Does the FP3 *HAVE* an FM radio?

Thanks. As this only leaves a working notification LED and “automatically stop charging at 80 %” as “nice to have” features, I’m not going through the trouble of rooting right now. And it remains a mystery if just the driver is missing or there is a hardware limitation.

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The Moto G7 Optimo Maxx is supposed to have a working FM receiver as well as a SDM632 CPU. If we can find Android Linux kernel sources with a working FM driver it might be possible to port it to FP3. Again this doesn’t guarantee that it would actually work.

Supposed to be this kernel:

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The Moto G7 Power has a SDM632 and a working FM receiver as well. And it seems, that the source code is already available; according to this xda-developers page:

Not, that I can make anything of it; but maybe this can help as well?

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well, looking at it, there is indeed a radio driver in it - enabled with CONFIG_RADIO_IRIS=y
CONFIG_RADIO_IRIS_TRANSPORT=y
under mmc adapters, which is labeled: “Driver for QTI FM Radio Transceiver”
The FP3 kernel has this driver and it is enabled. It is also referenced in the dtb tree, so in theory this should work, but when I looked at the device tree source, I could not find any pin/IO connection information related. dmesg does not report the driver initializing, which would indicate it might not “see” it’s hardware, which could mean

  1. the hardware is not there (disabled/ommitted in the chip version FP uses)
  2. its misconfigured in the device tree and therefore not found

definitely worth looking into some more. It’s supposed to be there and there is a driver, too.

Edit: btw, yes “transceiver” - by the quick look I had, the driver code includes functions to both receive and transmit FM radio :wink: maybe FP it was disabled for CE conformity issues :wink:

Edit: the comlete lack of any message in dmesg suggests the device tree might be telling the kernel that there is no radio, so the driver doesn’t even attempt to configure. if the device tree were saying there is a radio chip, but there isn’t, there should be an error message of some sort, which I couldn’t find

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About 10-15 years ago (?) small FM transmitters for personal use were common. I think this also was a feature of some early smartphones, and you could transmit audio without a cable or Bluetooth. This should be legal if the radiated power is very low (50 nanowatts?), which should limit the range to a few meters.

Somebody above already said it. The hardware/ processor can handle FM radio, Fairphone simply won’t let you have it. It’s Crippleware. There is no rational reason why a FP can’t do FM radio. In the end, it would have added one or two tracks to the PCB, saving two cents per phone.

The company Fairphone will not comment on whether there are hardware or software limitations. So we have to discuss this further.

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I moved a lot of posts to a new topic to keep this topic here on-topic about whether the FP3 actually has an FM radio.

If you are interested in discussing whether the FP3 actually needs an FM radio, please see the new topic:

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oh i posted in the wrong topic then, sorry about that
then i will write it here again, because more fitting:
local tech store has that in the specs of the FP3
Anmerkung%202020-02-03%20113048
but they could be wrong? idk (ja=yes, for non-german speakers)

Maybe the store has a FP3.1.

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Yes and no.
Yes … it’s not in the current official specs.
No … it obviously was in specs circulated to resellers before the release of the phone, possibly because the SoC used in the phone supports it in general, but it would still have to be implemented with antenna wiring and software support. Software support seems not to be there at the moment but perhaps possible, wiring seems unclear (if I didn’t miss something).

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Does the FP3 NEED an FM radio?

While working on LineageOS for the FP3 I fell over this. It’s based on the device config from Motorola G7 which has a working radio. The radio device is also provided by the kernel. So I played little bit around and got the error codes from the FM-Radio app solved. However the signal level seems not to be enough. I tried with several headphones. This is part of the logcat output I get:

04-23 00:25:46.392  3124  3288 D FMRadio : Received event. Count: 1
04-23 00:25:46.392  3124  3288 D FMRadio : Received <2>
04-23 00:25:46.392  3124  3288 D FMRadio : Got SEEK_COMPLETE_EVENT
04-23 00:25:46.392  3124  3288 E android_hardware_fm: index: 1
04-23 00:25:46.470  3124  3288 E android_hardware_fm: Free the buffer
04-23 00:25:46.470  3124  3288 D FMRadio : Received event. Count: 4
04-23 00:25:46.471  3124  3288 D FMRadio : Received <1>
04-23 00:25:46.471  3124  3288 D FMRadio : Got TUNE_EVENT
04-23 00:25:46.471  3124  3288 D android_hardware_fm: BT soc is
04-23 00:25:46.471  3124  3288 V FMRadio : Current state is 0
04-23 00:25:46.471  3124  3288 V FMRadio : RxEvtList: CURRENT-STATE : Search ---> NEW-STATE : FMRxOn
04-23 00:25:46.471  3124  3288 D FMService: FmRxEvSearchComplete: Tuned Frequency: 103000
04-23 00:25:46.471  3124  3288 D FmSharedPreferences: Save preferences
04-23 00:25:46.472  3124  3288 D FMRadio : mServiceCallbacks.onSearchComplete :
04-23 00:25:46.472  3124  3288 D FMService: startNotification
04-23 00:25:46.472  3124  3124 D FMRadio : mSearchComplete:
04-23 00:25:46.482  3124  3288 D FMRadio : Received <8>
04-23 00:25:46.482  3124  3288 D FMRadio : Got BELOW_TH_EVENT
04-23 00:25:46.482  3124  3288 D FMService: FmRxEvServiceAvailable
04-23 00:25:46.482  3124  3288 D FMService: FmRxEvServiceAvailable: Tuned frequency is below signal threshold level
04-23 00:25:46.483  3124  3288 D FMRadio : Received <11>
04-23 00:25:46.483  3124  3288 D FMRadio : Got MONO_EVENT
04-23 00:25:46.483  3124  3288 D FMService: FmRxEvStereoStatus: false
04-23 00:25:46.483  3124  3288 D FMRadio : mServiceCallbacks.onAudioUpdate :2
04-23 00:25:46.483  3124  3288 D FMRadio : Received <13>
04-23 00:25:46.483  3124  3288 D FMRadio : Got RDS_NOT_AVAL_EVENT
04-23 00:25:46.483  3124  3288 D FMService: FmRxEvRdsLockStatus: false
04-23 00:25:46.483  3124  3288 D FMRadio : mServiceCallbacks.onStationRDSSupported :false

So I guess some hardware wiring or antenna components are missing. Maybe someone with hardware knowledge can check for that on the PCB.

To me personally it wouldn’t matter too much if FP3 would lack FM capabilities. I never use it. However it would be a pity for you guys who miss it.

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So FM is available and working but there’s no antenna? Would providing a wire to the soc work?

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No, it would not. It seems that FM capabilities were wrongly advertised before the FP3 actually came to market. And this rumor has persisted still. We should just forget about it and close this useless topic forever.

I know the story about the wrongly advertised feature… I was referring to the log @Max_S posted…

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Hello teezeh, I don’t think this topic is useless. Because tmho, looking for a way to listen to radio without spending mobile data money nor wasting data centre energy, is useful.
This is true for fm, not to forget dab+.
Surprisingly, the environment-friendly Fairphone company missed this, while the fp3 includes the required hardware …

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Definitely don’t want this topic to die/close.
It seems @Max_S has at least got some degree of understanding the obstacle(s)

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As I need a new smartphone, I’m considering buying a FP, either 3 or 3+.
However, I’d like to make sure it has an FM radio receiver/transmitter included.
I listen to the radio A LOT, and I don’t want to be forced to listen to it through an app requiring an internet connection (4G/Wifi).
Many thanks to the one(s) who can help me answer this question :slight_smile:

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Welcome to the community forum.

I moved your post here to avoid duplicate topics. Please have a look around.

While the Fairphone 3 uses an FM radio capable chipset, it seems the necessary antenna wiring isn’t there, so FM radio can’t be used.
Any place in the internet still listing FM radio in the specs is listing outdated specs, Fairphone and most sellers corrected the error quickly after the launch of the phone.

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