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Smartphone DXing

BostonRandy

BostonRandy

Anyone have any comments on DXing via a smartphone? My Droid 2 has an FM Radio app that seems to be pretty decent. It is also RDS capable. Thanks in advance!

Randy
 
My Droid 3 has an FM chip as well, but the app had to be installed separately. It sounds pretty good but I wouldn't consider it DX worthy. It has quite a bit of first adjacent noise and headphones as an antenna limit its ability to get a good signal on weak stations, although it does a decent job. Its still really nice to have an FM tuner always with you on your phone. RDS support is nice too.
 
My HTC Thunderbolt has an FM radio with RDS data too. I wonder if there are any phones out there yet that have an AM radio tuner in them?
 
Buckeyes2001 said:
I wonder if there are any phones out there yet that have an AM radio tuner in them?
Click to expand...

Where would you put a loopstick antenna inside a 1/4" thick smartphone? The earbud leads are a couple orders of magnitude too short for AM and are barely long enough for FM.
 
KeithE4 said:
Buckeyes2001 said:
I wonder if there are any phones out there yet that have an AM radio tuner in them?
Click to expand...

Where would you put a loopstick antenna inside a 1/4" thick smartphone? The earbud leads are a couple orders of magnitude too short for AM and are barely long enough for FM.
Click to expand...

The newest radio on chip IC's work with a PC board trace around the outside of the board, forming an AM loop.
 
rbrucecarter5 said:
KeithE4 said:
Buckeyes2001 said:
I wonder if there are any phones out there yet that have an AM radio tuner in them?
Click to expand...

Where would you put a loopstick antenna inside a 1/4" thick smartphone? The earbud leads are a couple orders of magnitude too short for AM and are barely long enough for FM.
Click to expand...

The newest radio on chip IC's work with a PC board trace around the outside of the board, forming an AM loop.
Click to expand...

A smartphone is about 4.5" x 2.5". How would a PC board trace 14" long and formed into a rectangle work on AM? 14 inches is a full wavelength at close to 800 MHz, too small even for UHF-TV (assuming a closed loop). A decent sized loop antenna for AM is much larger than this.
 
HTC Evo Shift. VERY sensitive & decently selective. (and good audio quality) I no longer bother to bring a radio with me for DXing while on vacation -- the phone does better than any portable I own.

No HD but does have RDS. Amusingly, the last PS (station name) received is stored with the station's frequency -- so if you tune in "Z98.7" in Nashville -- and then carry the phone to Milwaukee & tune to a 98.7 station that doesn't have RDS -- your phone will say you're still listening to "Z98.7".

Unit definitely uses the headphone cord for an antenna, as the radio app refuses to run if there are no headphones plugged in. (but it will let you play the radio through the speaker)

Given the horribly wimpy antennas attached to car radios, I don't think a smartphone is necessarily too small to host an AM antenna. It might be fairly deaf, but no worse than many past dirt-cheap FM portables. The problem is, an AM antenna inside a smartphone is wrapped around a computer.. and probably couldn't get a 50,000-watt station 200 feet away through all the computer noise.
 
KeithE4 said:
A smartphone is about 4.5" x 2.5". How would a PC board trace 14" long and formed into a rectangle work on AM? 14 inches is a full wavelength at close to 800 MHz, too small even for UHF-TV (assuming a closed loop). A decent sized loop antenna for AM is much larger than this.
Click to expand...

I may have mis-spoken. Silabs AN note 383 describes antennas for smartphones but I don't see the one turn loop for AM. But those air core loops for AM on iPod docks are smaller than a smart phone. I can see them downsizing them to a single turn if they just go up on embedded capacitance. All you have to do is make a decent resonance with the L and C in the AM band. Makers of AM radios don't care about DX, they just want the band to work on strong local stations.
 
Thanks, everyone!!
 
I have a HTC Thunderbolt and when I plug it into my reciever with a 12 foot cord the built in FM radio actually performs quite well! It's the only way I can get some stations that are close together. Can get a NPR station from 60 miles away on 91.9 with no problems and there's a local on 91.7. I'm pretty happy with it :)
 
I have the Gigaware HD radio on my iPhone. It sucks, there is a lot of self-interference that kills the sensitivity. Besides, all the stations I can get on it also stream.
 
On Android phones, Download from the Market, Apps -- TUNEIN RADIO or MEDIA U and you can DX all you want... By format, City, State or other countries.

Your're welcome!
 
There's just something special about pulling in a station via e-skip or tropo than by streaming it. That's why I still carry around my Insignia portable HD radio even though I have an iPhone that has thousands of songs on it and can receive any station that streams.
 
It's cool to be able to get faraway stations online, but if it's a larger market you won't get the same content as the spots will be different. I'd love to hear the on-air version on CBS-FM on New York...the online version has glitches and mistimings galore...and one Saturday night listening session had a Trojan ad every break
 
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