Forum Discussion
Trade in our phones or carry a separate FM Radio?
Finally my wife and I both made the jump into buying our first brand new smartphones (before we always had used ones). In 2019 we got a Pixel 3a XL for the wife and then in 2020 I got a Pixel 4a. El...
I would suggest the LG V60, if that fits with what you need. The last LG I had was a V30, but FM worked perfectly fine on it. The V series from LG have always focused on audio and video. If LG had stuck with the same styling as the V30, I would have picked up a V60. Hopefully someone with a V60 can chime in to confirm if FM works on it. A call to LG Support or a visit to LG's forum might also net you some good info as to if the V60 has what is needed to pick up FM.
The Samsung S8 actually has an FM radio. But there are Issues. First, there is this app, NextRadio, that, on a radio-enabled phone, could let one tune the radio, select favorites, and so on. Problem: the developers couldn't make money on it, so the streaming and an ability to search for a radio station by name or type evaporated. It's abandonware these days, but one can still get it on the Play Store.
Second: FM is real, live radio, with a wavelength in 3 meter range. There's a reason that even cheapie FM radios come With a whip or, like in the S8 case, use the headphone cables as an antenna. A modern cell phone like an iPhone with no audio jack, well, it's not going to cut it.
Contrary to popular rumor, many current phones don't have the FM chip. That rumor about chips being generally disabled got started when particular carriers, with Verizon as the poster child for this behavior, would disable the FM chip in their firmware loads so they could force their customers to use more streaming data, before the advent of common unlimited plans. Thing is, T-Mobile was, and probably still is, one of the good guys in this regard, and has always generally enabled the FM chip if a phone has one.
