FCC Urges Apple to Protect Safety of Americans by Activating FM Radio Chip in iPhones [Updated]

[flat five]

What stupid information can a radio gives you during a storm anyway?

"power lines are down.. tree limbs are falling.. stay inside.. flooding is likely if you're near a body of water.. in which case, go outside and move to higher ground... sale at Macy's next friday"

---
edit-
oh yeah.. and it will make this noise sometimes :

: )

 

[PickUrPoison]

So if Apple cares "deeply", how can't apple with 100 billions cash make it possible? They can do things that go beyond tech possibility like FaceID but it is not possible to have iphone 7/8 built with FM chip? If they really care, they could have done it long ago.

or Tim Cook is too busy with politics.

No one said it wouldn’t have been possible to add an FM—or AM, TV, or shortwave for that matter—to the iPhone. They could also add it to AirPods, iPads, MacBooks or iMacs, for that matter.

Why stop there? What about adding an FM radio to every flashlight? Or television? What about requiring all radios to have hand-cranked generators? Will no one think of the children?

I think the FCC has the power to mandate the inclusion of FM radios in all cellphones, maybe they will?

 

[macfacts]

Lol... all of a sudden FM receivers are the pinnacle of customer safety..

Get real, please

Let me guess, you're the one who emailed Tim asking for new emojis.

 

[rikscha]

Laughable. FM.. in Asia this comes up as a very loud message on your screen whenever there is a typhoon earthquake or any other risky event.
Use today’s technology to achieve the same and yes this works on iPhones very well

 

[Plumber007]

Sen. Nelson is on this. Hopefully they mandate the iphone works for RDS too.

 

[MadeTheSwitch]

Mobile cell units can be used to send and receive signals. Much more effective and efficient.

What is the range on those? How many miles?

How about no. I don't need the government to have access to more information by exploiting these devices.

Good grief. How on earth do you think the government will have more access to your phone than they do already through the internet and cell service?

I see visions in my head of people in the throes of an emergency standing there trying to get an FM signal on their iPhones so they can figure out what to do next! Ridiculous in ANY circumstance. Can you imagine for a moment what that would look like!

I see visions of people who don't carry a radio around with them all the time being caught completely offguard and washed out to sea or down river because they didn't know they were in danger. Knowledge is power. It's amazing how many here want to be left in the dark.

What stupid information can a radio gives you during a storm anyway?

Oh...silly things like knowledge that a tornado is about to blow you away or that the dam that you are downriver from is about to break and drown you. You know...trival stuff.

 

[PowerGala]

I have one of those weather radio things. It has a crank shaft to charge the battery if there's no power, it also has a flashlight and it can charge my phone. I think it cost $25. I haven't really had to use it, but I think it's neat to have around.

While I'd rather Apple do it on their own and for the government to stay out of it, I could see the FCC mandating FM radio chips in all new phones by a certain date. It's hardly the craziest idea a government agency has come up with and manufactures would probably have at least 5 years to implement it.

I'm just surprised that the FDA hasn't declared the Apple Watch a Medical Device yet. The FDA regulates chairs and cabinets for crying out loud.

 

[JamesPDX]

Uh, the whole point is for everyone with a smartphone to have a way to receive emergency news and alerts if the cell system is down. What you mentioned requires a working cell system.
No.

I suppose we'll find out if it's not implemented well.

By the time a true mandate is slathered over our nation, there will be this:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/04/spacex-internet-satellites-elon-musk.html

 

[Bacillus]

What I read between the lines:
"Apple deeply cares about your safety but more about its own wallet that fares better by AppleMusic so it removed the FM chips from the products and refused to use the iPhone 6 casing as an antenna with a 10 mm extra wire.
We provide 911 calling but don't know what happens if millions of people dial it simultaneously as most of them turned off their AMBER alert because of battery issues.
And Joni is too busy with Apple Park trees now for a battery redesign "

 

[leman]

An iPhone IS a radio transceiver! A FM radio is a receiver only.

Technically correct, doesn't have much to do with the topic though. We were talking about FM radio. And while English is not my first language, I am fairly sure that its pretty common to refer to FM radio simply as "radio".

 

[jeremiah256]

What is the range on those? How many miles?

I can’t remember the vendor’s name, but a mobile unit on display (suitcase sized) was about 5 miles?

This is a different company I found called Mactro.

 

[jkruehne]

it is these typical (company-name) nonsense talk – sure, if in urban surroundings wifi/LTE might be full strengths – but there are (yes there are) areas with minimum (E) coverage – where not even iMasseges etc will work… I may be wrong, but FM Radio than is a nice way to receive informations, music etc … in an easy and elegant way (at least for mid40+ people

 

[0388631]

As usual, Pai is full of ****.

 

[Suckfest 9001]

Let me guess, you're the one who emailed Tim asking for new emojis.

All I wanted is that poop animoji

 

[phillytim]

FM Radio is one of the major reasons that I will keep my claws dug into an iPod Nano for as long as humanly possible.

I was always irritated that that Apple doesn't allow FM on their phones, and pissed to know that FM was in there for years yet wasn't enabled.

 

[69650]

If there is no power how are you going to use your iPhone to listen to FM Radio? Surely it makes more sense to have a battery powered FM radio at home if you live in one of these areas.

 

[bruinsrme]

I honestly never even knew the iPhone had FM radio capabilities. It would be cool to be able to listen to FM radio with the iPhone. "Competition with Apple Music" seems like a flimsy reason to leave it deactivated, though.

Have you listened to FM radio. OMG it's virtual commercials/advertisements.

 

[robbietop]

It's a modem. FM needs an antenna and the iPhone 7 and 8 do not have shortwave antennas in the 88-108 MHz spectrum required for "switching on" the FM "functionality built into every smartphone".
This is a hardware request, not a software one.
And Secretary Pai should know better given he has worked in Telecom.

 

[thekumar]

Is this something they even could activate with a software update, seems like an odd request if it would reguire a hardware configuration change...

Yes, for a brief period that I would like to erase from my smartphone history, I owned a Nokia 920 windows phone, and FM radio was enabled over a software update.

The excuse that Apple is using about the iPhone 7 and 8 not including the capability is due to one of their other mis-features... dropping support for the headphone jack since wired headphones connected to the analog output port acted as the antenna. But Apple’s courage (and iTunes revenue) took priority

Just to note: The iPod Nanos used to have FM radio feature built-in as well. Not sure if it’s still available.

 

[BaltimoreMediaBlog]

It's a modem. FM needs an antenna and the iPhone 7 and 8 do not have shortwave antennas in the 88-108 MHz spectrum required for "switching on" the FM "functionality built into every smartphone".
This is a hardware request, not a software one.
And Secretary Pai should know better given he has worked in Telecom.

Ajit Pai was involved in the FCC approvals of both phones.

And Timmy worked in budget & stock on hand rather than tech?

And if Apple deliberately damaged the FM capability of the chips on purpose, that's even worse!

Poor Timmy. He's in way over his head. Always the water boy, never the QB until 4th quarter.

It should be noted that almost every other function of the headphone jack is duplicated via the lightning connector via an adaptor in these phones, so Apple would have had to have gone out of its way to make sure it could never work. Like I said, that is even worse if true and thank you Ajit Pai for RATTING THEM OUT!

 

[George Bailey]

Completely agree. Apple should Enable it for safety precautions. For those living where Hurricanes are more Prevalent, this could be a useful tool when they need it most.

There's nothing to enable. There is no FM receiver. Apparently our FCC chairman does his "research" by reading clickbait articles. Back when iPhones contained more off-the-shelf non-specialized generic parts the chip manufacturer threw in an FM converter for "free". Even then it required a proper FM antenna which most phones, including iPhones, never had.

As has been pointed out, cheap battery powered FM radios are a sensible solution - leaving a smart phone active all day just to listen for news is just a bad idea. It makes about as much sense as leaving a car engine running all day just to use the radio.

 

[psac]

Or the life-saving information can be push messaged to your phone or send emergency alerts hyper-localized to your location via cellular. Time to dig yourself out of the past.

Not when the cellular towers are down, as what happened in multiple places with these past hurricanes. And is still the case in PR.

 

[Dethklok]

I don't get this. A cheap $30 FM Radio running on AA batteries would have longer listening time than a $1,000 smartphone with a FM chip.

 

[marco114]

Do you carry a radio in your pocket at all times or your car on your back? Everything is on our phones these days for a reason.....because we always have them with us unlike most anything else.

No, I don't carry around a radio. If cell and data service is disrupted, I have several radios in my house and in my car and I can find out what's going on. It's called emergency preparedness. Our cellphones don't need radios. This is just a grab by the FCC because radio is suffering and they want more listeners.

 

[kdarling]

Why is the government trying to mandate only Apple add FM reception to the iPhone?

You start somewhere. Plus many Android phones from Samsung, Huawei, LG, HTC, et al already have it in at least some models. Apple is the sole exception.

1. I’ve lived, primarily, on the west coast, so emergencies (earthquakes) can develop without warning. And I currently live in Japan (earthquakes, missiles, melt downs). Effective alerts are worth their weight in gold.

Yep. Or being told to stay inside during the eye of a hurricane. Or where to get help. When Sandy came through, and during blackouts, we depended on car radios for a while to find out what was going on. It would've been handy (especially for all those without cars) to be able to listen on our phones while out and about.

2. You don’t need a cell tower to broadcast. Mobile cell units can be used to send and receive signals. Much more effective and efficient.

Mobile units still need backhaul. The standard method is microwave, which means you need a working central transceiver somewhere fairly close by. In a disaster, that's not likely, so then the burden shifts to much slower satellites, and there's not much bandwidth there for a large disaster.

Solution: Get a radio.

Personally, I have any manner of radios, including am/fm, sw, police/fire, refinery, ham... that's me, and I'm an extreme case. But a phone is not a proper replacement for a radio. Even if your phone has it, a real radio is superior.

One could argue the same for receiving weather/Amber/etc alerts... but those alerts also come on our smartphones because far, far more people carry their phones around.

I don't think the phone-FM need is huge, but it would certainly be a way to save lives for very little cost to the consumer or manufacturers. In other words, it's one of the most cost effective aids available.