Should all smartphones come with radio built-in?

The best two phones I’ve had with FM radio were from Nokia. The first, the 8300, is now about 15 years old (and while I used to have 3 or 4, I “lost” them (thrown out by my sister, I suspect) when I moved. Second was the Nokia Xpress Radio (which needed no headphones to work).

As for modern mobiles, I ALWAYS use an Android App called TuneIn Pro (cheap, and they offer a free version for people to try them out).

Unlimited data on Three means I can stream audio all day with no worries. Unlimited tethering allows laptops and other things to connect to the net via my phone.

As for FM/DAB radio, one problem would be the power consumption for DAB, because it’s a digitial stream that needs decoding with extra processing compared to FM, and on portables, was reputed to chew up batteries, at least the earliest models.

I’m not in favour of the “switchover” to digital from FM, but if it goes ahead, all the major stations would be moved off FM, leaving it (for a while) for “community” stations, so the need for FM might eventually disappear for listening to BBC R1, 2, 3, 4.

Rather than having FM broadcasts, or even DAB, it would really make sense for the most popular 10-15 stations to be broadcast as a signal by all the cell towers, which your mobile already spends its time “listening to” (waiting for a call, text, or checking if your phone needs to switch to another cell mast as you move from area to area). This would just be a broadcast, with no silly “data charges” or using this from your monthly allowance (and the cell masts are transmitting nearly all the time anyway, whether to people on calls, or just checking any registered users are still in their coverage area.

If the cell towers were broadcasting in “multicast” mode, any phone could receive the signals and decode to give you the main national services (including BBC R 5 for sport/news) and the phones would not need to transmit for this to work – it would be like the FM signal, 1 transmit and as many listeners as possible. Clearly there’d be some need to debate which stations could be included, and people wanting others would need radio apps unless their phone could handle FM / DAB.

FM RADIO a must to have feature . A recording scheduler a bonus. Cjd

When my last phone died, having an excellent FM radio, I spent a lot of time looking for a replacement. Like other commentators, my main use of my phone is listening to the radio. Many phones were advertised as having FM. Nokia was awful, I tried 3 models, as were others I cannot remember. I ended up with an xperia u, a temperamental phone but excellent FM.in don’t know what I’ll do when this one dies.

I use an old Sony Erricsson with excellent FM radio.
Nokia C5 really disappointed with the FM radio.
New Blackberry 9720, FANTASTIC FM radio.

Yup I can see Tunein would be great but most places I stay have no, or still very expensive, or poor wifi, and at home mine doesn’t reach down the garden.

It is a pity that there is still no mobile phone available having a DAB+ chip. Would be something for a manufacturer to stand-out.

There is one way to get FM on an iphone. iFM by Allputer

see: http://allputer.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=2086

I cant ubderstand them scrapping fm. Internet conection radio is rarely smooth and regularly cutting out. The big manufacturers are loosing a lot of customers because of this. On a possitive note the latest nokia lumia 930 has fm radio

The inclusion of DAB on a smartphone would require the use of more battery power and you’d need a far bigger battery to get the same amount of use out of your phone. Very simply DAB is broadcast in Multiplexes and all the radio stations on the multiplex are sent out as one channel. Your DAB radio has to receive and decode the entire multiplex before finding the channel you want to listen to. FM radio is much simpler and there is one station per channel which in turn uses less power to listen to.

Everything that DAB can do except the inclusion of extra (niche) stations can be done with an FM radio, especially on a smart phone. For example current track, show, station information can all be done by RDS. Recording and playback will depend on the software on your phone but is again possible. DAB is also useless if traveling with your phone/radio in the USA as they don’t use DAB and have another system.

Certainly FM & DAB radio should be standard, along with retention of the standard 3.5mm headphone socket. I’d also like a return to batteries you can replace as opposed to the hard wired types and wouldn’t mind a new phone being slightly thicker to accomodate those with a little more power.