The 90s kid in me yearns for a phone with Fm radio, headphone jack, IR blaster, stylus, memory card slot, slide out keyboard and one of those click on projectors the Motorola phones used to have. I would call it the Donatello and it would be radical.
I’ve refused to buy these “flagship” phones that don’t have a headphone jack. The 90s kid in me will live on, damnit!
Same I use wired earbuds everyday at work and I refuse to buy a phone without one
I recently bought Bluetooth large headphones and I feel like they’re a massive improvement. However, when it comes to earbuds (which I still use a lot when big ones are inconvenient), I would never buy wireless ones. I am afraid that in a lot of them, battery is not easily replaceable (while in my big ones it can be accessed by unscrewing a cover), and the small things would get lost fairly easily.
If there was a decent phone with FM radio and an IR blaster, I might pick it over a lot of other ones.
I miss having an IR blaster so much, I was always finding new uses for it. Now I’ve got little remotes everywhere again
There’s a lot more capability with USB-C audio though. Even entirely discounting Bluetooth, there are plenty of high quality USB-C headphones out there that blow the pants off of what you could do with a 3.5mm jack.
No lol. It all gets converted to an analog signal to drive the headphones. There’s no difference in fidelity between 1/8" and USB-C. It’s literally the exact same signal.
Why? You can just hire a dude to sing to you as you walk around. Just use a bard, bro.
Worse quality audio, vastly more expensive, easier to lose pieces, yet another device I need to think about charging, will need replaced after a while as the batteries swell/die, extra e-waste, occasional pairing problems (especially on PC), etc.
And guess what, if all of that sounds good or doesn’t matter to you, you can still use Bluetooth on phones with 3.5mm ports!
I used to swear by wired headphones.
The audio quality, not needing batteries, the simplicity.
But then I got a decent pair of Bluetooth headphones and I discovered how much wires got in my way. I discovered that the audio quality coming out of phones were garbage regardless of connection type, and the headphones I got would last weeks of daily use on one charge.
Plus I would get a more water proof phone, and I would never have to worry about the headphone jack breaking inside of the port, or my headphones going flying off because I walked past a knob of whatever at just the right height to ruin my day.
I still want phones to have the ports, but on mobile devices I’ll never use them. I just want others to be happy too.
I’ve an Armor 21, it has the radio, headphone jack, IR blaster and the memory card slot, plus a loud and clear speaker, actual night vision and is rugged as fuck. Base price sub-$250, upcharge for an attachable endoscope.
Just checked it out, this thing looks sick. But it also looks ugly as shit. Is it as ugly as it looks in person? Specifically not a fan of the RGB LED ring thing on the back?
Honest criticisms: It’s a bit of a brick for sure. I turned the RGB ring off. The multi-function button isn’t as usable as I’d hoped, mostly just a flashlight/screenshot button. The headphone jack and USB port are behind a protected rubber flap, so I keep opening/closing it frequently, but that’s to help with being waterproof. While the optional case functions as a good stand for horizontal viewing and for holding, it is inadequate for vertical, and it just would’ve needed a small internal brace to fix that. The case also blocks their wireless charging connectors, if you were planning to use a dock for that. Attaching the endoscope requires removing a tiny screw. The lack of a bottom button bar has taken some getting used to but I’m fine with it now, the side fingerprint scanner is similar.
Overall I am happy with it. The battery lasts a whole day with high use, it has decent internals for games, the screen and included protector are appropriately unobtrusive, it isn’t running a very outdated version of Android. Perhaps most importantly, it should survive my child who likes to throw my phone and my dumbass who left it in my pocket getting in a pool.
how do you know someone was born in the 80s? they’ll fucking tell you. you can just like stuff without referencing your stupid metal lunchbox all the time.
I hate this idea. FM channels have more advertisements than they have music. And there’s no technical way (yet) that I know of to automatically block said advertisements. Advertisements have driven the world into madness, as now anything that requires them to stay profitable either jams them into everything, or has a huge focus on rage-bait in order to get people to listen/watch/click. This rage-bait has made our world more angry, more divisive, and more chaotic than ever. Fuck advertisers.
The point of the article is to have them there for emergencies since we already have systems in place to broadcast emergency info over radio, and it’s a lot simpler to implement than satellite for when cell signal is down.
I don’t see the necessity for FM Radio to be used for this. They’ve removed them from most of today’s phones, and adding them back would be just as complex as adding something like LoRa for emergency messages.
LoRa could also be used for mesh-messaging, and bring some added privacy features that people genuinely would have a use for.
I guarantee this article has FM Radio station money behind it.
I’m a qualified amateur radio operator and I work in IT as my day job, if you can’t see how bad it would be to continue to put all our eggs into one basket for datacom, primarily in the hands of poorly regulated private cellphone companies, then I can’t really help you.
Fact is, 80-110 MHz FM requires less infrastructure (aka fewer broadcast points) to more completely cover an area, and it’s almost impossible to have it blocked by buildings/walls/vehicles, etc. Sure, the signal might go to shit, but it’s at least able to be heard even in very challenging conditions. It also takes nearly no power to run. Receiver chips can be made so small that it would be a trivial addition to make for most cellular manufacturers. There’s no licensing fees or service fees so the entire process is free from top to bottom.
Add that to the fact that it’s already deployed, regulated and configured for emergencies, and you have a very low implementation cost for a very reliable and robust service.
The idea here isn’t to add it so we can listen to FM commercials all day. Anyone I know who had FM on their cellphone, didn’t use it; and I won’t suggest that anyone will use it now… but if there’s a major catastrophe and the cellular networks go down, having a recieve-only way of getting emergency information to those who are otherwise disconnected from everything is a big deal. A lot of households are going digital only for their entertainment and getting rid of old stereos and hi-fi units with radio built in for all HDMI systems that make their Netflix work nicely. Many also have zero land line service so once the internet stops functioning and the cell towers go out, the only method of communication these people will have is standing on their porch and screaming into the void.
I’ve monitored communications during major outages, like sitting hurricane hits on the contental US and heard the radio traffic stating that there’s people at x location and all consumer/commercial communication systems are inoperable. The only thing working was an amateur owned and operated repeater network to relay the communication across the region; I was listening to an internet relay on the outskirts of the coverage area and it was clear that they would have had no outbound communication if they didn’t have those repeater nets. Inbound, I’m sure FM and AM radio was still operable, so anyone with an FM set could hear news and alerts as they happened.
Radio is also nearly instant, while LoRA mesh networks rely on people having nodes to relay the messages and the messages may be interrupted while a node is down. The first isn’t a thing yet, the second is difficult to do at best. Amateur FM cells can transmit over many miles potentially several dozen, meanwhile most LoRA can’t reach a fraction of that far, requiring a massively larger number of them, and each one is a potential point of failure.
With regulation, commercial broadcast FM sites are required by law to participate in the emergency broadcast system, no such regulation exists for LoRA.
Under normal operating conditions, FM is fairly useless, unless you feel like listening to ads, but in an emergency, it can be the only way for you to be told that, though the weather seems to have gotten better, it’s temporary and you should stay where you are.
All my handheld radio transceivers have commercial FM recievers built in, so either way, I’m covered. I also have several dedicated FM and shortwave receiving radios around. I have adequate communication capability for an emergency. I’m not perfectly set up, even remotely, but I’ll be able to reach out to someone if I’m without power, internet, cellphone coverage, etc, during a major event. I can call for help, get information about the situation and it’s duration, I can reach out over 10 miles or more to communicate with others, all with my handheld.
And you want to take all this infrastructure and preparedness that we as a society have developed over more than a century, and flush it all away… because why? You have a hard-on for LoRA? You think old tech is useless in today’s day and age? Because you have a problem with broadcast radio trying to survive, a service that’s free to you, by playing ads?
Do you realize how stupid you sound?
In addition to all that @MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca said, implementing an am or fm receiver on an existing device is as easy as plopping down one of the existing bga chips that has an antenna input and an audio output. here’s one of the bigger ones that needs a killer 3mm x 3mm land pattern. It’s also only $1.79 or so, which is expensive for an ic, but in the context of a phone wouldn’t contribute significantly to the cost of the device.
The need for an 1/8” out would be the worst part because ironically, phone jacks suck for uhh… phones.
There are some channels that aren’t like this if you’re lucky enough to live in an area with something like NPR stations, college/highschool stations, or donation funded music radio.
I just built a website that makes it easy to find and stream community radio stations (which you refer to as ‘donation funded’) There are over 100 stations listed. Just choose from a drop-down and hit ‘play’. Looking for more beta testers https://AlternateAirwaves.com
If you live near a University, tune in to the local student radio.
It’s usually run by the University without ads.
I rock out to WPTS radio in Pittsburgh and both WUOG and WPPP in Athens, GA.
What, you don’t like watching two 15 second advertisements before each youtube video, which has a minute+ dedicated time to talk about today’s sponsor?
That’s not all radios for sure. For example the Bulgarian Radio 1 seems to be almost exclusively music. Sometimes there are advertisement blocks that are long, but usually it’s just music. Then there may be local stuff like college radios (e.g.: KGRG) that won’t have as many advertisements, if any. In Slovakia there used to be Rádio Anténa Rock that was also mostly music as well, but they shut down as it wasn’t profitable. They are now owned by Bauermedia and operate as “Rádio Rock” with only 3 low-power FM transmitters which barely cover 2 cities. At least they’re in DAB+.
Anyway, there are some radios that do not have as many advertisements.
There are gaming phones, phones with crazy cameras, and iPhones where the lack of features is a feature. What I wish to have is a phone with as many features and functionality as possible.
That includes (but not limited to): IR blaster Headphone jack MicroSD card slot FM Radio RGB Notification/Status LED
Rather than a slim phone with a glossy finish that will pick up scratches right away unless wrapped in a phone case, the outer cover of the phone should be rugged and replaceable. Like with old Nokia phones. I don’t care about few extra grams, or another millimeter of thickness. And I’m sure I’m not the only one.
I was hopeful about the Fairphone at first, but they started removing features as well.
When I changed in my iPhone 3g for an original Galaxy S, with barometer, I thought that by the iPhone/Galaxy 10 we would all be rocking tricorders. What kind of crazy sensors would they jam in by then? Zero. Here we are at generation 15 with no additional cool sensors.
It’s intentional. They’d like to drop features to cut on design and manufacture costs, while taking out features most of the target audience doesn’t really care about. Some of these are just greedy. Phones used to rely on microSD expansion, but once you drop this option you could charge for additional space much more than what the equivalent microSD card would cost. You can also stop shipping phones with chargers because most people have them anyway. This is pure profit as the customer is paying the same price, but doesn’t get a charger.
As for other features, they probably dropped them because people just didn’t care enough.
It seems to be incredibly difficult to design a phone from scratch, and that’s why we only see a handful of manufacturers, with the small endeavors being able to make something that looks obsolete by the time it rolls out and even then it takes a few months to overcome all the bugs and glitches. Fairphone is the closest we’ve got, but it’s still far off and strays further with each generation.
Disappointed Moto Mods didn’t catch on. The obvious approach of “skinny phone with minimal features but you can slap whatever you like onto the back (radios, projectors, beefy batteries, gamepad, etc)” - just makes sense for me. I loved my old Moto Z.
I actually meant to reply to your comment but replied to the main thread by mistake, I had the same frustrations with modern phones losing features, and even fairphone dropping the 3.5mm jack was a wtf decision to me. See my comment on the ulephone 18t, it had virutally everything I wanted in a phone.
That includes (but not limited to): IR blaster Headphone jack MicroSD card slot FM Radio RGB Notification/Status LED
My Poco F2 Pro has all of those but microSD slot (none of my recent phones have had it, and I’m starting to miss it right now with 128 gb of base storage) and the IR blaster has saved my ass more than once!
I still have my LG v20 because of this. I’d love to upgrade but nothing that’s come out since even comes close.
I still have my V10 and v20. My v60 is better though. Definitely some trade-offs but I will argue that v60 is better
Yea, I wasn’t ready to upgrade yet when the v60 came out. I guess I should have said “nothing I looked at to upgrade has come close” looking at it now though the non removable battery is a deal breaker.
The v60 is the best phone ever.
All the features, very fast, 2 screens.
My v35 was on par and had the back fingerprint, but otherwise the v60 was the ultimate phone.
Non removable battery is a pretty big deal breaker IMO especially in an era where every subsequent phone is more and more stripped down.
I’ve been saying this for a while now. FM radios and such are invaluable in emergency situations.
There have been times in the past where I’ve lost power to my house. No internet, no electricity etc in the middle of an emergency weather situation. I had to rely on battery powered radios to learn about what the situation was elsewhere and how long we’d be stuck etc. There is basically no reason why this can’t be incorporated into phones, aside from the fact that phone makers would rather you use Apple Music etc. It should be legislated for I believe.
One reason is that every implementation I’ve ever tried relies on using the wired earphones as an aerial and Apple magically convinced everyone that having a 3.5mm port is somehow a bad thing.
Exactly. The real plea here is “bring back 3.5mm ports.” I’m afraid of the day my old phone dies because I have this fear that even cheap-ass phones are going to abandon 3.5mm headphones for cheap, unreliable, garbage bluetooth trash.
Just buy a $15 FM radio. Especially since you can’t charge your phone when you have no power, but a small radio takes AA batteries which can sit in a drawer for 10 years until you need them.
You’d think so but every device around my house that I “put batteries in it and forget it” when I need it I find the batteries have exploded and the device is ruined (regardless of the decade on the expiry-date label of the battery). So my plan now is to keep the device separate from the batteries like it’s a freaking handgun and make sure my phone is charged so I can use its light to make my way to the drawer where we keep the batteries.
Alkaline batteries are the crappy ones that leak. Get the more expensive lithium batteries, or go full on rechargeable ones, and you can leave them in without worrying about your device getting ruined.
In addition to being able to take AAs, my FM radio has a solar panel and a hand crank to recharge the included rechargeable battery, which can charge a phone in a pinch. Win all around!
It probably also picks up the NOAA frequencies for weather forecasts and will have a standby feature for severe weather alerts. Emergency weather radios are pretty cool, and good to have on hand.
Yes… but… this becomes one of those things that everyone should buy to be prepared but few actually do or they forget.
I keep a little crank-chargeable radio in our emergency kit but most people don’t. If the cell networks go down (and they usually do in severe weather and most other big emergency situations) most people will lose all of their access to information.
You can make your battery phone last a lot when you are not using the display and disconnect from any networks. You can also have some powerbank around. Emergencies won’t necessarily find you in home or wherever your radio is stored in. You keep your phone with you most of the time, chances are, if an earthquake happens, for example, you’ll have your phone with you. Been there.
I wholeheartedly agree, but I don’t think there’s any saving it at this point. Car manufacturers are dropping it from new models and that’s the only actual AM/FM radio most people actually buy these days.
Same thing happened to the phone network. It used to actually be possible to call 911 when the power was out. The central stations all had battery banks and diesel generators. Unless the lines were cut, you had service.
I wanted to tag on to your post. I’ve been without power for weather stuff too a few times and one thing i learned was that my cheapie 40" TV would only pull 10-15watts with backlight all the way down. With a small battery bank you can go a good while on that and tune into your local station via OTA. It was very watchable especially given the only light around was my candle.
For a couple more watts you watch shows off your memory stick as well once the event is over and you are just waiting for the power lines to get fixed… my phone drained nearly as much but to be fair i left the radio enabled so it was hunting for a tower.
Just something to consider for your gear if you live near the coast or in Texas. Battery banks are pretty cheap.
I’m glad battery backup can keep the internet going for a long time but I also have data to use and never get close to making a dent in it. If service providers went down though I do have several radios around the house. I don’t go anywhere but I’d I did i would carry a little radio lol. That being said, I miss my smart phone and flip phone that had radio on it. I don’t care about headphone jacks but I definitely would love radio.
The components to make the phone able to decode FM radio take place. Which, in such small device, is valuable. If you really need FM radio for emergency situations, why not take a dedicated miniaturized FM radio receiver?
Not sure if this is still the case, but in the past the FM radio functionality essentially came “free” as part of either the SoC or modem. Since it used headphone wires as the antenna, the death of the headphone jack pretty much killed any purpose for including it.
There is no such thing as “free” functionality in hardware. Old SoC may have had this functionality, but it was at the cost of some die space, that has since been reclaimed by other function more useful to most users.
FM radio was integrated in even smaller phones 20 years ago. And the tech to “decode the signal” is already present in today’s phones. FM are radio signals, just like NFC, Wifi, Bluetooth and cellular.
Not the same radio frequencies, not the sames technologies (analog vs digital). Those radio hardware are very specialized, and won’t work on frequencies or technologie they are not meant to.
I’ve come to the realization that the phone I want is a Nokia 3310 “brick”.
- Infinite battery life
- compact size
- headphone jack
- indestructible
- no spyware
- no social media
- T9 texting
- no software updates
- Snake
- Brick Breaker
No. I don’t know of anywhere that a 2G network is still available to use. Some still operate it for emergency calls but that’s it.
T9, back when you could text and drive without ever taking your eyes off the road.
Some of these I get, but I don’t get the T9 thing. T9 was so bad! It took ages to type many words. Today’s predictive keyboards are miles better.
Also, no software updates? Sure, every now and then there’s a shitty update, but most updates are great. New features and especially bug fixes are amazing. Used to be that if something had a bug, you just had to deal with it. There’s no guarantees it’ll be fixed today, but many companies do fix their bugs at least eventually. The ability to iteratively develop is huge for software quality. These days, unless you’re developing something that absolutely cannot fail (like a mars prober or radiation therapy machine), it’s widely agreed upon that iterative design is superior to “waterfall” design of trying to plan it out all ahead of time. Part of why is so you can get feedback continuously instead of only after you’ve committed to months of tech debt.
