Just buy a $15 FM radio. Especially since if you have no power and you can’t charge your phone when it dies, but a small radio takes AA batteries which can sit in a drawer for 10 years until you need them.
Comment on Phones should have FM radio again
FrankTheHealer@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’ve been saying this for a while now. FM radios and such are invaluable in emergency situations.
There have been times in the past where I’ve lost power to my house. No internet, no electricity etc in the middle of an emergency weather situation. I had to rely on battery powered radios to learn about what the situation was elsewhere and how long we’d be stuck etc. There is basically no reason why this can’t be incorporated into phones, aside from the fact that phone makers would rather you use Apple Music etc. It should be legislated for I believe.
CrayonRosary@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Pxtl@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
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.
tarjeezy@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
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.
Pxtl@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
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.
DrinkMonkey@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Im 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!
Chobbes@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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.
DrinkMonkey@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
It absolutely does!
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 8 months ago
A weather radio is even more useful. It usually has FM as well, but getting National Weather Service alerts can be vital.
jcit878@lemmy.world 8 months ago
one of those windy radios you crank for a bit would be better for emergencies
knotthatone@lemmy.one 8 months ago
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.
knotthatone@lemmy.one 8 months ago
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.
Cihta@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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.
Ataraxia@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
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.
Dremor@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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?
stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
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.
Dremor@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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.
Maven@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
The functionality is, in fact, still there, and basically every phone with a headphone jack turns it on.
Saik0Shinigami@lemmy.saik0.com 8 months ago
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.
stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
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.
knotthatone@lemmy.one 8 months ago
No, but it’s so immaterial it hasn’t really been worth the effort to exclude it yet
elbarto777@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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.
Dremor@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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.
elbarto777@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Correct, not the same technologies. It’s q much simpler circuitry, and as the matter of fact, 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.
Piers@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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.
doktorseven@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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.
Piers@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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.