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Comment Re:Obvious (Score 1) 350

Well, it takes a bunch of time and effort to implement and test it, and the primary middle man [the carriers] have a vested interest in not having it, for a feature that can only work for some users [people who use wired earphones].

And the carriers are working on get at least some emergency messages to get sent to cell phones via SMS's, which everyone with a cell phone can get [and you may even get them if you don't have a working cell phone account, same as making a 911 call], which works on the vast majority of phones, regardless of what happens to be connected to it or what mode it's in [except airplane mode, but FM would also be disabled in that mode]. And the phone normally is configured to alert the user they have received a text message.

And hours after the initial 'event' most people will have moved to where a radio and/or tv will be to learn more about it.

So, IMHO, this is really just a made-up issue [presenting it as a safety issue] by an industry that is losing listeners and ad-revenue.

Comment Re: Obvious (Score 4, Informative) 350

So, for a bunch of people, the FM feature would never work, because they don't use wired headphones.

"Please plug in a wired headset to enabled this feature".

A non-trivial number of people:
-just use it as a hand-held device, holding it up to their head when using it as a phone
-have a wireless headset

And it can't be great for those that do, because you don't know how long the antennae is, or how it's terminated [or even more fun, splitters so the port drives two sets of headphones].

These problems aren't insurmountable, but it all takes a bunch of time and effort [so it would add to the cost of every phone], along with competing goals of two separate wireless industries [FM Radio vs cellular providers]. And given that the cellular providers are a much bigger industry than FM Radio in the US, it seems unlikely that FM Radio will be able to give a large enough 'contribution' to Congress and/or the FCC to make this happen [and there definitely doesn't seem to be enough actual end users clamoring for this to get them to do it].

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