4 ms·

I recently dug up my old iPod Nano 5th gen (small square one) from 2010 and charged it up, and still works fine. What I forgot, and it totally surprised me, is

I recently dug up my old iPod Nano 5th gen (small square one) from 2010 and charged it up, and still works fine. What I forgot, and it totally surprised me, is that it has FM radio! I selected some stations and it worked great. And that Nano was tiny, would be cool to have this feature back in current iPhones / Apple Watches. I know it’s not the same as having full tx/rx on the 2m/70cm bands, but still, even just just listening to normal radio on iPhone would be cool.

anyfoo 2y ago
I remember that my HTC Desire Z Android phone, and possible also the iteration of a Nexus Android phone that I later owned, had FM Radio. It was relatively common back then, and I made use of it almost every day on my bike commute and such. They used the (wired) earphones plugged into them as an FM antenna, worked well enough.
- Scrapemist 2y ago
  I miss those days :’
imp0cat 2y ago
How's the battery life after so many years? I recently found my old e-reader (Kindle Keyboard) from 2011 and the first thing I had to do was swap a new battery in, the old one would not hold a charge for too long.
- radicality 2y ago
  I haven’t played with it long enough, need to check again. I’m also happy and surprised that all my music files are there and that everything works. I haven’t touched it in probably 4+ years, and was under the impression that flash memory, especially older generation like 2010, can degrade / bitrot if it’s not powered every so often.
pbmonster 2y ago
> And that Nano was tiny, would be cool to have this feature back in current iPhones / Apple Watches. That iPod used its headphone cables as the radio antenna. There's no easy way around that for a SmartWatch, and most people wouldn't be happy to carry a USB-C antenna dongle around with them for their iPhone. You can of course start doing black RF magic with more compact antenna designs, but that's much more complex and still has a much larger footprint on the board than the FM receiver in that iPod nano has.
- radicality 2y ago
  Ohh right yeah, I remember once reading about the headphone-cable-is-antenna, clever! I guess that’s why we don’t see it anymore in devices, as everyone is using more wireless headphones.

anyfoo 2y ago

I remember that my HTC Desire Z Android phone, and possible also the iteration of a Nexus Android phone that I later owned, had FM Radio. It was relatively common back then, and I made use of it almost every day on my bike commute and such. They used the (wired) earphones plugged into them as an FM antenna, worked well enough.

Scrapemist 2y ago
I miss those days :’

imp0cat 2y ago

How's the battery life after so many years? I recently found my old e-reader (Kindle Keyboard) from 2011 and the first thing I had to do was swap a new battery in, the old one would not hold a charge for too long.

radicality 2y ago
I haven’t played with it long enough, need to check again. I’m also happy and surprised that all my music files are there and that everything works. I haven’t touched it in probably 4+ years, and was under the impression that flash memory, especially older generation like 2010, can degrade / bitrot if it’s not powered every so often.

pbmonster 2y ago

> And that Nano was tiny, would be cool to have this feature back in current iPhones / Apple Watches. That iPod used its headphone cables as the radio antenna. There's no easy way around that for a SmartWatch, and most people wouldn't be happy to carry a USB-C antenna dongle around with them for their iPhone. You can of course start doing black RF magic with more compact antenna designs, but that's much more complex and still has a much larger footprint on the board than the FM receiver in that iPod nano has.

radicality 2y ago
Ohh right yeah, I remember once reading about the headphone-cable-is-antenna, clever! I guess that’s why we don’t see it anymore in devices, as everyone is using more wireless headphones.