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I wholeheartedly agree, but I don’t think there’s any saving it at this point. Car manufacturers are dropping it from new models and that’s the only actual AM/FM radio most people actually buy these days.
Same thing happened to the phone network. It used to actually be possible to call 911 when the power was out. The central stations all had battery banks and diesel generators. Unless the lines were cut, you had service.
I wanted to tag on to your post. I’ve been without power for weather stuff too a few times and one thing i learned was that my cheapie 40" TV would only pull 10-15watts with backlight all the way down. With a small battery bank you can go a good while on that and tune into your local station via OTA. It was very watchable especially given the only light around was my candle.
For a couple more watts you watch shows off your memory stick as well once the event is over and you are just waiting for the power lines to get fixed… my phone drained nearly as much but to be fair i left the radio enabled so it was hunting for a tower.
Just something to consider for your gear if you live near the coast or in Texas. Battery banks are pretty cheap.
Just buy a $15 FM radio. Especially since you can’t charge your phone when you have no power, but a small radio takes AA batteries which can sit in a drawer for 10 years until you need them.
You can make your battery phone last a lot when you are not using the display and disconnect from any networks. You can also have some powerbank around. Emergencies won’t necessarily find you in home or wherever your radio is stored in. You keep your phone with you most of the time, chances are, if an earthquake happens, for example, you’ll have your phone with you. Been there.
Yes… but… this becomes one of those things that everyone should buy to be prepared but few actually do or they forget.
I keep a little crank-chargeable radio in our emergency kit but most people don’t. If the cell networks go down (and they usually do in severe weather and most other big emergency situations) most people will lose all of their access to information.
In addition to being able to take AAs, my FM radio has a solar panel and a hand crank to recharge the included rechargeable battery, which can charge a phone in a pinch. Win all around!
It probably also picks up the NOAA frequencies for weather forecasts and will have a standby feature for severe weather alerts. Emergency weather radios are pretty cool, and good to have on hand.
It absolutely does!
You’d think so but every device around my house that I “put batteries in it and forget it” when I need it I find the batteries have exploded and the device is ruined (regardless of the decade on the expiry-date label of the battery). So my plan now is to keep the device separate from the batteries like it’s a freaking handgun and make sure my phone is charged so I can use its light to make my way to the drawer where we keep the batteries.
Alkaline batteries are the crappy ones that leak. Get the more expensive lithium batteries, or go full on rechargeable ones, and you can leave them in without worrying about your device getting ruined.
Lkline leaks, lithium explodes
Yeah but at least you’ll know exactly when the lithium ones go bad…
Rechargeable batteries self-discharge and get damaged if left unplugged for too long, and explode if left plugged in. They are not ideal for something you want to pack away in an emergency kit.
Almost everything in an emergency kit expires. But many name brand alkaline and non rechargeable lithiums are now rated for ten years shelf life. In addition there are rechargeable eneloop branded batteries rated for slower discharge rate.
Yes, but there’s a difference between “expires” and “leaks all over the inside of my emergency radio”. And they don’t make it to half their stated lifespans once put into a flashlight and the flashlight goes into storage.
A weather radio is even more useful. It usually has FM as well, but getting National Weather Service alerts can be vital.
one of those windy radios you crank for a bit would be better for emergencies
The components to make the phone able to decode FM radio take place. Which, in such small device, is valuable. If you really need FM radio for emergency situations, why not take a dedicated miniaturized FM radio receiver?
Not sure if this is still the case, but in the past the FM radio functionality essentially came “free” as part of either the SoC or modem. Since it used headphone wires as the antenna, the death of the headphone jack pretty much killed any purpose for including it.
There is no such thing as “free” functionality in hardware. Old SoC may have had this functionality, but it was at the cost of some die space, that has since been reclaimed by other function more useful to most users.
No, but it’s so immaterial it hasn’t really been worth the effort to exclude it yet
Old SoC may have had this functionality
Modern SoCs still have it…
Further we’ve moved to Software Defined Radios in general… So it’s all programmable.
The functionality is, in fact, still there, and basically every phone with a headphone jack turns it on.
Hence the quotations around “free”. Qualcomm isn’tgoing to tape out a custom chip without it for you just because you don’t want that block.
that has since been reclaimed by other function more useful to most users.
This was my uncertainty, do you know for certain that they don’t include FM functionality on their chips anymore or are you just guessing? The public facing documentation is not exactly detailed enough to tell for sure.
FM radio was integrated in even smaller phones 20 years ago. And the tech to “decode the signal” is already present in today’s phones. FM are radio signals, just like NFC, Wifi, Bluetooth and cellular.
Not the same radio frequencies, not the sames technologies (analog vs digital). Those radio hardware are very specialized, and won’t work on frequencies or technologie they are not meant to.
Correct, not the same technologies. It’s a much simpler circuitry. Very specialized doesn’t mean very complex. A hammer is very specialized too.
I read somewhere that SoC boards on today’s phones still have FM tuning capabilities, but they just don’t use them.
I’ll try to verify that, though.
Edit: this link seems promising: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-unlock-fm-radio-hidden-smartphone/
One reason is that every implementation I’ve ever tried relies on using the wired earphones as an aerial and Apple magically convinced everyone that having a 3.5mm port is somehow a bad thing.
Exactly. The real plea here is “bring back 3.5mm ports.” I’m afraid of the day my old phone dies because I have this fear that even cheap-ass phones are going to abandon 3.5mm headphones for cheap, unreliable, garbage bluetooth trash.
Just double-checked. My current smartphone that I partially picked for it’s 3.5mm socket does have built in FM radio that works great and only functions with earphones plugged in.
I’m glad battery backup can keep the internet going for a long time but I also have data to use and never get close to making a dent in it. If service providers went down though I do have several radios around the house. I don’t go anywhere but I’d I did i would carry a little radio lol. That being said, I miss my smart phone and flip phone that had radio on it. I don’t care about headphone jacks but I definitely would love radio.
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As a ham, ugh.
I dream of it being more common to have radios in everyone’s pocket, but it needs to be accompanied by some level of education on how to use it.
Maybe the price of the transceivers would go down, at least, lol. I have a general license and I just mess around with a Baofeng for the most part because I cannot justify buying a better radio. Tempted to get a QCX-mini or Pixie kit for a project… Unfortunately the like… $1000+ transceivers are just way out of budget for me, and I’m not sure I’d get enough use out of it to warrant the expense.
I hear you. I have a handful of HT’s, all are 2m/70cm, same as the baofeng’s… I have an alinco and an ailunce, plus two baofeng’s. I picked up a small 20W mobile unit for my car, around $100 or so, all told, plus an antenna. Maybe $150 for everything? A little less?
I’ve been looking at the software defined radios on Ali Express for HF stuff, all low power. I think less than 10W, but you can go global on 10W on the right band with the right conditions. They’re usually up for around $350 USD? They’re small too. Good for POTA. I think they can go from 6m up to 40m. Something from the big brands that can do that is usually in the 1200+ range. I think that’s similar to what you’re talking about. Someone local here that I’ve met has one and he’s been lighting up parks constantly with it.
I want to experiment with DMR more. My next project is to build a hot spot, since the closest DMR repeater tower is a bit too far to pick up. I can sometimes get it at the lakefront (it’s across Lake Ontario from me, in Toronto VE3WOO if I recall correctly), and I’m in the Niagara area.
I would like to get a DMR repeater in the area and I’ve been talking to a local club about it. So it may just be a matter of time. In any case I’m weird. I use FM a lot still since that’s what all the VHF and UHF stuff around here uses. There’s some fusion/dstar stuff but no DMR.
I’d imagine no phone would have transmission ability, or at most transmit like a Walkie talkie
There are some ham radio call phones that can transmit. They’re pretty specialized and not cheap, but they exist… around $1200 for what is essentially 3+ year old phone hardware (with software to match … Android 9-ish) with a built in transceiver… I like the idea, but I’m not paying that much for a very old phone because it happens to have a ham radio built in.
The current ideas with adding radios to phones is almost entirely to pick up broadcast radio, like am/FM. Nothing fancy.
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The 90s kid in me yearns for a phone with Fm radio, headphone jack, IR blaster, stylus, memory card slot, slide out keyboard and one of those click on projectors the Motorola phones used to have. I would call it the Donatello and it would be radical.
You’ll be happy to know that I bribed my kids into watching the 1990 TMNT live action movie this weekend. The younger one loved it, but the preteen was full of critical commentary the whole time. Go figure. But hey, I won one of them over to the TMNT side.
I’ve an Armor 21, it has the radio, headphone jack, IR blaster and the memory card slot, plus a loud and clear speaker, actual night vision and is rugged as fuck. Base price sub-$250, upcharge for an attachable endoscope.
Just checked it out, this thing looks sick. But it also looks ugly as shit. Is it as ugly as it looks in person? Specifically not a fan of the RGB LED ring thing on the back?
Honest criticisms: It’s a bit of a brick for sure. I turned the RGB ring off. The multi-function button isn’t as usable as I’d hoped, mostly just a flashlight/screenshot button. The headphone jack and USB port are behind a protected rubber flap, so I keep opening/closing it frequently, but that’s to help with being waterproof. While the optional case functions as a good stand for horizontal viewing and for holding, it is inadequate for vertical, and it just would’ve needed a small internal brace to fix that. The case also blocks their wireless charging connectors, if you were planning to use a dock for that. Attaching the endoscope requires removing a tiny screw. The lack of a bottom button bar has taken some getting used to but I’m fine with it now, the side fingerprint scanner is similar.
Overall I am happy with it. The battery lasts a whole day with high use, it has decent internals for games, the screen and included protector are appropriately unobtrusive, it isn’t running a very outdated version of Android. Perhaps most importantly, it should survive my child who likes to throw my phone and my dumbass who left it in my pocket getting in a pool.
Hell yes, just jumped on the ulefone train myself!
how do you know someone was born in the 80s? they’ll fucking tell you. you can just like stuff without referencing your stupid metal lunchbox all the time.
I was born in the early 70s. We didn’t have anything cool.
And a translucent purple case!
I’ve refused to buy these “flagship” phones that don’t have a headphone jack. The 90s kid in me will live on, damnit!
Same I use wired earbuds everyday at work and I refuse to buy a phone without one
I recently bought Bluetooth large headphones and I feel like they’re a massive improvement. However, when it comes to earbuds (which I still use a lot when big ones are inconvenient), I would never buy wireless ones. I am afraid that in a lot of them, battery is not easily replaceable (while in my big ones it can be accessed by unscrewing a cover), and the small things would get lost fairly easily.
I have some wired headphones for when I am gaming on the computer, but anything else I use Bluetooth earbuds, and I can’t imagine going back to wired ones, never getting the cable caught on things is so freeing. They also have active noise canceling and hear thru which both come in real handy on work sites.
I do have a pair of Bluetooth headphones and I use them from time to time. I tend to revert to my wired m50x pretty often just out of personal preference
Also you have to spend a lot more for good bluetooth ear buds compared to wired. Like, you can get a pair of KZ ZSN Pros for 20 bucks or so. They sound great, have nice material quality (they got metal bits on em!), good quality cable, great sounding mic… you get the idea. To get bluetooth ear buds that sound just as good you’d probably have to spend like 80 bucks? And they’d be made of plastic and not have the mic quality anywhere near the KZs. It’s just so much easier to get good audio quality with a wire.
Basically all the phones with headphone jacks now have abysmal long-term support. Even the fair phone got rid of the headphone jack so they could sell their bullshit wireless headphones
If there was a decent phone with FM radio and an IR blaster, I might pick it over a lot of other ones.
I miss having an IR blaster so much, I was always finding new uses for it. Now I’ve got little remotes everywhere again
Same, including an IR led is such a simple thing, why did this ever go away. Though I’m pretty sure most Chinese phones still have them, Xiaomi phones do for sure
Just use Bluetooth
Cables doesn’t consume battery not get affected by radio interference.
Cables doesn’t consume battery
When you plug earbuds into your phone, your phone is literally powering the earbuds. The cables transmit an electrical signal; they consume battery. The consumption is fairly negligible, of course, but so is modern Bluetooth.
The consumption is fairly negligible, of course, but so is modern Bluetooth.
Sure, that should be why using BT my phone headphones, battery lasts 30-40% less 🤦🏻
Either your phone is straight up broken or your anecdotal measurements are way off. There is effectively no difference in battery life on a phone between using wired headphones and Bluetooth.
I believe they meant that bluetooth headphones need to be charged, while wired ones just run off the phone’s battery. Sure, the amount of power consumed might not be that different (though bluetooth will still be more), but its easier for the user to just charge one device.
How pray tell would Bluetooth help with having FM radio? The headphone cable is used as the antenna for phones.
I used to swear by wired headphones.
The audio quality, not needing batteries, the simplicity.
But then I got a decent pair of Bluetooth headphones and I discovered how much wires got in my way. I discovered that the audio quality coming out of phones were garbage regardless of connection type, and the headphones I got would last weeks of daily use on one charge.
Plus I would get a more water proof phone, and I would never have to worry about the headphone jack breaking inside of the port, or my headphones going flying off because I walked past a knob of whatever at just the right height to ruin my day.
I still want phones to have the ports, but on mobile devices I’ll never use them. I just want others to be happy too.
My old Moto G3 was the only real waterproof phone, whatever you have I bet you take it out of your pocket to swim, and guess what, it had a headphone jack.
I have inside pockets added so that I can deal with the wire issue. Makes for a better place to carry the phone anyway.
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Worse quality audio, vastly more expensive, easier to lose pieces, yet another device I need to think about charging, will need replaced after a while as the batteries swell/die, extra e-waste, occasional pairing problems (especially on PC), etc.
And guess what, if all of that sounds good or doesn’t matter to you, you can still use Bluetooth on phones with 3.5mm ports!
As a solution for me, I grabbed a fiio brt3k. Supports the highres Bluetooth codecs and can totally be used as a usbc dac. I got a pair of the samsung beans with my last phone and just hate them, this lets me use any pair of wired headphones I want.
I still want a proper on board dac and a headphone jack but it’s what I have to work with
Why? You can just hire a dude to sing to you as you walk around. Just use a bard, bro.
…Is that a serious offer?
I’m sure that you can find one on craigslist or whatever hell site people use for that these days.
There’s a lot more capability with USB-C audio though. Even entirely discounting Bluetooth, there are plenty of high quality USB-C headphones out there that blow the pants off of what you could do with a 3.5mm jack.
No lol. It all gets converted to an analog signal to drive the headphones. There’s no difference in fidelity between 1/8" and USB-C. It’s literally the exact same signal.
Except you’re not limited to the phones hardware and space constraints with USB. You can put the DAC, you know the thing that does that conversion, in the headphone end now, whereas you couldn’t with 3.5mm because you can push power over USB. Meaning you have the ability to get headphones with a much better DAC, which will provide better audio quality.
It also frees up space in the phone for more battery, different radios, and other things.
DACs in phones these days are totally fine these days. There really isn’t any need for an external one unless you need to drive higher impedance cans. Quality-wise, they’re totally fine.
It’s a tradeoff of convenience. I want the jack because it’s a universal standard that doesn’t require external batteries or the right alignment of the stars for proper functionality. Quality has been fine since the dawn of the smartphone, IMO, at least for earbuds. You’re still free to use a USB DAC if there’s a jack!
Where’s our different radios and other things? They just keep adding more camera lenses, and MORE MEGAPIXELS.
Nothing innovative or useful, and now we’re forced to buy more shit (adapters) to make other things we already have, work with our phones.
I’ll stick with my “mid grade” phone that does all of the same things, but also connects to 3.5mm
PS. This mid grade phone also has USB C if I really wanted a custom DAC, and alternatively I can also charge and listen to things at the same time, with no extra cost
Uh, since Apple removed it they’ve added the mmWave antenna, the ultrawideband chip, the satellite antenna, and a thread radio.
Fair point about Apple. They did also remove the home button and optimized their display further to accommodate that though.
If only it wasn’t so proprietary, I could get on the apple train. Still mad about my headphones jacks though.
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It’d be better if it had fm transmiter, so you van turn car radio or normal old radio into a useful wireless speaker
No thanks. I listened to radio the other day (not in my car) and it was all ads and a shortened version of a song so they can do more ads.
I didn’t realize radio got so bad.
Then you’d need to include a headphone jack since the headphones acted as the antenna.
I wonder if wired USB-C Headphones could work the same?
Yes. But it would also drain more power.
Good.
It’s funny how the few who’re totally sold on Bluetooth go “ugh, but then you’d need a headphone jack” as if it isn’t an upgrade for others which wouldn’t affect their ability to use Bluetooth at all.
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Digital headphones have better sound quality than analog headphones, too.
There’s no such thing as digital headphones.
But what’s the problem with having an analog component?
Also, your last claim is weird, because the headphones will ultimately require an analog signal, so, it just changes the place where the conversion is made, either in the user device, or in a digital circuit inside the headphones, and the cable diatance is small enough for adding interference. Your better sound experience is probably due to manufacturers making better sound actuators, not due to the digital data transmission. Try some really cheap bt headphones, and you will see what bad quality is.
Not an expert on this but, but AFAIK having the analog component inside the device is exactly the problem, as all the components in there cause electrical interference that you can’t really shield against inside such a tiny device. It’s similar to how the built-in PC audio is often quite bad compared to even the cheapest external DAC.
Not to mention it’s a form factor that requires a considerable amount of space. That for the majority of users is doing nothing but taking up that space for no reason. Every phone without a headphone jack is capable of getting a jack with a simple dongle. What I love are the people who have absolute no problem with a dangly cord around their neck but lose their shit if you have to connect a 1 inch piece of wire first. They act like it’s a bag phone you attach to your side. And as far as audio fidelity goes the DAC inside a cell phone is nearly always garbage and you’ll need your own DAC anyway which is easy to obtain when it can be powered by your phone.
Yup. What I’d actually like to see is a secondary USB-C port becoming much more common. USB-C is just much more universal and if both ports support charging it also helps device longevity since you can still charge if one breaks. My handheld emulation device has two and it’s been handy several times already.
Indeed, interference is the greatest enemy of analog signals. It’s not impossible to shield, though. Other parts are already shielded, but I can see how it could have become more challenging.
Btw, I thought it was more related to frequency than components size, but now I’m confused, I will look more into it when I have more time. Thanks for bringing this into the topic.
I’m not an expert either, but the DAC on my Galaxy S10 sounds amazing. It’s just a question of whether manufacturers bother implementing it properly.
get radio.garden or another app
This requires an expensive (in my country) data plan and cell tower service.
Then get a $10 transistor radio instead of a cell phone
It doesn’t make it at all harder to waterproof the devices. Sony has been making them for a decade now (IP57 in 2013 on the Xperia Z), Samsung didn’t have any issues with the S10 line either. This is just a lie manufacturers tell you to sell bluetooth crap.
I see myself wanting to listen to music in situations where the data signal is bad more often than I want to use my phone underwater or something.
You say that like it’s a bad thing. You can still use Bluetooth even when your phone has a headphone jack, and headphone jacks can be IP67 rated so it’s not a concern for waterproofing.
How did I say that like it’s a bad thing?
Why is it limited to 67? It should be easier than the USB port right?
I mean, the only other rating above that is IP68, and that would require them to specify the depth and time that the phone can be submerged. Most manufacturers only go for IP67 because it’s much cheaper to test.
That I know but I was wondering why you specifically mentioned 67. I guess I misread that as a limit.
Nah, not a limit. It’s just a cost/benefit trade off. Manufacturers don’t typically push for IP68 unless they’re specifically marketing the device for underwater use, and believe users will be willing to accept the higher resulting cost.
For emergency purposes, mandate cell tower batteries with solar supplement.
And generators for bigger hubs.
Cellular internet is critical infrastructure now.
Same for ISPs. My internet wifi has battery backup, so as long as the ISP stays up we are good.
Cell towers nearby all went down during the last big power failure. I could hit one distant tower that still had power, but the signal was weak, and the tower was swamped. It could barely push data.
Next big earthquake will be a total shitshow if that’s not fixed.
The last couple major power failures we’ve had in my area, information was by far the most difficult thing to come by.
The power goes out, and shortly thereafter so does cable internet. My UPS usually keeps my cable box up longer than the service itself lasts. That puts everyone on the cell network, which is immediately overloaded. So the internet is essentially worthless during most hours.
FM radio stations are similarly worthless. I remember a power outage last winter where there was going to be a press conference, I think the governor was going to talk about something…couldn’t get coverage. The local FM station was up and running, they were broadcasting just fine, but they were trying to patch into the press conference via Facebook, and the internet wasn’t up to it. They apparently don’t have their own radio uplinks anymore.
The local television station would have been more help…if I could get an antenna high enough to hear it.
And during normal business hours most broadcast FM stations are IHeartRadio transmitting the same 20 songs intercut with the same 90,000 advertisements. Or broadcasting The Two Retards Named Chris show three times a day.
But why?
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low end MediaTek ones often do
only time i ever used phone FM was camping. not often lately. car has fm but radio commercials assault my nerves, use mp3s on a stick or streaming w/$10/mo
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I really hope not.
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i will not elaborate
