this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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from what i recall almost every QCOM chipset has the circuitry baked in, it's just disabled. https://www.wired.com/2016/07/phones-fm-chips-radio-smartphone/
Yeah, a lot of smartphone chipsets still have an FM tuner, but it needs additional circuitry (e.g. a 3.5mm jack to use as the antenna) that most device makers don't implement.
Or they just disable the radio for some reason even though everything else is there. They've been hardware disabling them these days instead of just software. Makes you wonder.
That’s been going on for years. I had a Nexus One back in 2010, it had the radio hardware but no software support in the stock ROM. When I installed an alternate ROM the radio worked just fine.
Removing headphone jacks is more about saving internal space and pushing Bluetooth headphone sales than a ploy to stop radio listening though.
Makes me wonder if you understand that if they have the feature turned on then they need to support it with additional hardware, software, and ongoing tech support.
Even if it was as simple as turning it on, they would need to support people complaining about reception since phone sizes are not great for FM antennae (which they most likely don't have). Then they would need to support people who complain about signal quality since FM is not a work/not work situation like digital. Don't even get me started on the confusing FM HD weirdness. Oh, then they need to have an app built in that people can ignore because they didn't spend any money on it like their other terrible default apps.
You've never had a phone with a working radio.
it probably wouldn't be too hard to diplex it with one of the low band antennas, wouldn't be great reception but it'd give you something for FM stations that are close enough. a relatively big ass coupling inductor and small series cap before the antenna tuner shouldn't do too much insertion loss damage, these cellular front ends are lossy AF already... and the lowest low band freq is like 6x higher from the FM band, so isolation should be ok... dunno, obviously adds more cost than what it's worth to the bean counters in charge i'm sure.