[EAS] FM Chips Useless???

[Alan Kline]

I've heard that said about the chip in iPhones--the chips that provide 
the wifi, Bluetooth and 3G/4G capability are Broadcomm devices which 
also provide FM receive and transmit capability. I haven't been able to 
pin down whether or not the FM in those chips, in existing phones, can 
be activated via software, or if the chip needs a connection to an 
antenna which isn't there.

Hopefully, it can be done, or at least Apple might see the wisdom of 
activating it in the next iPhone release. It's not like they don't know 
how, since iPods for several years have used the identical chips, with 
FM activated.

Food for thought: A few weeks back, I bought a Yaesu VX8-DR ham radio 
transceiver (a handheld) which not only includes AM-FM broadcast receive 
capability, but is also designed to activate on the alert tone (but not 
the EAS bursts) in a NWS weather alert. It's absolutely amazing what can 
be crammed into a small package these days. My point here is simply that 
if the FM capability is enabled in a smartphone, it should be relatively 
simple for an app designer to come up with something that would allow 
the user to enter his favorite local station's frequency and let it 
silently monitor for EAS data bursts, even if the user is listening to 
someone else. It could be programmed to disregard RWT's and RMT's, and 
like other iOS apps, could be designed to monitor even if the app itself 
isn't open.

What I've just described gets around the limitations of the FM 
capability of the chips, which are limited to the broadcast band and 
can't receive the NOAA frequencies.

ak

On 3/28/2013 4:15 PM, Adrienne Abbott wrote:
> I've heard a rumour that the FM chips in existing cell phones can't simply
> be "turned on" with a programming update and that the chip currently built
> into any cell phone is basically useless. The source tells me that we will
> all have to buy new phones if we want to have FM radio with our phones.does
> anyone know for sure whether or not this is true? Or is it a marketing ploy
> to get us to buy new phones?