[dhon_]

Cars radios are battery powered so will continue to work during power outages, and large enough that adding an AM radio + antenna is not really an issue - unlike a mobile phone. Seems like a good way to ensure most of the population has access to emergency broadcasts.

Edit clarified car radios are battery powered

[kevin_thibedeau]

I'd bet good money that many phones have an FM radio tuner that isn't usable only because they follow one misguided company and won't make a headphone jack available.

[dagmx]

Schrödinger’s Apple. They’re simultaneously behind Android manufacturers for not following their stead, and to blame for anything negative Android manufacturers do as well.

Why can’t the Android manufacturers just be accountable by themselves?

[makeitdouble]

Android manufacturers weren't on stage touting their courage.

Otherwise if that's the drum you want to beat, android makers were the first to push bigger and bigger screens ("phablets") and opened the door for Apple to also inflate it's devices, to the point where 6" is considered "small" by today's standard.

[dagmx]

Youve completely and unsurprisingly missed the point.

It’s irrelevant to Android phones whether Apple made the choice first or how they did it. Android manufacturers are able to be accountable for their own decisions.

it’s even more irrelevant that Android phones had larger screens first, unless people on the Apple side are blaming Android manufacturers for the push to larger screens.

[makeitdouble]

We can keep each maker accountable for their own decisions, while blaming the company pushing the Overton window on what the customer will accept as regressions.

I don't see how the two are exclusive.

[dagmx]

They’re not exclusive but that’s also not what you or the person I initially responded to were doing, now was it? If we’re actually looking at both of your responses and not a retroactive framing of them. Neither one of your comments did anything but levy shots at Apple, and neither even mentioned the Android manufacturers part in it.

In fact your own reply starts of with blaming solely Apple. Your only mention of Android is how they did bigger screens first.

[dmonitor]

> it’s even more irrelevant that Android phones had larger screens first, unless people on the Apple side are blaming Android manufacturers for the push to larger screens.

I would be that person, but the iPhone mini showed the market just isn't there for it :(

[makeitdouble]

If we look at the Pixel 4a which was a 5"8 screen, straight in the middle of the mini (5"4) and the regular iPhone (6"1). It had extremly good sales, and of course the super low price is a major factor in it, but it also was very well reviewed and people flocked to it as one of the best smallish phone at the time.

Then of course Google just went bigger for their garbage 5G variant of it which just trashed battery life, and all subsequent phones doing ML with the Tensor processor also went bigger.

It makes me think it's not a matter of commercial success, or even if there's a market for it. The issue is probably the massive incentives on the maker side to push a bigger battery to deal with more computation and push the device price upper to get better margins.

[Terr_]

Recently I was surprised by not-finding any phone-accessories that are basically a USB-C plug, a little blister of inline electronics, and then more wire for an AM/FM antenna. (And an app to control the tuning/presets, etc.)

It seems like something that ought to be technically doable, but perhaps the market isn't there compared to just selling standalone little radio-things?

[kevin_thibedeau]

USB-C permits analog audio passthrough so you could literally use a passive headphone adapter for the antenna but it's a feature rarely supported anywhere.

[Kirby64]

Not anymore, that mode has been deprecated since USB C 2.3 (released last year). Almost nobody actually supported it in reality though.

[transcriptase]

It’s not exactly what you mean, but a nano RTLSDR, a usb C adapter, and any SDR app can do what you’re outlining and far more.

[mikepurvis]

I'd expect so. It's basically like an analog TV capture card for your computer— but the use cases are even more limited as it's hard to imagine your phone being the platform on which you'd want to record stuff off the air.

I guess it could make sense if the phone is driving your wireless earbuds or you want to change stations using Siri, but yeah other than that, I dunno.

[Retric]

Seems like the market would be people without unlimited internet. Audio takes up a fair bit of bandwidth over time so being able to listen to your personal music or the radio in your earbuds might be considered useful.

[RajT88]

I've read that most phones have a built-in FM tuner, but it's disabled for the US market because telcos wanted you to buy music from their store.

It was true at one point - I owned at least one phone with a disabled FM radio.

Some cursory checks on my current phone suggest it's got one (just doesn't work for some reason with FM Tuner apps).

[Neikius]

They usually require headphones plugged into 3.5mm jack...

[RajT88]

The tuner app says the radio is not present. I am on LineageOS so there is many possible reasons for it not working.

But, there are folks complaining about how Samsung broke FM tuners with an update on this phone a few years back. Who knows what that is about.

[bombela]

yep, the headphone cable acts as the antenna!

[giancarlostoro]

I had a phone in 2010 that would receive FM / AM iirc if I had headphones plugged in, used the wire. I think it was a Motorola phone.

[AStonesThrow]

My Moto g play (2021) has an FM radio app. And, I believe that my KaiOS feature phones had it too.

The story goes that analog radio receivers are built-in to nearly every smartphone, but most lack the app or drivers to access them.

[grogenaut]

several of their current ones also have this feature

[robotnikman]

Probably the original Droid, I had the same one

[musicale]

According to a post below, you would lose the bet. Reddit also claims that several phones have supported FM antenna passthrough via USB-C.

I imagine adding analog FM radio isn't a major selling point on a phone where you can already stream the digital feeds from most FM stations – not to mention Spotify, Youtube, Apple Music, etc.

[GJim]

> you can already stream the digital feeds from most FM stations

That will use up your data.

By contrast FM radio is free, and we have some bloody good BBC radio stations in blighty.

[chgs]

My understanding in America is that FM is full of pirate transmissions blocking real channels and thus reducing usefulness of FM for the majority.

American culture leans “against the feds”, it really is wackamole trying to shut them down, on the other hand it drives more subscriptions to satelite radio which is good for the gdp, so win win.

Hell I believe this is even the case in London, just not as extreme.

[0_____0]

I live in the US and can't recall ever having come across a pirate station. Sometimes people have little FM transmitters in their cars to get audio to their car stereos, but those have a range of meters.

[yardie]

Not as many pirate radio stations as they’re used to be in the 80s and 90s. A few friends were running them from unsecured buildings back in the day. It’s where I first tuned into a younger DJ Khaled, LOL. The FCC started cracking down heavily by the 00s. And they were eventually replaced by community radio stations. Properly licensed, tend to have more religious, and marketed towards immigrant communities who don’t follow western, English speaking news.

Those pirate radio stations are still out there just with a low power license and a sheen of legitimacy now.

[kstrauser]

More like Clear Channel / iHeartMedia bought all of them and turned them into the “the greatest hits of the 80s, 90s, and today!” I listen to NPR sometimes, and KEXP plays good music, and I can also stream both of them. I haven’t listened to commercial FM radio in many years because it’s absolutely awful in the US.

I’m the one who said it’s weird we single out cars to have AM radios, but my wife actually listens to live sports on AM during her work commute. If I had to pick exactly one of FM or AM to have in our car, it’d be AM without a second thought.

[jprjr_]

Pirate radio stations are extremely rare in the US. They exist sure but, not so much that it's making the FM band not useful. The FCC really doesn't fuck around.

[SamBam]

I love your vision of America, and want to live there.

[K0balt]

My thoughts exactly. Sad.

[pak9rabid]

Man, you give us too much credit :p

[musicale]

> By contrast FM radio is free, and we have some bloody good BBC radio stations in blighty

Unfortunately my antenna can't pick up the FM signal, and iPlayer is geo-blocked, but... I do seem to be able to stream some BBC radio stations and program[me]s via the magic of the internets.

[esskay]

Reminds me of being in 6th form and listening to Radio 1 on my iPod. Those used to support FM just fine!

[musicale]

Oh, the legendary iPod radio remote!

https://ipodwiki.com/wiki/IPod_Radio_Remote

Shows Apple can do FM if they put their mind to it.

RIP iPod Classic (2007-2014).

[nindalf]

> That will use up your data.

Where do you live that you're worried about data? Is this an American thing?

I've lived in Asia and Europe and data is so cheap and plentiful that I'm never changing my behaviour to save a few MBs.

Or are you not worried about data but you're trying hard to make a case for this FM antenna that no one wants in their phones?

[datavirtue]

Nevermind your data. During natural disasters, as was the case in North Carolina, everyone loses cell coverage.

[antifa]

The problem in the US is price gouging and ISPs accepting government money to improve infrastructure then pocketing it instead.

[chgs]

They said they lived in the UK

[diegolas]

nice to see that you have no problem seeing things from another person's POV

[nindalf]

Nice to see that you can make a glib, worthless, condescending comment that added nothing to the conversation.

At least start your sentences with a capital letter, they might at least have the veneer of being worthwhile to read.

[eptcyka]

One good reason to use FM instead of the internet is that it scales better - you can have practically infinte receivers, wheras most digital radio on the internet will deliver the same content for each listener individually, thus using more bandwidth per listener.

[musicale]

True. Though technically multicast could be used, which helps somewhat.

On the other hand, everyone can get their own personal "radio station" via streaming...

[lxgr]

5G has a broadcast option, but I’m not sure if that’s supported by any commercially available phone yet.

[namibj]

Apart from some old 3G tech demos with TV streaming, none of the user data multi/broad cast functionality from 3GPP cellphone standards reached a usable state in consumer hardware, with the single obvious exception being cell broadcast (basically broadcast SMS, by my understanding).

[lxgr]

I’m also very doubtful, but at least in Austria it’s being touted as a potential DAB alternative.

(That might just be a strategic device by the incumbent public transmitter operator though – they have ubiquitous FM coverage, which helps avoid competing programs on DAB out by decreasing the utility of buying a DAB receiver.)

[eptcyka]

5g having broadcast is closer to FM rather than the internet. Broadcast does not work on the internet.

[musicale]

RTP and multicast though...

[robotnikman]

I remember a few of my old Android phones did have FM radio capabilities, and if you downloaded a tuner app you could actually listen in to them

[grogenaut]

I can't remove the tuner app from any of my phones actually :)

[rjsw]

My current mobile phone has an FM radio, works well.

An AM radio doesn't even need a battery, I built a crystal set as a child.

[K0balt]

This exactly. With a little screwing around, you don’t even need a “crystal”, just a corroded piece of metal, lead corroded by sulphuric acid works well. Aside from that, you can make an earphone out of some fine wire and a small magnetic fragment, and a suitable capacitor using aluminium foil and paper or plastic film. That’s it. 3 components and some wire. Not even a battery is needed for relatively powerful AM broadcast signals. If you want to get fancy you can wrap some wire around a paper towel tube for a tuning resonator.

Or, you can just use the old wood stove in my childhood home. We had some wire racks for drying gloves and mittens supported above it, and the whole contraption played the 670khz radio station broadcasting about 15 miles away, sometimes at an annoying level of volume. You could quiet it down with some wet gloves, though.

It also would shock you when it was being loud. Somehow, the demodulated signal ended up at a pretty high voltage. I’ve often tried to imagine the circuit that was going on there between the stove, grounded at the bottom and with a 30 foot high metal chimney, the aluminium foil backed insulation in the house, the two metal pipe penetrations connected to the huge foil planes 9 feet apart on the first and second stories, the gasketed top of the stove that was somewhat insulated from the grounded base, and attached to the chimney at the top, and the corroded bolts that held the bottom to the top.