Sprint plans on offering FM tuners on majority of smartphones over the next three years
Taking a page out of HTC’s handbook, Sprint announced today that it is planning on offering FM tuners on a wide selection of its Android and Windows Phone smartphones over the next three years. This will be delivered through the NextRadio tuner application and a compatible FM radio chip, available later this year.
This is the first time a US carrier has committed so strongly to offering a majority of its smartphone customers the ability to receive local FM radio broadcasts on their smartphones. Currently, most smartphone users have to enjoy radio by streaming it online – and as many of us know, Sprint’s ailing 3G network oftentimes isn’t up to the challenge.
Of course, HTC EVO users have had this ability from day one back in 2010, so it’s easy for some people to take this feature for granted. Still, this should be welcome news to many other people, particularly Windows Phone fans. Sprint also says that the NextRadio tuner app will offer some additional features not available to current radio listeners, although it didn’t name what those features would be.
[Sprint]
