No, I’m full of ideas why someone finds FM overly important. Also, that was one argument; not two. I’m not the one who brought up the scenario about FM being necessary during a catastrophe.
I can give you another one: refusal to adapt to new situation. Typical something elder people suffer from.
I also gave several alternatives to the situation, which was conveniently ignored. There’s headsets which have FM functionality (heck they existed 20 years ago as well). You could use such a thing, if you find this feature very important. That one believes they need to carry their SGS3 around with FM, for this reason, is overly dramatic. Although, to be fair, different smartphones have different pros/cons, and its reusing an old device; in essence something to applaud. As you see, you can explain such things positive or negative. Entirely up to you.
Yes, there are differences, but that does not equal that FM is somehow still required. I argue it isn’t in The Netherlands. I don’t know exactly about other countries, probably going to be different there.
I frankly don’t care about a country like Romania or Serbia (technically Europe) or other East European countries. Fairphone does not cater to them, and they’re as corrupt as I find it unwise to use your normal smartphone there (ie. use a burner, like with China). The coverage where Fairphone officially does sell the FP3, that does matter indeed, but mainly what you use a smartphone for: 4G.
Uh, there’s tons? My smartwatch lasts a month. My e-reader lasts months, and has on-demand WiFi (if I keep that on, yes its going down fast). There’s 2G dumbphones which last months as well. Then there’s LoRa devices, and other IoT, 2G, 3G, even 4G devices. Besides, there’s powerbanks. The notion that you need a FM radio for in case of a catastrophe is ridiculous. We have an ample amount of alternatives. If you want to argue the 2G towers are down, well you don’t know if in such a case the FM transmitters are still working.
Yes, one-way analog services can be used anonymously (though it can be detected that the receiver receives). However, in case of protocols like FM they can generally only be used to receive (due to license reasons).
You sense the pattern? T-Mobile. I don’t know about EU, but T-Mobile Netherlands (and Tele 2, formerly) has excellent 4G coverage. Their 3G coverage has been notoriously weaker though, where KPN and Vodafone have good 2G/3G/4G coverage with Vodafone’s network being clogged (logically, as they’re the cheapest AFAIK). However, sunsetting 2G has the advantage that the frequencies can be used for 4G/5G. Modern smartphones (including FP2 and FP3) will only gain from that, as the very same frequencies will continue to work on the smartphones, with 4G. 4G is better for the battery, data-wise, and has native IP stack and VoLTE. Its a bold move by T-Mobile (might lose them customers on short term) but on long term they’ll be the first ready for 4G/5G on more frequencies.
TL;DR FP3 with 2G being put off to make room for 4G/5G is gonna be no problem for reception; it will probably increase throughput and decrease latency.
From the same source:
So if you’re in Europe and your smartphone does not support 4G, or 4G coverage is bad, you could consider Vodafone. Again: you can stream perfectly fine over 2G. Internet radio with an efficient codec such as AAC or OGG Vorbis is going to deliver good enough quality; better than FM.
True, if you find tracking important, then your cellphone being connected to 2G/3G/4G allows an adversary to track your movement approx (at the very least based on GSM triangulation), or nefarious things if its unencrypted data. That could be a valid concern. However, that’s a given when you own a smartphone without killswitches, like a Fairphone 3. If that is a valid attack vector for your use-case, then I would say don’t get a Fairphone 3, or just remove the battery at times. It is actually an argument for a dedicated device like a SGS3 or headphones with FM or DAP/walkman/… with FM.