[Spirit FM] mikereidis:
Checking my compatibility list in post 2 and/or asking me is a good idea if you want to know about my FM support.

Yes, and the wording in the code and looking at the SE FM apps indicated I would never be able to support stock unrooted devices, which helped to turn me off, despite their free phone lending program.

Your Xperia Sola MT27i is an exception it appears; perhaps I could in theory support even stock unrooted newer Sony devices.

One bad sign is that you are the only one to ever ask about this model in this thread or my email. As much as I like to support customers with new devices, 1 is never enough.

Your device has the ST Ericsson CG2900 chip. There appear to be no public data sheets on this chip, despite the available source code.

One nice thing is that in theory, I think you could do FM transmit. The chip is supposed to use the same antenna pins for Rx and Tx.

I'm supporting 4 different FM chips now, 10 APIs, and 4 different HCI access methods.

The 4th FM chip "family", Qualcom, was attempted 1/2 a year or so ago I think, and I had to "abandon" it because I didn't have a device and most requests were for a "semi-obscure & semi-mediocre" Huawei device. I only support it now because the LTE HTC OneX has it, and it's OK on the OneX, but still doesn't work too well on the Huawei (Same family but different chip.)

So adding support for a 5th chip is a big deal and a big investment of time, and some expense ($330 ?). My time is more valuable, but it's also useful to note most of my income comes from owners of $500-$800 phones (Just makes sense). Especially in Europe where people tend to pay full price.

Technical observations:

Among other APIs, your Sola supports V4L, which is what the Qualcomm chips use, so it triggers my code adapted for Qualcomm. That's why it takes an extra 6 seconds at startup, it's a timeout for trying to load the Qualcomm firmware etc.

There are errors in the log because I use Qualcomm private functions that won't work on other chips. In theory I could spend a lot of time looking at the driver code and eventually figure things out.

The stock FM app is loading the firmware, or otherwise initializing the chip. This is why you see RSSI in my app after it is started. Seek would work if you ran the Light or Unlocked versions. RDS can't work because I don't support it in Qualcomm V4L yet, and we'd probably hit some chip specific thing anyway.

There are ALSA controls that we might be able to use to enable audio to speaker or headset. I don't see any such functions in the FM driver code.

I don't know how many other Sony devices might use this chip. The Sony & Ericsson "divorce" might be cause to change chip suppliers ? I don't know.

So, unfortunately, I think this is where we stand. If I see evidence of sufficient numbers of users for this chip, or compatible chips, then I will consider investing the time required for proper support of a 5th FM chip. It happened eventually for Qualcomm. It could happen eventually for ST Ericsson.

I DO like the FM transmit, and I DO like the Sony capabilities for recording. And I've seen evidence that Sony customers buy apps. And it's interesting to see Sony is doing well for ICS updates.

But as I've noted in posts above, Galaxy S3 and HTC One X are the popularity contest winners this year. Message boards are full of excitement about them. Sola doesn't even have a section on XDA I think.

ONE thing that could change my mind would be the "ST Ericsson proposed standard Android FM API" gaining some traction. I'd LOVE to support a standardized, documented API for Android. The API code is even in AOSP last I checked, but it was pretty much the same dusty old code from 1-2 years ago. And there is no sign that anyone but ST-Ericsson might support it, and I'm not even sure what their (or Sony's) dedication to it is. Last I heard they moved further development of the API to India.