A Secret Radio Inside Your Phone?

Thank you Bob for this informative article. I'd like to post it on Facebook to make more people aware, but don't see a Facebook icon for posting or sharing it. I live in an earthquake zone and I'm sure if enough people were made aware we could lobby the CRTC to make it mandatory for service providers to make it available.

As you rightly say, we have paid for the feature in the price of the phone so are being forced to pay through the nose for an alternative.
Do the carriers care more for their customers or their shareholders? For an answer, consider the way that a mobile phone is limited to about fifteen seconds of ring before it cuts to answerphone.
I cannot remember the last time I fished the phone out of my pocket in time to answer it, so to find out what the caller wanted, I am expected to use my carrier's service to call him/her back. Who benefits? Go figure (as you Americans so quaintly command).

Thank you so much Bob, I never knew about this . I have an HTC One M8 so I downloaded the app and it notified me my phone would work across all carriers. It requires headphones or an external speaker to be plugged in so I will try it later when I get home..... cool :-)

You know I pay a LOT of MONEY for that phone and now I feel cheated.

Would have been an awesome app back in the 70's and 80's. Unfortunately,FM is now a corporate wasteland of garbage and lack of choice. Here in Birmingham AL,there is one alleged "rock" station that plays the exact same 25 songs over and over and over and over and over. The same corporations own every station and there is absolutely no local programming allowed, PERIOD. Idownloaded and checked it out going against hope that maybe there were more stations that I was unaware of but as with everything in Alabama, just disappointment. Maybe in NYC where I grew up they still have decent stations but I guarantee that most of the country is owned and programmes by the same two corporations. Good luck with your journey but mine had ended within five minutes.

I went to the link where I could contact my carrier about this issue. I decided to send an email. The site-supplied text bordered on rude and brash; certainly unworthy of review by a customer-service person receiving same. I would suggest a direct, but more polite approach. Something about getting more flies with honey than salt...

Does anyone know about unlocked phones purchased directly from 3rd party vendors? There seems no reason they couldn't be switched on.

The ability to hear the broadcast of the National Weather Service and Emergency Network System is in the public interest. The people own the airwaves -- not big business. GregPaul

Nokia lumia 635 at&t windoz go phone here. Fm radio app factory installed and works. Haven't activated with at&t. Wifi only at present. Need more windoz apps but pretty much love the 8.1 OS.

Sorry, but my Nokia Lumia 830 has FM Radio as a built in app. Has a page of its own in the manual. The earphones act as the the antenna.

Would like to have FM on my Apple phone. I don't go in for purchasing and don't know how to access iTunes--another of my "to-do" list of things to know!

The huge cracks in the crumbling foundation of the big carriers have been caused by GREED..... Back in the 70s and 80s, FM was cool. Here in south eastern Wisconsin, FM is a vast wasteland of repetitious, bad music and lots of loud, annoying commercials. I actually listen to Public Radio now and then. We need some good old fashioned pirate radio stations like they had in Europe back in the late 60s! Anyone remember Radio Luxembourg or Radio London?

One advantage of living in security-conscious Israel is that we not only don't have to fight to get radio broadcasts over the phone (I have an app called "FM Radio" which even changes wavelengths automatically when I move from one broadcast area to another so I remain on the same station), they even have wavelengths which broadcast SILENCE at night in time of emergency so we can go to sleep safe in the knowledge that the radio or phone will burst into action when we need it.

To Gary:

I certainly remember Radios Luxembourg and London but better by far was Radio Caroline, founded apparently because even Luxembourg (whose sound quality was uneven at best) was taken over by the record establishment. I think I recall listening to the first day's broadcasting by the much missed John Junkin back in '64.

I wonder whether the U.S. service providers request that manufacturers disable the ability to use the cell-phone as an MP3 player, for the same reason they request to disable the FM receiver.

This article just added another reason to a long list of reasons to NEVER buy a cell-phone from a service provider.

>>>> The carriers...are the manufacturers' customers...

This is the core problem!

The manufacturers' customer should be the USER, the one who pays for both the device and for the cellular service.

I have to agree with what Robert A. said. I live in an area (in hurricane territory) that sadly has not one FM radio station with a decent playlist for anyone who isn't either a senior citizen, a teen, a country music fan, or Spanish-speaking (and of course, a fan of the genre of Latino music they play). I don't stream music, I play the music I've downloaded onto my phone. I miss hearing new music in the adult alternative category, but I'll live with it. What I wouldn't like, though, is to be unable to listen to news reports the next time a hurricane (or 3, as in 2004) blasts through my area.

One of the lucky ones here...my Lumia 520 (prepaid) phone is one of the ones that does have the FM radio chip built in. Found a fabulous app (FM Radio X+) at the Windows Phone store that is dead simple to use, and have that pinned to my start screen. So I now have free FM radio available wherever I go...no cellular charges and no WiFi connection required...and all the mobile phone services I need via my prepaid contract with my carrier (Rogers in Canada), and I pay less than $100 per YEAR for all of it. Huge thanks to you, Bob, for this invaluable tip! I had no idea FM radio was available on my phone until I read your article.

I'd love to have access to FM radio on my cell phone! Grew up listening to the radio, and it's still my favorite source of local information when we lose power due to hurricanes, etc. Lately I've been streaming a good bit of radio from other parts of the country when local stations don't meet my needs - but I'd love to be able to use that chip instead!

Thanks for the informative article. As usual, it's all about the money!!!

Please. No "ummms" in your articles! As you say, grammar is important.