So a friend came over for Thanksgiving dinner and had a Motorola Smart phone he wasn't using anymore. This one uses the Android operting system and works nicely, while i don't have service for the cell section of the phone, i can still take advantage of the wifi app and other features.
A neat feature, the FM Radio app.
From 87 mhz to 108 mhz this radio built into a phone works fairly well considering were i live and the initial test was made inside a home under the most unusual conditions.
With a set of headphones plugged into the phone the fm app works, if no headphones are present it will not start up and tells you to plug in some headphones, ear piece or even a powered speaker. I did try this out with a three speaker system and it sounded great.
For the test i used a set of over the ear headphones, most users have earbuds, i however cannot use earbuds without feeling a gread deal of discomfort.
To program channels into the radio you hit scan and the radio scans the fm dial from 87 mhz to 108 mhz and will only pick out the strongest signals.
Of course it chose 87.9 FM BBR then moved on to other stations that were strong enough for the app to sense. If i moved around alot the stations would get static or the receiver would mute and i would either have to move to where i first heard the station clear or re scan.
There is no manual tuning and the app doesn't mask out interference which i was hearing on 90.3 fm caused by the phone being too close to my pc's keyboard.
Below is a link to the video demonstration.
If i had to rate this radio app on a scale of 1 to 10 , 10 being the best and 1 being the worse, I wouuld have to give it a rating of 7. It's okay if you are in a city with 50 or more signals blanketing the area, but out in the sticks your reception may be poor.
I also don't like the idea of not having a way to manually tune the radio.
Barry of Blue Bucket Radio 1620
WJVS-Fm 89.7
Are you talking NextRadio
The FM radio in my phone is probably one of the best portable tuners I have, with good separation and sensitivity, better than other pocket and portable radios I have.
That's surprising, I was expecting the FM radios in a phone to be an afterthought, since it's mostly a digital communications device, but the tuner is great. I don't know if all phones are as good, but the few I've tried have been nice performers. I'd suggest trying a few different headphones with your phone, with different length cords, it seems to make a difference with mine.
Now, if they could add the AM band, it would be that much better, since there are useful stations on there too. There might be noise, but even if it could only receive a few of the strongest stations, that would be fine too, at least AM would be available.
What is the make and model of the phone?
Motorola Moto E 2nd Generation with 4G LTE - Android OS version 5.1
I took the phone to town a few times and it did rather well with the same over the ear headphones. Tried it once from inside the car ( car was parked ) and again while standing outside the car in a busy parking lot. Scan picked up about 9 signals which is pretty good but compared to the Sony car stereo in the Jeep, the Motorola was missing some signals.
Again, manual tuning would be a great feature, the phone worked as I suspected in town.
It did poorly inside a house surrounded by hills and metal which is to be expected, out in the yard i had to walk around until i found a sweet spot but still did not pick up as many stations as the test in town.
Still, pretty impressive for what it is.
As for AM in these things, hmm maybe. Trouble with that is shielding the AM radio from the other circuits in the phone, mainly the processors which are noisy as hell.
Barry of Blue Bucket Radio 1620
The concept of FM radio in cell phones is not new. Several years ago I had a Sony Ericksson "slider" phone (it slid open rather than flipping, LOL) that had a FM radio in it that worked very well. This had to be 7 or more years ago. This was long before "smart phones". At this time there were no "apps". But there was a radio in the phone that worked quite well, even had RDS readout.
I used to take it with me when working on my employers FM transmitter, as I could listen off air, and check the programming of the archaic (compared to todays) RDS programming. I could stand in the transmitter building, or outside the building and listen to 96.9, or 91.7 with no troubles these are both 100,000 watt transmitters in the SAME building, with antennas on the SAME tower. And I could listen to one with no interference from the other, even standing next to the transmitter right under the tower. It was a mighty fine radio that happened to be in a cell phone.
I loved that phone. I'm sure it's still stashed away someplace, I could look it up. But I'm sure it wouldn't work today. It was back when phones were still analog! It had phone, text, camera and FM radio. But it died on me one day on vacation. It's brain scrambled and no efforts by meself or the phone people could get it working right again.
TIB
The heck with the phone I'd love to have the Radio as a portable test device for my FM TX.
The Galaxy Grand Prime works with NextRadio which has manual tuning and RDS.
I went poking around on the internet and the phone I wasl talking about above is still available for sale! So it must still work on today's networks! Here's a link to an outfit that's selling them:
I know nothing about this company, or the suitability of the phone today, but this is the one I had years ago that I loved! Great built in FM radio!
TIB
It's an UNLOCKED GSM phone so AT&T or Cricket basic pre paid will work. $80 may be steep as you can buy a CountyCom AM FM SW Radio with SSB for that price.
I see them on ebay starting at about $15, of course that's not for a new one. But there are new ones for about $30.
Remember, it's a lot more than a radio -- it's a phone for petes sake, with an acceptable camera and it's also an mp3 player and I was able to rip CD's into mine with software that came with it.
TIB