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I'm confused. Both my Samsung Galaxy Ace GT-S5830T (January 2011) and Galaxy Ace 3 GT-S7275Y (June 2013) phones came with an app called "FM Radio" that works. They cost me $100 on sale. Why don't the more expensive ones have that feature?

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The radio is built into most chips, even on feature phones. They are generally blocked, or have been until recently, mainly because of politics--using an FM receiver means you might use less bandwidth, which means less revenue for carriers. I have a couple of feature phones built for the Russian market that have FM enabled. I think most non-US phones actually have working FM receivers, but I am not certain of that.

Probably because you live outside of America - for some reason carriers in the states block the FM chip on their phones.

"Your phone has an fm chip. So why can't you listen to the radio?" https://www.wired.com/2016/07/phones-fm-chips-radio-smartpho...

Makes sense. In Europe all smartphones I had had FM Radio application. It requires headphones, but it works.

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