I installed LineageOS on my Samsung device, and there doesn’t seem to be a radio app. I have access to an identical device which is running the stock OS. I extracted the radio app on the other device (with App Manager) but cannot install it (unavailable shared library com.samsung.device). (Galaxy A21s, Exynos.) How can I listen to the radio on this device?
Do Samsung phones even have FM antennas? As far as I know they have to be a minimum length and old school feature phones had a hacky workaround where you had to plug in earbuds to listen to the radio because it was using the earbud cable as an antenna. Modern Samsung phones don’t even have headphone jacks so I can’t imagine they support FM at all. Probably your best bet is to use an internet radio service that has access to the stations you like.
My phone does have a headphone jack, and I could listen to the radio on the stock ROM using the workaround you mentioned.
I was going to recommend RevampedFMRadio but I see your device isn’t either Qualcomm or MediaTek.
There’s some discussions on XDA and Reddit I found where someone wanted it on an S10/S10e and the responses were that the Exynos chip does not have any FM radio functionality at all.
I looked up your Exynos 850 chipset and Samsung’s datasheet says it does have an FM radio, as you yourself surmised by it being in the stock ROM.
There is this app (seemingly without anything prebuilt) for a different Exynos chip, but given it hasn’t been updated in 3 years and the chip difference, I wouldn’t have high hopes.
Otherwise you might have more luck asking the LineageOS maintainer why FM radio functionality is missing and if they could add it.
Thanks for the detailed comment! I’m trying to build the app, but I’ve been unsuccessful so far… I have zero experience with this. I’ll try asking the maintainer.
No worries, all the best with that.
I wish I could be more help with the radio app but I get the impression that it’s intended to be built with the ROM and while I’ve compiled ROMs once before I have no idea how to include a different app with the build.
https://f-droid.org/packages/org.y20k.transistor/
although not in FM…
This might be an option, although I am not familiar with lineageOS.
It didn’t work…
RFM Radio popped up when I searched on f-droid (IzzyOnDroid) just there, says it’s incompatible with my version of Android and it requires root but it does actually use FM radio.
It says it only supports “ONLY smartphones with Qualcomm Snapdragon”. Too bad…
Get the app Radio Garden. Gives you access to almost every radio station in the world, but uses streaming
This does not look to be free software. Where is the source code? I found a page on google play store that says “contains ads.”
No, I don’t believe this is an open source project. But I’m not aware of any alternatives. I can’t remember seeing an ad in the UI any time I’ve used it. Maybe a tiny banner ad if ever. But terrestrial radio stations all have ads embedded, so even an open solution would technically have ads
It is not FOSS, but it is usable as a webpage instead of an app. https://radio.garden/
Are there ads on the webpage too? Who knows, that’s what adblock is for.
Putting a proprietary app into a web page doesn’t make it not proprietary. And, if it’s using some web server to replace the built in radio, it may be Service as a Software Substitute too.
