Will my FM radio app work on a new phone?
Q
My Android mobile phone has an app I installed called FM Radio. This app is a genuine FM radio, which uses the headphone cable as an antenna and scans for stations without using the internet. It’s one of the most useful things on my phone. I seem to remember reading that most phones have a radio function buried within them, but that there is a problem with enabling this function.
It won’t be long before I need to replace my phone, so I want to know if I’ll be able to transfer my app to a new phone, and whether it’ll still work. If not, is there another Android app that provides genuine FM radio rather than streaming over the internet? David Horne
A
We don’t know the exact app you’re talking about but, if the developers still support it, it should still work in Android.
However, the real problem is that there’s no guarantee any phone you buy will work with it. It’s true that many Android phones have FM radios built into them, but it’s also true that, for various commercial and technical reasons, many manufacturers disable this feature at the hardware level. Sometimes it can be re-enabled, but often it can’t. We’re sorry if this all sounds rather uncertain, but that’s because the situation is uncertain.
Only a handful of manufacturers actively support FM radio in their phones, and although they tend to be the lesser-known brands and models. The pictured Xiaomi Redmi 10, for example, is equipped with an FM radio, so it would probably work with your app. It costs around £200 ( www.snipca. com/40161).