You know that your cell phone has a built-in chip that allows you to turn it into a receiver FM Radio? No, don’t bother looking for an App that allows you to do this. From 1 January 2021, listening to the radio on phones will be banned. But where does this restriction come from?
The limitation was imposed by law 205/2017, also known as decree unlocks construction sites, which in Article 28 paragraph 5 establishes the timeframe: “For mobile telephony devices and new category N vehicles, the obligations of marketing to the consumer, referred to in Article 1, paragraph 1044, of Law no. 205, take effect from 31 December 2020 “.
This means that the ban applies to all smartphones that will be sold starting January 1, 2021, including those that have already been delivered to retailers but are still lying in warehouses or on store shelves.
The ratio of the law would have been, in the intentions of the legislator, to favor technological innovation by allowing consumers to purchase devices compatible with the Dab+, that is, the digital radio format that now reaches over 70% of the population. This is a technological evolution of the radio transmission method that allows, for example, to listen to the radio in the car even inside tunnels or tunnels and to receive multimedia content such as images and texts. However, to work properly the Dab + requires the installation of an additional antenna, as well as a dedicated chip. Expensive and space-hungry components in the smartphone case.
The date low demand of this functionality on mobile phones, the production of devices compatible with Dab + proves to be economically disadvantageous. Among the major smartphone manufacturers only LG, with the Stylus 2 of 2016, has decided to integrate the technology, without however obtaining the desired response.
The most diligent to obey the new legislation were the Koreans of Samsung which, on the occasion of a software update of their devices, will also disable the function that allows you to listen to the radio in FM. The phones from the Seoul manufacturer affected will initially be the Galaxy A50 and Galaxy A20.
Are there any possible remedies to keep receiving FM radio on your phone? A solution, rather drastic, would be not to update the smartphone software, however condemning oneself both to not benefit from the technological improvements and the resolution of bugs gradually made, and to expose themselves to potential hacker attacks. A more rational choice could be to rely onlistening in streaming, possible both from the specific apps of the individual radio broadcasters and through the internet, on dedicated sites. Streaming radio reception only consumes modest gigabytes.
–
