How useful is your cell phone in an emergency? That answer depends on whether or not the emergency situation has disabled the cell towers. If those towers are down — as has happened in several recent disasters — then your smartphone is a brick. The solution proposed by the Feds is to enable your phone to receive FM radio.
A few phones in the past had FM radio ability. I believe the original Droid did. It came with an app that let you listen to broadcast FM, providing a headset was plugged in. (My guess was that the headset provided the antenna.)
Because cell phones receive all their information via wireless, when the wireless signal goes down, your cell phone cannot send or receive anything. It could, however, receive emergency information over the FM radio if it were so equipped. Turns out that’s exactly what the Feds are thinking.
