So we all know for weeks that the Cliq/Dext, Droid/Milestone, Nexus One, and even the iPhone 3GS, have the Broadcom BCM4325 chip that besides integrated IEEE 802.11a/b/g (MAC/Baseband/Radio), Bluetooth 2.1 + enhanced data rate (EDR), also integrates an FM receiver. When I saw some tweets that our friends over at alldroid.org had a topic going about creating an application to take advantage of this chip I decided to do some digging.
Turns out that Erin Yueh, who has Android running on his  Beagleboard, already developed an FM Radio app that runs on Android 🙂 Of course the Beagleboard runs on a TI OMAP3530 so I can imagine the app or the drivers need some porting, but I don’t know enough on that subject. There has to be some deeper reason why HTC, Motorola and the other Android smartphone manufacturers haven’t provided an FM Radio app… maybe we will find out in the near future, when they read my article 🙂
Those of you eager to see this app in action, here’s a video:
Bottom line is, this proves it is definitely possible to have OTA FM Radio on Android devices that have the necessary FM receiver built in. How soon will we see one ?
p.s. I hope the guys over at alldroid.org don’t send me C&D emails for posting this article :o)
