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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday September 30 2017, @11:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the you're-not-holding-it-right dept.

Apple would like to remind the FCC that it can't activate imaginary FM radios that iPhones don't have

Apple responded today to FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, who issued a statement that "urged" Apple to activate the FM chips that he claimed are in iPhones in the name of public safety. The recent hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria were the hook for the reasoning. The only problem? Apple hasn't even included FM radio chips in iPhones since the iPhone 6s.

That's right, Pai called on Apple to activate radios that don't even exist.

As John Gruber astutely points out, the statement has the stink of trying to shift blame or attention off of the FCC's own response and readiness issues. Pai has been banging the drum for months now and it's been a talking point of the NAB for years. When ostensibly asked for comment by Bloomberg, National Association of Broadcasters spokesman Dennis Wharton said "The notion that Apple or anyone else would block this type of information is something that we find fairly troubling." Again, the radios do not exist in iPhones and haven't for over a year now.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Sunday October 01 2017, @12:28AM (6 children)

    by fyngyrz (6567) on Sunday October 01 2017, @12:28AM (#575420) Journal

    I went through the chip spins where they tried to get GPS to not interfere with the phone, and vice versa. I imagine getting FM working is the same issue.

    Not so much. GPS is 1575.42 MHz and 1227.60 MHz; Cellular is 800-900 MHz-ish; FM broadcast is 88-108 (US... slightly different elsewhere.) Wifi and bluetooth are also up in the GHz range, well above FM broadcast. Only the GHz range stuff transmits, and interference is almost always harmonically related in the upwards direction, so that won't readily interfere with FM frequencies.

    Yes, the earphone cable is typically used as the FM antenna, and Apple (in an incredibly user-unfriendly move) removed the earphone jack, so FM is problematic for the new designs unless they fix them to use standard earphones again.

    My Galaxy phone didn't support FM until a fairly popular petition pushed Verizon in the right direction, at which point viola, one update later, FM worked fine. With, as noted, the earphones plugged in. Of course, you know, Samsung designed the phone to work, as opposed to Apple, who designed the iPhone 6 and prior, according to them, to not work.

    Starting Score:    1  point
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Sunday October 01 2017, @12:36AM (3 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday October 01 2017, @12:36AM (#575424) Journal
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    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Sunday October 01 2017, @12:41AM

      by fyngyrz (6567) on Sunday October 01 2017, @12:41AM (#575426) Journal

      Yes, there are interesting options for antennas. Fractal antennas are another one that can offer surprisingly good results.

      Still, the earphone cable is easy, and it's there. Well, when the manufacturer isn't busy screwing the customer out of their audio investment, of course.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Sunday October 01 2017, @12:42AM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday October 01 2017, @12:42AM (#575427) Journal

      The Si4708/09 [silabs.com] takes up 6.25mm2. The Apple A10 [wikipedia.org] SoC has a die area of 125 mm2 and the Apple A11 [wikipedia.org] is 87.66 mm2. The Si4708/09 is from 2010 so I assume there is a smaller receiver by now that would soften the blow of bloating the ever-shrinking Apple SoCs.

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      • (Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Sunday October 01 2017, @12:49AM

        by frojack (1554) on Sunday October 01 2017, @12:49AM (#575431) Journal

        These FM receivers (for those phones that had them) were never in the SOC, they were almost always embedded in the wifi chipset, which was (back then, at least) a separate chip.

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Snotnose on Sunday October 01 2017, @01:15AM (1 child)

    by Snotnose (1623) on Sunday October 01 2017, @01:15AM (#575437)

    Not so much. GPS is 1575.42 MHz and 1227.60 MHz; Cellular is 800-900 MHz-ish; FM broadcast is 88-108 (US... slightly different elsewhere.) Wifi and bluetooth are also up in the GHz range, well above FM broadcast. Only the GHz range stuff transmits, and interference is almost always harmonically related in the upwards direction, so that won't readily interfere with FM frequencies.

    You don't quite get how mysterious this stuff can be. In the mid to late 90's a friend of mine was in the antenna group. This was when phones had retractable antennas. His group was trying different alloys in different configurations to figure out what worked and what didn't. Did I mention he was a geology Ph.D? Hella smart, no relevant training at all. He was also the guy that first told me about Burning Man, he always said how he liked to go there, get naked, and whatever. Did I mention he was hella smart?

    Anywhoo, it was maybe 10 years later they were trying to get GPS and cellphone to work together. I was purely software, but for every chip that came down the line I got a memo "disable GPS", and rumor was it interfered with cellphone performance.

    WiFi and Bluetooth came long after Qualcomm got GPS and cellphones working together.

    The other thing you have to keep in mind, outside of RF issues, is battery issues. CDMA means the phone sleeps for 90% of it's time, waking up every few ms to ask "um, do I need to send anything? Anything come in for me? No? I'm going back to bed". Bluetooth messes with this timing. I assume WiFi does as well, even though I never worked on the WiFi software.

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    • (Score: 3, Informative) by fyngyrz on Sunday October 01 2017, @11:30AM

      by fyngyrz (6567) on Sunday October 01 2017, @11:30AM (#575533) Journal

      You don't quite get how mysterious this stuff can be.

      Oh, I get it, all right. I designed RF systems for a living for decades, and still write SDR software [fyngyrz.com] today. RF is my thing.

      Believe me when I tell you that RF interference tends to go upwards. There can be other issues - power supply, for one instance, shared front end overloading for another - but an FM broadcast receive radio in proximity to a GHz level rx/tx system isn't really a problem for either set of capabilities. Which is why you find all of the foregoing in wifi chipsets.