Poll: Should Apple enable the FM radio in its devices
c/o Thomas Beck/Flickr
People across the Caribbean turned to FM radio to help them during the hurricane emergencies. They can use the radio inside most smartphones, but not iPhones….
UPDATE: Why is this? Well, in a public statement from the company Apple confirmed the reason they don’t have FM radio support is because these devices don’t actually contain an FM chip.
Should they?
[CP_POLLS id=”24″]
Apple can’t “monetise” FM radio and thus are seemingly not willing to allow a free service to cannibalise services that they can make oney from.
This is a terrible idea. I would NEVER use my phone as an FM radio during a disaster. That would be a monumental waste of battery power.
You can probably short the battery in an iPhone for heat. Should Apple do that next? Maybe you should be able to remove the battery to start an emergency fire with it, how about that?
Just because it CAN do it doesn’t mean it SHOULD do it.
I have a solar-powered, hand-crank-powered emergency radio for that task. Anyone who doesn’t have one apparently wasn’t prepared for the disaster.
I hope by now that the author and readers realize that the iPhone hasn’t had an FM radio inside it for years… and even when it did, they were incapable of being used due to hardware issues. It was never a switch that could just be flipped by Apple.
Yep! I should have linked through.
https://blogs.computerworld.com/article/3228970/apple-has-a-big-chance-to-do-the-right-thing-updated.html
And also
https://blogs.computerworld.com/article/3228988/how-your-iphone-can-save-your-life.html
What good does it do to turn on a feature only found in old phones? Use a real FM radio. I still have a few of them.