• Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    I don’t think they’re joking at all… what they said is true. If the phone has an FM receiver then the wired headphones do serve as the antenna for it. It will not work without wired headphones.

    Back in the day that was a good way to have free music over the air if you didn’t have an unlimited data plan, which most people didn’t.

    It’s just obsolete tech now. Having a headphone jack doesn’t mean anything if the phone doesn’t have an FM receiver. Most phones don’t have an FM chip in them anymore.

    • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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      12 hours ago

      Having a headphone jack doesn’t mean anything if the phone doesn’t have an FM receiver.

      It means I can connect my phone to my car stereo without a bunch of fucking dongles.

    • Bruncvik@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      My current phone is Samsung XCover 4. It’s a fairly newish rugged phone; still has a FM receiver.

      • Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        No you can’t… at least not easily or cost effectively.

        It’s not just the wire on the headphones, it’s how an analog jack works. A 3.5mm audio jack routes raw analog signal through a direct electrical connection. USB doesn’t not. Without the raw analog signal, the FM receiver can’t do anything with it.

        You need extra hardware like an analog pass through to get USB to handle analog radio signals. And that’s expensive and bulky for no benefit over an audio jack which is compact and dirt cheap.

        Respectfully, you don’t know what you’re talking about here.

        • offspec@lemmy.world
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          14 hours ago

          I’m not disagreeing that the FM radio circuit being directly connected to the trs connector is how phones worked for decades, I’m just saying that they said you couldn’t get FM radio over usb, so I assumed they must not be talking about literally receiving FM radio to the computer because obviously you can use SDR over usb. Maybe I’m just too autistic to appreciate what they were trying to say, but the interpretation I had from their comment was that killing TRS removed the ability for your phone to receive radio even including over usb, which is demonstrably wrong. But yes, your phone receiving the raw analogue signal through the TRS connector and using its dedicated radio circuit is in fact a thing, and almost certainly the better way to do it.