[THINKTANK] FM Radio from I9000

There is already a thread on this somewhere here. I believe the consensus was that the Vibrant doesn't have the hardware for the FM radio.

Minker17 said:

There is already a thread on this somewhere here. I believe the consensus was that the Vibrant doesn't have the hardware for the FM radio.

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Was that completely confirmed that the hardware is absent from the unit?
I know the camera is, but perhaps this was something that could have not been left out of the PCB footprint/components???

Just playing devil's advocate.

Im pretty sure that it has already been confirmed that the Vibrant does have the FM reciever AND the FM transmitter hardware.

well one of you guys are wrong. which one

lol, seriously
I love how they both have that authoritative tone.
LOL

If from what everyone is saying around the net. That the GPS chip that's in the samsung vibrant, is the broadcom Incontrol 20751. Then not only it has a FM receiver, but there's also a FM transmitter there as well.

sxfx said:

If from what everyone is saying around the net. That the GPS chip that's in the samsung vibrant, is the broadcom Incontrol 20751. Then not only it has a FM receiver, but there's also a FM transmitter there as well.

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so in plain english, whats an advantage of having an FM transmitter. i can start my own late night talk show or something?

Well with a transmitter you can transmit your GPS voice, or phone call to your cars radio through fm.

The way it's been working for me it should be named the Broadcom outtacontrol...

Just pushed the i9000 fm radio app to my vibrant, it doesnt work. Keeps saying to turn on fm radio and ear phones are not plugged in. If we have the hardware, it would be a good assumption we would need drivers loaded in the kernal for it to work.

Unfortunately you are correct, do not expect this to work automagically. Just as the N1 has a FM radio that is no enabled, has to be made to work. FM transmitter is awesome tho'! Great when the devs get it goin'.

scrizz said:

lol, seriously
I love how they both have that authoritative tone.
LOL

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I can see how saying "i believe" would seem authoritative...

Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

setzer715 said:

Just pushed the i9000 fm radio app to my vibrant, it doesnt work. Keeps saying to turn on fm radio and ear phones are not plugged in. If we have the hardware, it would be a good assumption we would need drivers loaded in the kernal for it to work.

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I've pushed the app and libs, and got nothing. It's going to be a kernal issue at this point. Once we have a custom kernal with the fm radio module enabled, we'll golden.

setzer715 said:

Just pushed the i9000 fm radio app to my vibrant, it doesnt work. Keeps saying to turn on fm radio and ear phones are not plugged in. If we have the hardware, it would be a good assumption we would need drivers loaded in the kernal for it to work.

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earphones need to plugged in because they work as antennas.

boodies said:

earphones need to plugged in because they work as antennas.

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LOL, sorry, forgot to mention it kept telling me to plug in my headphone when they were already plugged in.

I have a Captivate and have also pushed the FMRadio.apk to the device.

EVerything runs great - except when one tries to play a station - then an error is received: "Unable to turn on FM Radio"

I have spoken to a dev or two and they are not convinced that the hardware is the same on our devices. It appears from this post:

http://ip208-100-42-21.static.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=7057871&postcount=18

Edit: The person who made the above post works for Broadcom so this chip: InCrystal 20751 should be the same as the BroadCom20751. And, it is in (at least) the I9000's.

Anyway, the nomenclature on the I9000 is: SWB-B23 which is just the print on the protective metal cover.

Bottom line: First - we need to definitively know that the same GPS/FM/BT chip is in the US variants as is in the I9000. *Anyone willing to pull apart their device to see what the cover says If it has the same nomenclature then we'll know. Secondly, until we can get the Captivate's (or, Vibrant's for the T-Mobile users) kernel so we can look around inside and modify it (ie: add the drivers from the I9000 kernel) - we probably won't get the radio working. This is because currently everyone is having to use the Captivate/Vibrant specific kernels to have a working phone one their carrier.

Yes, some are using the new froyo release made for the I9000 on the Captivate/Vibrants - however, they are flashing the Captivate/Vibrant kernels on afterwards - that is why they are not seeing the same performance increase as the I9000 counterparts - and, since many of the drivers are included in the KERNEL that is my suspicion as to why they also don't have a working FM Radio.

The only possible solution I have heard of is "cross-flashing" the kernels - whatever that is... Or, trying to find a way to add in the drivers after the device has been flashed and is working...

Wish I knew how to pull apart the binary kernel/boot.img and put it back together. But, it seems Koush made a post on another thread that the Captivate kernel isn't unpacking without corruption. I'll try to find his post and update this later today.

shaneaus said:

WORDS.

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This is all exciting news.
I was pretty sure that the chip in the PCB footprint should be the Broadcomm with FM TX/RX capability.

/me crosses fingers for a Vibrant "PIRATE_RADIO.APK"

if you dial in the service menu *#*#197328640#*#*

then go to:

1. [6] Common
2. [7] Factory Test

option [8] FM Radio - only one thing is listed and it reads
"Current Command is 6788"

it's built into the kernel so the ability is there, just a matter of finding whats missing between the i9000 and t959 roms