Though not available for the shortwave bands, Google Play reviews are mostly positive for the new software defined radio application that will run on your Android phone or tablet: SDR Touch.
According to the Google Play page, SDR Touch covers 50 MHz to 2.2 GHz and demodulates WFM, AM, NFM, USB, LSB, DSB, CWU and CLW signals. It requires an inexpensive USB rtl-sdr compatible USB DVB-T tuner. Click here to search eBay for RTL-SDR receivers. You then connect to your Android device via a USB OTG cable and SDR Touch should control the receiver.
SDR Touch’s Google Play website has a list of supported receivers–make sure to check the model number from eBay against this list before purchasing. Additionally, you should install their free demo SDR app to make sure your Android device is compatible.
This video shows SDR Touch in action on the FM broadcast band:
SDR touch claims that crashes should be expected as this app is still considered somewhat experimental.
Would be great if SDR Touch could support the HF bands some day.
Just got mine working today. Works great on my note 3. Yes PLEASE get it to work on hf someday soon. Thanx
Due to a complaint from the author of another competing app, SDR Touch was removed from Google Play.
It is available from the XDA Dev Forums though:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2108053
You can read about the complaint there.
It’s back up on Google Play.
It would be nice if it could be applied to the radios already inside my device.
There are… 9 different bands built in?
Wow – Very cool. I only have Apple devices here at my “shack”, I’m going to watch this development – I can soon see myself investing in a Android tablet too!
And that’s the great thing about Android tablets, they’re pretty inexpensive. Just make sure you have the right version of the Android OS. I bet someone will port this to iOS too.
Cheers,
Thomas