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>Most smartphones do include most of the FM radio circuitry in the chip used also for Bluetooth connectivity for example Who told you this? They are wildly dif

>Most smartphones do include most of the FM radio circuitry in the chip used also for Bluetooth connectivity for example Who told you this? They are wildly different frequencies and encoding.

jeffbee 3mo ago
Twenty years ago this would have been wrong with a kernel of truth. Today, it's just wrong. There were chips that integrated all this but they weren't that popular in the West and ultimately nobody cared. https://www.mediatek.com/press-room/mediatek-announces-worlds-smallest-4-in-1-combo-chip-wi-fi-bluetooth-gps-fm-solution https://www.mediatek.com/press-room/mediatek-announces-world...
- userbinator 3mo ago
  MTK still has the largest marketshare of smartphone SoCs worldwide and they still use their combo RFICs. https://pccentral.net/q1-2026-smartphone-soc-market-share-mediatek-leads/ https://pccentral.net/q1-2026-smartphone-soc-market-share-me... https://www.androidheadlines.com/2025/03/mediatek-leads-global-smartphone-soc-market-as-samsung-slips-again.html https://www.androidheadlines.com/2025/03/mediatek-leads-glob...
- numpad0 3mo ago
  And it's not a tiny kernel of truth, even iPhone(2007) had Wi-Fi/BT combo chips with FM radio. Apple was partly responsible for death of FM radio, by not implementing the software feature. That's also literally 20 years ago.
ssl-3 3mo ago
I don't know about "most smartphones," but the FM bits were commonly a built-in with Qualcomm and some other chipsets for a coon's age. Even the OG Motorola Droid, of 2009, had the parts inside for an FM radio. They just weren't connected to an antenna and the default software stack didn't include any access to those parts at all. Flagship Qualcomm-equipped Samsung phones up to the S20 or so tended to be ~similar: The FM tuner guts were usually in there, but they often weren't available to use, and even then they sometimes lacked an antenna. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list. :) --- In my time, I've enabled FM radio on a few different phones that weren't advertised to have that function, sometimes with root-only hacks from grimy corners of the internet, and sometimes by just installing some software that just happened to have the right hooks.
- SV_BubbleTime 3mo ago
  This has absolutely nothing to do with similarity with BLE radio and it’s 2.4Ghz antenna. And a far cry from most smartphones.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - ssl-3 3mo ago
    Thank you for the input. I'm not here to argue, nor to support claims that I have not made.

>Most smartphones do include most of the FM radio circuitry in the chip used also for Bluetooth connectivity for example Who told you this? They are wildly different frequencies and encoding.

jeffbee 3mo ago

Twenty years ago this would have been wrong with a kernel of truth. Today, it's just wrong. There were chips that integrated all this but they weren't that popular in the West and ultimately nobody cared. https://www.mediatek.com/press-room/mediatek-announces-worlds-smallest-4-in-1-combo-chip-wi-fi-bluetooth-gps-fm-solution https://www.mediatek.com/press-room/mediatek-announces-world...

userbinator 3mo ago
MTK still has the largest marketshare of smartphone SoCs worldwide and they still use their combo RFICs. https://pccentral.net/q1-2026-smartphone-soc-market-share-mediatek-leads/ https://pccentral.net/q1-2026-smartphone-soc-market-share-me... https://www.androidheadlines.com/2025/03/mediatek-leads-global-smartphone-soc-market-as-samsung-slips-again.html https://www.androidheadlines.com/2025/03/mediatek-leads-glob...
numpad0 3mo ago
And it's not a tiny kernel of truth, even iPhone(2007) had Wi-Fi/BT combo chips with FM radio. Apple was partly responsible for death of FM radio, by not implementing the software feature. That's also literally 20 years ago.

ssl-3 3mo ago

I don't know about "most smartphones," but the FM bits were commonly a built-in with Qualcomm and some other chipsets for a coon's age. Even the OG Motorola Droid, of 2009, had the parts inside for an FM radio. They just weren't connected to an antenna and the default software stack didn't include any access to those parts at all. Flagship Qualcomm-equipped Samsung phones up to the S20 or so tended to be ~similar: The FM tuner guts were usually in there, but they often weren't available to use, and even then they sometimes lacked an antenna. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list. :) --- In my time, I've enabled FM radio on a few different phones that weren't advertised to have that function, sometimes with root-only hacks from grimy corners of the internet, and sometimes by just installing some software that just happened to have the right hooks.

SV_BubbleTime 3mo ago
This has absolutely nothing to do with similarity with BLE radio and it’s 2.4Ghz antenna. And a far cry from most smartphones.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- ssl-3 3mo ago
  Thank you for the input. I'm not here to argue, nor to support claims that I have not made.