Originariamente inviato da mikereidis
Galaxy S4 GT-I9500/9505:
This is possibly the only new phone I'll be buying this year, after 4 high end phones in 2012, 2 in 2011, and another 12 or so past their prime in both years.
I haven't clearly seen an FM app in any pictures or video, but indications are that there is FM, in the International Exynos 5 Octa GT-I9500 variant anyway.
EDIT: None of the hands on videos shows an FM app in an alphabetical list that should include "FM...". My guess is that the FM app isn't ready yet, and/or the demo units are Qualcomm LTE variants with FM disabled.
It appears there is, as usual, a Qualcomm LTE GT-I9505 variant for the US and some other countries. FM for these is unclear. Con: US Sx variants have never had FM, Pro: US carriers may be paid by broadcasters to enable FM.
It appears the S4 will use a BCM4335 combo chip for 802.11ac and BT4. It's difficult to trust early wordings of info articles but it seems as if this chip may also be used for FM.
Samsung has never before used Broadcom FM chips in their highest end devices: GS/GS2/GS3/Note/Note2. They've always used otherwise almost unknown Silicon Labs SI470x chips. And this has been despite that all these devices use Broadcom combo chips for WiFi and BT. They've always just left the antenna pins grounded to disable the FM.
So, Broadcom FM would be a major shift for Samsung on the GS4, and it would give me reason to support this chip in Spirit2. There's no other current high end device out that uses Broadcom for FM, other than the coming HTC One.
This shift to Broadcom, and the likely use in all GS4 variants, provides hope that all variants will be capable of FM.
The BCM4335 appears to be receive only. No transmit. Frequency range is likely about 65 MHz - 108.
I hope the 4335 chip can also support direct digital FM audio, at various sample rates and bits. But if so, there is likely reverse engineering to do to work with it.
Broadcoms' continued "design wins" in high end devices have me questioning the success of Qualcomm combo chips. Qualcomm SOCs and BPs/modems are doing very well, but there must be some reasons why the "integrated" WCN36xx chips are being passed over.
There may be connections between this and Broadcoms' role in the rewriting of the Bluetooth system in Android 4.2.