Bad news for all smartphone owners: from January 1, 2021 FM radio will be disabled and you can only use streaming, waiting to change smartphone.
Radio is dead, or rather not: from January 1, 2021 all consumer electronic devices that can be used to receive the FM radio signal, that is also smartphones, will no longer be able to keep the FM receiver active by law.
To be precise, in compliance with Law 205 of 2017. Goodbye to radio on smartphones, then? Not exactly because the same law also requires that newly manufactured smartphones are able to receive digital radio, in DAB and BAB+ standards. The problem, however, is for smartphones already on the market that do not have a digital radio reception module, but only the one for the analogue FM signal: what will happen to these smartphones? Li potremo ancora usare per ascoltare la radio? La risposta ce la mostra Samsung, che ha già aggiornato il suo primo smartphone per "metterlo a norma".
Che succede alla radio FM del cellulare il 1 gennaio
Samsung ha già spento la radio FM al suo smartphone Galaxy A50, con un semplice aggiornamento software. In questo modo l’azienda inizia a mettersi in regola con la legge, ma gli utenti restano senza una funzionalità per la quale hanno pagato.
A breve su tutti gli smartphone, di Samsung e di tutti gli altri produttori, verranno spenti i moduli radio e gli utenti affezionati a questa funzionalità non potranno che cambiare smartphone comprandone uno più nuovo, dotato di sintonizzatore DAB. The bad news is that there are very few smartphones with digital radio tuners.
How to continue listening to the radio on your smartphone
Those who can't or won't change their smartphone, but can't give up listening to the good old radio have only two options: block software updates on the phone (all of them), or listen to streaming radio via an app. All national radio stations have an app, and many regional and local radio stations do as well.
Blocking updates is highly inadvisable, because every update almost always contains security patches that patch recently discovered flaws. Switching to streaming, on the other hand, is not the best because it consumes a lot of data from the phone plan.
To tell the truth, though, not all streaming radios consume the same amount of data: it depends a lot on the CODEC adopted and how it is configured. The higher the playback quality, the higher the amount of data transmitted (and consumed). In some cases you can set the bitrate at will, to choose your own compromise between data consumption and listening quality.