fee (some are less strict about it than the others). I wouldn't be surprised
if national broadcasters or fee collectors were pushing for presence of this
chip in mobiles so no one can use the excuse "I don't have radio/TV so why
should I pay the license?".

~~~
kalleboo
Many of them already achieve the same result by saying "you can receive our
online streams so pay up", I don't think underfunded public broadcasters in
Europe are busy bribing chipset manufacturers to add features their customers
don't want

------
thanatropism
In Brazil many low-lower-end Android phones (from LG, for example, but I'm
sure from other non-Apple brands too) have FM and even TV receivers.

The same phones support multiple SIM cards because cash-strapped folks on
prepaid cards are aggressive optimisers.

------
hitr
In India we have free streaming apps from the network provider like Airtel
which allows downloads or offline playing of millions of songs without paying
,people really don't miss FM radio that much as it used to.

~~~
Ankurkkhuran
and killing net neutrality in the process. What will the likes of gaana/saavn
do now ? eventually they will lose there revenues, shut down and guess what's
next ? Paying Airtel music subscription.

------
mrmondo
This annoys me so much, here in Australia DAB (digital radio) is nerfed so
much that the broadcast quality is significantly lower than FM so it's not
even worth buying a nice, fancy DAB unit for your home HiFi.

~~~
voltagex_
48 kilobit stereo AAC+ per station, 10+ stations on a single frequency.

------
bootload
Is it possible to avoid articles from Wired? Sick of not being able to view
articles without the ad-hustle Wired pulls on viewers -- must try reading on
lynx to see if this solves the problem.

------
ungzd
It would be cool if it can be used like rtl-sdr, right on the phone.

------
Waterluvian
I didn't know this wasn't something all phones had. I love random FM radio
when I'm on a walk. The moment I hit an ad in just seek and listen to
something new.

------
alok-g
Older discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9395944](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9395944)

------
JustSomeNobody
If the rumors are true and Apple removes the 3.5mm headphone jack, it is
likely we still won't have FM in the next iteration of the iPhone.

------
throw7
"Every smartphone has a FM tuner built in"

Well, from what I've read my nexus 5x does NOT have an FM tuner on board.

------
siddboots
What's going on with Wired? This page has an autoplay video ad _below_ the
article text and an anti-AdBlock full-screen subscription nagger that pops up
a few seconds after page load.

~~~
spacehome
I'm running NoScript, and I saw no anti-AdBlock or video. It's becoming
increasingly clear to me that NoScript is the only reasonable way to browse
the web today. Random websites can't be entrusted to run javascript in a way
that's not hostile to my interests.

~~~
amelius
You do realize that if everybody followed your example, they will at one point
block NoScript too?

Also, half of HN would be out of a job :)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Setting aside the why and wherefore; how would they block NoScript?

~~~
echelon
Imagine a world where all content is loaded over XHRs and the DOM serves only
to load Javascript.

This is becoming an increasingly prevalent pattern. I really miss the
document-oriented web of the late 90's / early 00's.

~~~
frigo_1337
Honest question: Why?

I don't understand why people inherently dislike Javascript (aside from,
y'know, creepy ad networks).

~~~
TeMPOraL
Because, besides the creepy ad networks and stuff, it's most often used in a
mix of _shitty engineering_ and user-hostile practices.

Let's consider a web document like this article here. Its stated goal is to
_be read_ by the visitor and thus deliver him value. So presumably, an article
that's easier to read is better than one harder to read. An article that,
ceteris paribus, consumes less resources on user end is better than one that
consumes more.

Now we have a perfect technology to deliver that article. Plain old HTML. With
a little bit of CSS on top. When what you want to send is text communicating a
message, you need exactly _zero_ JavaScript to do that successfully[0]. You
barely even need much CSS - the default browser styles, raw as they are, are
better than most web designers produce, _if you care about providing value to
the user_.

Now if you don't, here starts JavaScript. Look at just what JS on Wired does
and find me _one line of code_ that actually serves _the user_. The JS there
tracks you, shows you ads, shows you nagging popups[1], adds social media
buttons that are somewhat useful if you want to exchange being tracked
everywhere for convenience of not having to CTRL+TAB to that Facebook tab. In
general, JS here is a waste of electricity (often in users' phone batteries).

You can run a similar analysis of other websites[2] and rarely if ever you'll
find one when JavaScript does anything other than fuck users over more or less
subtly. The technology is fine, but everyone[3] is using it for user-hostile
purposes, and/or because of bad engineering. Think of all the scroll
hijacking, JS rendering article text dynamically on a blog page, etc.
Personally I dislike it from the very same reason I dislike crappy code.

\--

[0] - Sure, JS can be used to qualitatively _enhance_ the reading experience,
to make it more pleasant and efficient. I accept that in principle, but I'll
cede the point only when I see anyone other than Bret Victor actually doing
it.

[1] - Wired, I appreciate that you wanted to say "thank you" to me for turning
off uMatrix for a second, but could you _please_ do not do that _with a
popup_?

[2] - Web _apps_ are a different topic; I don't think anybody is saying you
should turn off JavaScript for GMail or Google Docs. But most of the sites on
the web are not, and _should not behave like_ web apps.

[3] - Except Bret Victor.

~~~
damptowel
I once was smart enough to burst into a rant about exactly this in an
interview question.

I didn't get the job.

Next I was joking with a friend that all the layers of abstraction added to
the web are probably part of some big conspiracy by web developers to create
artificial demand and job security. You run a heavy CMS but the bells and
whistles confuse rather than help the user, and they'd rather pay for an hour
of hour time than figure things out themselves. Your spa makes a simple series
of documents feel like an app, with all the added complexity, but in the end
the user couldn't care less about the full page transitions or parallax
scrolling.

I have one simple rule: if it's about information retrieval, it's supposed to
be a simple bloody document. If it's supposed to act like an app, it should
look like an app. The latter is the propper use case for JS, but people are
applying the latter to the former. This is not user centric design.

------
easytiger
Well mine does.

------
jack2016
FYOU Wired Don´t nag me with this Adblock shit. I simply block you!

If i wanna pay for a article i goto Blendle, there i have a choice.

