Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Adid, who writes:
Check this little gadget for android phones or tablets
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32976847250.html
If they have the FM app installed than this will come handy.
One needs to select speaker and not earphone as expected.
It works fine here. (I don’t know if Apple phones have an FM module)
Thank you, Adid! Very cool! This little antenna costs $0.90 USD–an insanely low price.
If you have an old set of earphones lying around the house (I probably have two dozen that ship with various radios) you could also snip off the earpieces and use the pigtail as a wire FM antenna.
Up to the iPhone 6 there is a FM chip in the phone… beyond that NO CHIP . NO FM.
The USA telcos have used their power over phone manufacturers to not enable FM receiver software in mobile phones despite the hardware being capable. The National Association of Broadcasters (USA) has been trying to force phone manufacturers to include FM reception without modification. Apple didn’t want to do it because of the competition between broadcasters and itunes.
Most Android phones in Australia can receive FM natively, but use the earphone cable as the antenna. The inserting the earphone plug will mute the internal “speaker”. Using a bluetooth headphones and speakers overcome this problem.
Mine I connected wire to the 3.5 mm jack’s metallic part to increase the FM signal. As a result, most of Cebu stations received reliably in Tacloban City.
Apple devices don’t have FM capability.
Quite true. But there is Soundot, which adds an FM capability:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/soundot/id1244005808
It needs OS11 , so I couldn’t try it on my Iphone5.
but it say there that it’s “Design for Soundot AF1 headset ” …