T-Mobile Embraces FM Radio In Phones
Aug 14, 2015, 4:06 PM by Rich Brome @richbrome
T-Mobile CEO John Legere announced today on Twitter that the company will "push" its phone manufacturers partners to include and enable FM radio features on T-Mobile phones. The move comes two weeks after AT&T announced a similar initiative. Most phones include some FM radio circuitry in the main chipset, but may not include all of the necessary connections to enable the feature. It is considered a relatively cheap and easy feature to include. Most phones with the feature use the cord of connected wired headphones as the FM radio antenna. The makers of the third-party FM radio app NextRadio have been campaigning recently for more phones to include the necessary hardware support. FM radio uses less battery and data than streaming music services, and of course the broadcasts are free to anyone in range.
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Comments
And the rest of carriers will follow
My old HTC Amaze 4G also has an FM radio chip and I use it without the SIM card in it. It's great to listen to FM simulcast of the Seattle Sounders soccer games when I am in a pub and the TV sound is off (as usual.) Because there is less delay on an FM broadcast than on TV, I usually hear the GOOOL before it happens on the TV. So I can act as some magician for the rest of them to predict the goals a few seconds before they see it. Great fun!
BTW, listing to the simulcast on the KIRO FM app over data connection is useless in this situation because of the compression and buffering, the sound is like 15 secs later than the TV.
Less Data?
(continues)
Older Phones Had It
I live in a tornado prone area so having an FM receiver that operated independently of the data would be useful for those six to ten weeks of the year when the weather gets interesting.
