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Even if the chip supports FM, does the phone have an FM antenna? I seem to remember that my old pre-MP3 devices used the headphone cable as the antenna. Would
by leejoramo 12y ago
Even if the chip supports FM, does the phone have an FM antenna?
I seem to remember that my old pre-MP3 devices used the headphone cable as the antenna. Would it be easy to have good reception in a smartphone without using a headphone cable?
Given how I use my smartphone using Bluetooth speakers for music and seldom headphones, I doubt that the FM chip would work for me. (And if I did often use headsets, I would get a Bluetooth one.)
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- leejoramo 12y agoEdited to clarify that I was meaning do phones have FM antennas
- justincormack 12y agoThey use the headphone as an antenna. It works ok with some headphones and not others.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- foofoo55 12y agoFM antenna != cellular antenna
- tdicola 12y agoYeah I don't think most phones have an FM antenna. All of the phones I've seen that expose FM radio end up using the headphones that are plugged in as the antenna. This means you have to use headphones, which is a bit of an annoyance when you want to stream music to a bluetooth speaker or even just use the phone's internal speaker.
- leejoramo 12y agoAs I expected. So Apple and other hardware makers are likely not wanting to ship a feature that will feel flawed to many people. I guess, they could have the FM app tell people that they need to plug in the correct type of headphone for this feature.
- ewzimm 12y agoYou only have to have headphones plugged in. At least the Windows Phone radio app has software switch for where you want the audio output to go. You can plug in headphones and play on the speaker. If other radio apps don't have this, it would be easy to add.
- scriptedfate 12y agoAntennas, broadly, need to be some fraction of the wavelength of the wavelength you're trying to capture. Think resonance as to why this is the case. Since FM operates around 100 MHz, cellular around 1GHz, and Wifi from 2-5GHz, you'd need a pretty "flexible" antenna to talk them all at once. To say nothing of the capacitive footwork you'd need to undertake to adjust the electrical length properly to tune the sucker. Couple this with how FM Radio is seen as niche for smartphones and it makes sense to have an external antenna requirement. There is no requirement for the radio app to output to the headphones that are being plugged in for antenna reasons. The built-in app for my BlackBerry Z30 has no problems reassigning output to a speaker.