Phones should have FM radio again (as an emergency safety feature) - eviltoast

I didn’t even realize Qualcomm removed the built in FM radio from their chips. Huh.

          • tal@lemmy.today
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            1 year ago

            I like 1/8" jacks too, but active noise cancellation – which is pretty impressive, honestly – legitimately needed a source of power, and there was no standard way of providing that over that interface.

            You can get both USB-C or Bluetooth adapters for a 1/8" headphone set to run an existing pair. I’ll concede that it’s a bit more bulk to carry, but one can continue to use 1/8" headphones with phones.

            • Kernal64@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              Wired active noise cancelation headphones exist, you know. They have batteries, which are a perfectly legitimate source of power.

              • tal@lemmy.today
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                1 year ago

                Yeah, I have a pair (which charges over USB-C and also has a 1/8" audio jack). But if you’re having to charge batteries, you’re at the point that you are having to plug it into USB-C anyway, so you might as well just be using USB-C (well, or wireless), since you’re having to deal with the batteries of wireless and plugging into USB anyway. There just isn’t a lot of point to using the 1/8" jack on them other than to let you conveniently also use them with audio sources that have 1/8" jacks but no USB-C/wireless support. It doesn’t really buy you much to use the 1/8" jack on a smartphone that doesn’t have that limitation.

                There are some people who have expensive headphones that don’t do ANC and will want to keep using them, but those you can use the adapters on.

      • darcy@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        THATS WHY? i was always confused why that was the case. i thought it was a ““feature”” to only enable fm for headphones. my old phone also only allowed the eq to be used with a speaker other than the internal one

      • binboupan@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Nokia 105 (2023) has a radio that works without headphones so this is not necessarily true.

        • Senuf@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          I had an old Moto phone with an FM radio that worked without headphones, although it was stated that with headphones plugged in reception would be much better (which was true). My current phone (a Moto one too) has FM radio, and I use it.

          I never had a phone without FM radio. It’s one of the features I actually want in my phone.

        • limerod@reddthat.com
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          1 year ago

          The redmi 7a smartphone I had also supported wireless FM radio without plugging in a headphone jack.