Samsung Galaxy S10 FM radio

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quickymart

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#273192 9-Aug-2020 23:29

One phone I'm eyeing for a future purchase is a Samsung Galaxy S10. I saw one in a shop today and it looks nice. However it doesn't have an FM radio by default (a feature I use daily).

Some searching reveals that some S10's have it available and some don't, using an app called NextRadio (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nextradioapp.nextradio&hl=en).

Can anyone with an S10 please confirm if this works or not in New Zealand? It seems to work for some regional variants of this phone - but not all...and if I was to get one, I would purchase it here.

Thanks in advance :)

jonathan18

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#2537539 10-Aug-2020 06:09

That app is not available in the NZ Google Play Store, and an APK I tried stated it wasn't compatible with my phone.

Do you have any specific evidence that the S10s sold in NZ have an FM radio chip?

I had expected to really miss having a built-in radio on my phone when I moved to my previous phone 2-3 years back, but it really has been fine. Depending on the bitrate of the steam of course, internet radio doesn't chew up much data.

Further, in the era of podcasts and offline Spotify it's easy to have more content than you can listen to right on your phone and without using mobile data. I get that is originally a significant charge in listening habits, but there are such advantages too. Personally I don't miss linear radio given I can select exactly what I want and listen to my podcasts at 2x speed, have no or minimal ads, skip boring bits... Win-win.

quickymart

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#2537546 10-Aug-2020 07:20

I have no confirmation, sadly...just what I've found online. I'd settle for streaming but I travel to a few places where there's minimal cell coverage, certainly not enough to stream - yet FM works fine.

This is the page I got my information from:

https://www.slashdigit.com/how-to-enable-fm-radio-on-samsung-galaxy-s10-s10-plus/

jonathan18

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#2537562 10-Aug-2020 07:56

Is there specific content you'd not be able to do without if you relied on downloaded content in those areas without data coverage?

It's just I think it's a problem with many possible solutions or substitutions so to decide on a phone in 2020 based on whether it has a radio is going to be unnecessarily restrictive, and this is only going to get trickier and trickier as fewer phones will feature this.

quickymart

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#2538291 10-Aug-2020 21:22

Not really, but in some places I've been (as well as when roaming) it's nice to have the radio there to pick up local stations. I guess I'm so used to it now; every phone I've ever had - barring a couple of very early model Nokias - have all had an FM radio, and it's something I would seriously look at for my next phone.

mentalinc

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#2538349 11-Aug-2020 07:47

My understanding is that NZ phones from Samsung use the exynos chips which don't have FM radio, but the USA phones use qualcomm (snapdragon) chip which do have FM radio.

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rogercruse

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#2538358 11-Aug-2020 08:11

Why don't you just purchase a small FM radio?

quickymart

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#2538834 11-Aug-2020 20:16

rogercruse:

Why don't you just purchase a small FM radio?

I hear what you're saying, but then I may as well purchase a camera, and a compass, and carry those things around with my phone...which kinda defeats the purpose of what I'm trying to do, really (have it all on one device).