Phones should have FM radio again (as an emergency safety feature)

https://lemmy.world/post/6230589

Phones should have FM radio again (as an emergency safety feature) - Lemmy.world

I didn’t even realize Qualcomm removed the built in FM radio from their chips. Huh.

While not a physical radio, a Linux phone such as the Librem 5 in conjunction with an RTL-SDR dongle and external antenna may be a good candidate for a mobile software-defined radio (SDR) transceiver.

SDR frameworks such as GNUradio or REDHAWK are well-established by this point. Newer versions of REDHAWK are designed to run on CentOS/Rocky Linux, however, and they don’t (AFAIK) come with a mobile-friendly UI.

I do know that there are some web-based SDR tools in the wild. I’m not very familiar with them, their system requirements/capabilities/limitations, but they could be worth a look to jump-start a Progressive Web App for mobile devices.

Or basically any Android with OTG support. There’s a bunch of SDR software also available on Android. SDR++, SatDump, SDRAngel, Welle.io, Dump1090,…

But obviously, a proper GNU+Linux phone will do better.

you can listen to encrypted radio transmissions this way with the correct codes and software of course