07 March 2008

Listen to your Phone Radio without Headphones

Just like the all phone FM tuners, Visual Radio applications that is preinstalled on Nokia S60 devices requires wired headphones to be plugged in as it act as the FM aerial. Sure, it is possible to listen the internet radio stations via 3G or EDGE without headset but unfortunately it cause huge battery drain and requires good data plan or free WiFi.

If you don’t like idea about carrying the headphones there is a simple aerial that replaces the headset and enables you to use your lovely phone as a stand-alone high quality FM radio.

Aerial is 150mm long, 4mm diameter and can be adjusted through 180 degrees; it is made of flexible wire and plastic coated for safety. It conveniently replaces the headphone lead as an aerial source, and can be easily adjusted for optimum reception in any environment where listening on the supplied wired headphones was previously possible.

It is enough to simply insert it into the 3.5mm audio jack socket, run Visual Radio and to activate loudspeakers of course. All other radio functions operate as usually, including volume, station selection and storage etc.

Unfortunately it lacks the call accept/refuse button and therefore it is necessary to remove it to answer an incoming or make an outgoing call.

The aerial should probably work successfully with any Nokia Smartphone that has a built-in FM radio and standard 3.5mm audio socket and the 2.5 mm version should be available soon.