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Phones should have FM radio again (as an emergency safety feature)
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this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Analogue radio is getting shut down in favor of digital broadcasts, so I doubt this would truly be helpful in many areas.
Aren't digital radio less reliable than analog FM broadcasts? Would digital broadcasts be as useful during an emergency?
I don't really know that much about the subject, so I'd like to learn a bit more.
In a life or death situation it would be easier to construct an FM transmitter/receiver than a digital counterpart.
AM transmitters / receivers are far easier to construct than FM ones, though. If I was in an emergency situation where I couldn't communicate with anybody I think I might be able to at least make an AM receiver, even if there aren't very many components around... But I would need a reference to have any clue how to approach an FM one, and you'd definitely need more components available. Frequency modulation is quite a bit more complicated. If you want to transmit, CW is probably your best hope?
Realistically, though, almost anybody in an emergency situation is doomed if the only thing that would save them is building any kind of radio. It's not a skill set that most people have... Which I guess is why you might advocate for everybody's phones to be able to act as FM receivers in case that's the best way to get an emergency broadcast, because then they would have a device that's capable of it on hand. You're probably better off if you have a dedicated emergency radio, especially if you might lose power for an extended period of time, though.
Fair point.
Best part about a simple AM receiver is that it doesn't need a battery... For emergency situations it'd definitely be best as it's dead simple to construct, you can boost gain in radio station for more reach / power to the battery-less receivers, etc. and the transmitters are simple, too.
For emergencies it's also not a bad idea to have an offline copy of Wikipedia.
Kiwix is great and Wikipedia is surprisingly small :).