Most smartphones sold across the globe have a FM radio chip inside which lets users tune into terrestrial radio stations however the chips are usually disabled in handsets sold in the United States. AT&T demonstrated a major shift from tradition just last month when it announced that all Android phones that it will sell from next year are going to have FM chips activated. T-Mobile is now following suit with an announcement of its own.
T-Mobile CEO John Legere said over Twitter that Magenta is “saying yes to FM,” adding that T-Mobile will be pushing its OEM partners to support this. His tweet came in response to a campaign by NextRadio which is an app that lets people listen to radio stations on their smartphones.
What this means is that in the future smartphones being sold through T-Mobile are going to come with activated FM radio chips, users will then get access to music, local news as well as emergency information through the activated chip.
The best part about FM radio chips is that they don’t consume any mobile data so a user can be tuned to a channel the entire day but not spend a single MB of data when streaming music or just listening to the news.