this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
490 points (91.7% liked)

Android

27952 readers
122 users here now

DROID DOES

Welcome to the droidymcdroidface-iest, Lemmyest (Lemmiest), test, bestest, phoniest, pluckiest, snarkiest, and spiciest Android community on Lemmy (Do not respond)! Here you can participate in amazing discussions and events relating to all things Android.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules


1. All posts must be relevant to Android devices/operating system.


2. Posts cannot be illegal or NSFW material.


3. No spam, self promotion, or upvote farming. Sources engaging in these behavior will be added to the Blacklist.


4. Non-whitelisted bots will be banned.


5. Engage respectfully: Harassment, flamebaiting, bad faith engagement, or agenda posting will result in your posts being removed. Excessive violations will result in temporary or permanent ban, depending on severity.


6. Memes are not allowed to be posts, but are allowed in the comments.


7. Posts from clickbait sources are heavily discouraged. Please de-clickbait titles if it needs to be submitted.


8. Submission statements of any length composed of your own thoughts inside the post text field are mandatory for any microblog posts, and are optional but recommended for article/image/video posts.


Community Resources:


We are Android girls*,

In our Lemmy.world.

The back is plastic,

It's fantastic.

*Well, not just girls: people of all gender identities are welcomed here.


Our Partner Communities:

!android@lemmy.ml


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I didn't even realize Qualcomm removed the built in FM radio from their chips. Huh.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] jcs@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

While not a physical radio, a Linux phone such as the Librem 5 in conjunction with an RTL-SDR dongle and external antenna may be a good candidate for a mobile software-defined radio (SDR) transceiver.

SDR frameworks such as GNUradio or REDHAWK are well-established by this point. Newer versions of REDHAWK are designed to run on CentOS/Rocky Linux, however, and they don't (AFAIK) come with a mobile-friendly UI.

I do know that there are some web-based SDR tools in the wild. I'm not very familiar with them, their system requirements/capabilities/limitations, but they could be worth a look to jump-start a Progressive Web App for mobile devices.

[–] tal 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

SDR is neat but will be awfully power-inefficient, and if one is thinking of an emergency situation where one has to receive information and even the cell system is down, I would wager that being concerned about power usage on a cell phone is probably also going to be a factor.

My sister and some friends once were out in the forest and managed to get get themselves lost, out of sight of civilization but within cell range. The very first thing that the sheriff told them to do was to turn off all but one cell phone that they had with them, to maximize their battery lifetime. I suspect that that's probably standard advice from law enforcement, and the situation there was a lot-less of a major emergency than a loss of the cell network would be.

[–] Gotoro@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

GPS works anywhere on earth and doesn't require a cell connection, it even works in airplane mode, so you really can't get lost if you have the maps app (which you probably do)

[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

IF you have the local maps downloaded.

Mapping apps like Magic Earth are a lot faster than Google Maps, especially when outside good cell coverage, and it's easy to download maps in advance for wherever you're going to be.

[–] tal 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, this was years back when people were running around with candy bar phones. I'm not saying "you need this to deal with getting lost", but rather just that running out of power is a concern.

[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Or basically any Android with OTG support. There's a bunch of SDR software also available on Android. SDR++, SatDump, SDRAngel, Welle.io, Dump1090,...

But obviously, a proper GNU+Linux phone will do better.

[–] MaxVoltage@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

you can listen to encrypted radio transmissions this way with the correct codes and software of course

[–] MaxVoltage@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

stop sharing police technology bro /,$