like I lived through the brick to flip phone to smartphone era, but I can’t remember what features I was looking at on these flip phones when I was deciding which one to buy. do you guys remember?
Never had a flipphone but I would imagine that features like: opening with one hand, FM radio, and a good microphone, and builtin games are a must. I’m gonna get a refurb (excellent condition from amazon) Samsung flip3 5g so I’m hoping that I can open it with one hand, and I’m a bit sad that’s there’s no FM radio on it. But a lot of comprises are made when buying former flagships. (No SD card slot, no FM radio, no headphone jack.)
I don’t remember phones ever having FM radio as a norm. Yoy could listen to stations that were playable online if you had data. But that was before streaming is what is now.
Very common before 2010. As far as I know the fm decoder was integrated in the SoC itself (at least it is so in modern SoCs), so it’s not even that demanding on the design. Probably not a requested feature, which is a bit sad
I liked the ones that had fm receivers in them and if you plugged in a pair of headphones they would act as the antenna and you could listen to local Radio stations.
I honestly miss that in modern handheld devices. A lot of radio stations aren’t even available as Internet radio, and if they are, there’s often no common search database (except iHeartRadio, except fuck iHeartRadio) so you have to manually input the stream URL, and a lot of them make it a pain in the ass to even find the stream URL on their site.
In short: fuck Internet radio. FM’s where it’s at.
Edit: Sorry, I should have specified: I’m in the US, specifically the Midwest.
You can also try https://f-droid.org/packages/net.programmierecke.radiodroid2/
Seems like it’s no longer maintained, but it works fine, has search, sleep timer.
It uses data from https://www.radio-browser.info/
It’s all FOSS
I don’t know its source for stations, but Transistor has direkt links for many German radio stations and probably other regions too.
I still vastly prefer FM, DAB or Satellite radio, but when those aren’t available Transistor is a nice alternative.
Sorry, I should have specified: I’m speaking from the perspective of a Midwestern American.
Cost. Weight. Serial connection for use as a modem.
I looked for one that could fit in my front chest pocket and be indestructible when fallen out, and then kicked across the floor as I reach for it.
The LG EnV2, that’s what I looked for in a flip phone.
Yes, it opened sideways instead of top to bottom but it was still a flip phone.
I still miss it sometimes, I wish someone would come out with a new version for Android, just the same simple front with only a physical number pad and a small screen, then have it open like a Samsung folding phone to a full screen Android display.
