<story><title>Campaign demands telecoms unlock the FM radio found in many smartphones</title><url>http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/fm-radio-cellphone-telecoms-1.3577447</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>voltagex_</author><text>FM transmitters are great. No asking your friend to pull over to the side of the road to pair your phone to their car stereo, no messing around with USB cables, just tune your radio to 88.0 or similar.&lt;p&gt;My Nokia N900 had one and I&amp;#x27;ve missed it ever since - it could even display text via RDS!</text></item><item><author>userbinator</author><text>I think people should just &amp;quot;smarten up&amp;quot; and stop buying locked-down smartphones from telecoms. Almost every smartphone (and probably a lot of the dumb ones) that can be bought online from places like Aliexpress&amp;#x2F;Dealextreme&amp;#x2F;etc. has a working FM radio and are unlocked to be usable with any provider.&lt;p&gt;The reason is that the &amp;quot;FM radio chip&amp;quot; is usually not a separate IC that has to be designed in, but just a (tiny) part of an N-in-1 combo chip that provides WiFi, GPS, and BT, so all it needs is for support to be in the software to work. Here&amp;#x27;s one which has a FM &lt;i&gt;transmitter&lt;/i&gt; too:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.mediatek.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;products&amp;#x2F;connectivity&amp;#x2F;wifi&amp;#x2F;consumer-electronics1&amp;#x2F;mt6630&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.mediatek.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;products&amp;#x2F;connectivity&amp;#x2F;wifi&amp;#x2F;consum...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since many of these relatively brandless smartphones are a direct copy of a reference design from the SoC manufacturer, designed to show off all the features, they automatically inherit those features and the companies who make them wouldn&amp;#x27;t spend extra effort just to remove functionality. The fact that the market for them is heavily feature-driven also means one less bullet point in the feature list is going to be noticed easily.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wtbob</author><text>&amp;gt; My Nokia N900 had [an FM transmitter] and I&amp;#x27;ve missed it ever since - it could even display text via RDS!&lt;p&gt;You know, that&amp;#x27;s an amazingly depressing thought: how many other dead-simple technologies have we been prevented from using because of ingrained interests?&lt;p&gt;OTOH, Bluetooth is certainly a better idea for personal telephone calls.</text></comment>
<story><title>Campaign demands telecoms unlock the FM radio found in many smartphones</title><url>http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/fm-radio-cellphone-telecoms-1.3577447</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>voltagex_</author><text>FM transmitters are great. No asking your friend to pull over to the side of the road to pair your phone to their car stereo, no messing around with USB cables, just tune your radio to 88.0 or similar.&lt;p&gt;My Nokia N900 had one and I&amp;#x27;ve missed it ever since - it could even display text via RDS!</text></item><item><author>userbinator</author><text>I think people should just &amp;quot;smarten up&amp;quot; and stop buying locked-down smartphones from telecoms. Almost every smartphone (and probably a lot of the dumb ones) that can be bought online from places like Aliexpress&amp;#x2F;Dealextreme&amp;#x2F;etc. has a working FM radio and are unlocked to be usable with any provider.&lt;p&gt;The reason is that the &amp;quot;FM radio chip&amp;quot; is usually not a separate IC that has to be designed in, but just a (tiny) part of an N-in-1 combo chip that provides WiFi, GPS, and BT, so all it needs is for support to be in the software to work. Here&amp;#x27;s one which has a FM &lt;i&gt;transmitter&lt;/i&gt; too:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.mediatek.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;products&amp;#x2F;connectivity&amp;#x2F;wifi&amp;#x2F;consumer-electronics1&amp;#x2F;mt6630&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.mediatek.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;products&amp;#x2F;connectivity&amp;#x2F;wifi&amp;#x2F;consum...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since many of these relatively brandless smartphones are a direct copy of a reference design from the SoC manufacturer, designed to show off all the features, they automatically inherit those features and the companies who make them wouldn&amp;#x27;t spend extra effort just to remove functionality. The fact that the market for them is heavily feature-driven also means one less bullet point in the feature list is going to be noticed easily.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dsharlet</author><text>You must be joking. The only place I&amp;#x27;ve ever gotten adequate audio quality from an FM transmitter is in a tunnel more than 1&amp;#x2F;4 mile long. They&amp;#x27;re crappy even driving through the middle of nowhere where 9&amp;#x2F;10 radio stations are noise.</text></comment>