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Comment on Phones should have FM radio again

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.

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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.

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- 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.
  
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- 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.
  
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- 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.
  
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- knotthatone@lemmy.one ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  No, but it’s so immaterial it hasn’t really been worth the effort to exclude it yet
  
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