T-Mobile Embraces FM Radio In Phones
And the rest of carriers will follow
As they tend to do lately; imitating T-Mo at every turn just to keep their customers.
My old HTC Amaze 4G also has an FM radio chip and I use it without the SIM card in it. It's great to listen to FM simulcast of the Seattle Sounders soccer games when I am in a pub and the TV sound is off (as usual.) Because there is less delay on an FM broadcast than on TV, I usually hear the GOOOL before it happens on the TV. So I can act as some magician for the rest of them to predict the goals a few seconds before they see it. Great fun!
BTW, listing to the simulcast on the KIRO FM app over data connection is useless in this situation because of the compression and buffering, the sound is like 15 secs later than the TV.
My old HTC Amaze 4G also has an FM radio chip and I use it without the SIM card in it. It's great to listen to FM simulcast of the Seattle Sounders soccer games when I am in a pub and the TV sound is off (as usual.) Because there is less delay on an FM broadcast than on TV, I usually hear the GOOOL before it happens on the TV. So I can act as some magician for the rest of them to predict the goals a few seconds before they see it. Great fun!
BTW, listing to the simulcast on the KIRO FM app over data connection is useless in this situation because of the compression and buffering, the sound is like 15 secs later than the TV.
And AT&T is following in Sprint's footsteps from a couple years ago.
But the article says T-Mobile is imitating AT&T.
Less Data?
FM Radio uses zero data. Absolute zero. It listens to frequency modulation signals, it doesn't go through cellular, wifi, or any other kind of data connection. My phone has an FM radio in it, and it works with all cellular/wifi/Bluetooth radios turned off and in airplane mode. It also works with the SIM card removed from the phone. Not only does it use less data, it uses none.
Yes but some apps use a marginal amount of data when connected. For example, nextradio (mentioned in the article) will pull information about the station you are listening too off the internet. Including band information and links to buy the song. Yes...
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Older Phones Had It
Most of my Nokia (non-Lumia) phones from eight or less years ago not only had an FM receiver some had FM transmitters. I used the FM receiver on my 6301 more than with most models I had. When Internet Radio was included on the N78-3 I used the FM receiver a lot less and used the transmitter to stream to my sound system. I haven't looked to see if it is a feature on Lumia phones, to give a clue as to how relevant the feature is to me now.
I live in a tornado prone area so having an FM receiver that operated independently of the data would be useful for those six to ten weeks of the year when the weather gets interesting.
I live in a tornado prone area so having an FM receiver that operated independently of the data would be useful for those six to ten weeks of the year when the weather gets interesting.
