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Another StarTrek tech entering the reality realm. When Voyager stumbled upon a industrial-age civilization Kim immediately notified Janeway that he's detecting
by notum 6y ago
Another StarTrek tech entering the reality realm.
When Voyager stumbled upon a industrial-age civilization Kim immediately notified Janeway that he's detecting "Old style" FM broadcasts. I recall thinking "why would a 24th century subspace-communicator equipped star ship even monitor those?"
I got my answer, quantum receivers, they monitor everything.
- infogulch 6y agoWhy would a 24th century all-purpose info-tool not actively monitor and attempt to characterize all signals received? I mean look at all the sensors we can pack into a phone nowadays: crazy zooms, infrared, a wide range of radios. And that's in just 10 years, imagine how much improvement can be made in another 400 years. Honestly, if I were regularly beaming down to visit planets at wildly varying and unknown levels of technology I'd want to know as much as my reality-refractor could tell me.
- onion2k 6y agoI mean look at all the sensors we can pack into a phone nowadays Mobile phones used to include a FM receiver but more recent ones have stopped including it because it wasn't deemed useful enough.
- waste_monk 6y agoAs I understand it the FM radio feature requires physical headphones to act as an antenna. Maybe enough people are on bluetooth headphones (Airpods etc.) that it's no longer cost-effective to include the physical headphone circuitry which is required for the FM receiver to work.
- coretx 6y agoNo, it mostly stopped due to carriers not wanting FM due to it being competing with traffic bills - this despite pressure from civil society; think emergency responders, not wanting to drop the functionality for obvious reasons.
- vidarh 6y agoThat doesn't explain its absence from most phones from manufacturers that do not have any chance on getting sold directly by carriers. You will find occasional features on those phones - such as multiple SIM slots - that are rare on phones sold directly by carriers, but FM radio has become rare even on those.
- spicybright 6y agoMultiple sim slots are extraordinarily common outside the united states.
- poilcn 6y agoThe catalog of one of the most popular retail networks in my country shows that 78% of the smartphones they sell have two sim slots
- vidarh 6y agoOn phones sold directly from carriers? Where? Not doubting that it's possible, but I've not seen that anywhere I've looked. I know it is common outside of what carriers sell - every phone I've owned for the last decade have had multiple SIM slots. But none of the phones offered by my carrier does, at least last I checked. In any case, the point is that even on phones by manufacturers that have no reason to care what the carriers think - and none of the phones I've had in recent years have been carried by any carriers as far as I can tell -, FM radio is no longer a common feature, and so pressure from carriers is not a good explanation.
- coretx 6y agoI don't know about current models, but in the past a trace was cut and a resistor placed in order to _disable_ FM. Multiple SIM support is also simply sabotaged due to carrier pressure and a price to pay per registered IMEI.
- lgats 6y agoFrom what I understand the lack of use (in the US) is largely due to carriers being reluctant to enable direct FM receivers on the phones on their network. Can’t charge data when the customer can get free FM. Discontinuation may also be due to the requirement of using headphones as the receiver antenna.
- kuschku 6y agoBuy a Nokia, Xiaomi, Motorola, or even the korean version of Samsung devices. All of them have FM, some even DVB-T and DVB-H support. It's only the "premium" class in the US that doesn't include these feature (or dual sim, or micro sd slots, or 3.5mm jack, etc)