FM radio was a very common feature on mobiles in the early years of Android. Almost all phones had the necessary chip to tune in the radio out of the palm of our hand, but the rise of podcasts (although new creations have dropped) and the ability to listen to it on the internet have pushed this cool feature away.
Many users wonder if their brand new terminal does it have fm radio or notwe are therefore going to explain to you how to know if your mobile is compatible with FM radio, as well as what you can do to use it.
Is my new phone compatible with FM radio?
To begin with, we warn you in advance that fewer and fewer models integrate the material needed to tune in radio stations. It’s a deprecated feature
So, and starting from this base, the ideal is look at the technical sheet of your specific model. If you have an entry-level or mid-range Xiaomi, chances are you have this feature. Some of the best-selling models such as Redmi Note 9, Redmi Note 10 Pro, POCO X4 Pro 5G or some versions light They have FM radio.
If you still have questions, take the manual included in the box of your mobile and search for this feature. Or we can enter the manufacturer’s website, although in GSMArena they have a mobile locator in which we can filter by features, here are the results of phones with FM radio.
Another faster way is locate the necessary application to listen to it. If you see in the list of applications a call “Radio FM” or with a similar name, the most normal thing is that your terminal has the necessary antenna.
As a final check, we can use the diagnostic tools that our androids incorporate. Depending on the manufacturer, to access the diagnosis you will have to enter different codes. Here we leave you the main ones:
- On Samsung phones: by typing *#0*# in the phone application and pressing call.
- On ASUS phones: by typing .12345= in the Calculator application.
- On HTC phones: Type *#*#3424#*#* in the phone application.
- On Sony phones: Type *#*#7378423#*#* in the phone application.
- On Xiaomi phones: in writing ##64844## in the phone app.
How to Use FM Radio on Your Android Mobile
We now move on to classy from the question: use FM radio. To use the frequency modulated stations, we must have an application that is part of the pre-installed applications on our device. Obviously, each manufacturer makes their own application since Android does not have native support.
The app drawer (or the home screen if the personalization layer doesn’t have it) will host this application which is recognizable by name. As we can see in the image below, this is what the FM Radio icon and application look like on Xiaomi mobiles.
Some manufacturers usually have add your own solutions to Google Play Store, and so they are updated. An example of this is Motorola, whose app can be found in the official Android app store. Huawei also has its own which can be downloaded from APKMirror.
These applications have a similar interface, just launch it to listen to the radio from your mobile. We will be asked to connect headphones, since they act as an antenna, improved signal reception. Later we will be able to tune in to all the stations, useful to memorize them and access them more quickly.
Depending on the manufacturer’s application, we will have more or less useful functions.
Some additional functions provided by manufacturers such as Xiaomi are the possibility of making recordings, which will allow us to listen later our favorite program. Normally they allow us to tune the strings manually (by setting the frequency) or scan them automatically. If we scan them, the app will record the specific frequencies where they are best heard.
As an alternative, we have Spirit2, an application that can replace official solutions from manufacturers. Although it has not been updated for a while, it is compatible with phones with FM Radio chip. This application is useful if we have installed a custom ROM like LineageOS, since we are losing official support. We can download it from the XDA Developers forum.