yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mistake91:
Thank you !

Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Don't you think it sounds stupid that a phone is built with a FM tuner inside but it is not used? I have some hard time to understand why they would spend money putiing an FM receiver but not taking advantage of it? What would be the purpose of this strategy?

Regarding your suggestions for another phone, first, it is too late as I have ordered the phone... and when I ordered it the forum said that there was no problem installing an FM apk, second, all other features of this phone are great and I got a very good deal on it in France (only 275€ with a possibilty of 50€ cash back...).

If you have any information on new development on the issue of FM on this phone, please keep me up to date.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mikereidis:
See "US carriers want payment to allow (not disable) free over the air FM on smartphones:" http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=36567961&postcount=5154

I think it's very unlikely I will want anything to do with

FM on this phone again. I've had too many troubles with it thus far.

I'm not going to put hundreds of hours of work and/or MANY hundreds of dollars into buying one of these phones, when my compensation will end up being somewhere between negative income and a small percentage of the legal minimum wage.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mervluk:
Thanks. Phew; glad I just bought the full applicn and in time for me to stick with ICS, in the UK. Not unreasonable to balance the (cosmetic, for me) benefits of JB against the loss of my existing sw. The fm appn is completely satisfactory on RAZR i running ICS in the UK and much better quality than our over-hyped DAB; only has problem where fm reception is poor - which is surprisingly often but less so than with mobile phone data, - and no handheld receiver can handle that.

I know I'm just one user so uneconomic, but I'd be interested to know if there's an alternate update channel for those of us staying on ICS once it's removed from the Store - just had an update so not expecting any more soon.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] diogo.sena:
can't we use the same moto libraries from ics? (maybe copying related libs from system/lib/*fm*.so) ?
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] spunker88:
Couldn't a custom ROM and/or kernel fix this since the hardware was there and working at one point. Using CM10 on my Droid 3, SpiritFM works just fine which I didn't really expect since this phone was never supported by Morotola past GB and it has issues with other hardware like the camera on CM10.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mikereidis:
If you don't realize, I cancel any order at any time (even a year+ later) on request, for any or "no" reason. But Spirit1 and Spirit2 will both be around a year (or 5) from now, and hopefully you'll have some other phone(s) by then that are better supported, and the updates (including to Spirit2) are all included.

Yes, 1% of my customers are Paypal and have a license file and an automatic update mechanism that works perfectly. Email me, or email me anytime for an update.

I just marked the Razr I as incompatible. But sometimes the Play app allows download on such devices; I have no idea why. On some, the build.prop is modified to use a different device name, and that can be a problem, or in this case a solution.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mikereidis:
It's more than libs, it's framework jars and system services too. Can't be done unless you have infinite monkeys.

Yes, absolutely.

Ask your favourite ROM dev and give him the support he needs. Or try yourself ; that's what I did 2 years ago for my HTC Legend, also with a TI chip (WL1273 vs 1283), and Spirit was born.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mikereidis:
Is it true that once upgraded to JB, the Razr I can't be downgraded back to ICS ?

I'm starting to think I could put a warning in Spirit about the JB update, if I re-enabled it on Play.

Have many people updated yet ?
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mattlgroff:
You cannot go back to ICS.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mikereidis:
Thanks !

I've re-enabled XT890 on Play for Spirit, at least for now.

The new Feb 12a release should show a startup popup on this phone warning that the JB update disables FM access.

Hopefully this will save some people from losing FM.

Now if someone could just figure out how to enable FM audio, which would likely require a rooted device at least....
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mervluk:
:( problem I suspect is that since JB update is auto ota hourly nags, we don't have much option. After a lot of hassle, as a newbie, I think I might have disabled the ota update notifications - will anyone else bother; I doubt it, not seen anyone else doing so even on here yet! I asked about how to do so, and received no replies whatsoever! Might be helpful for me personally to have the Store's auto updates enabled though!

I reluctantly, as a keen user of Spirit FM unlocked, think you were right when you said this phone was more trouble than it's worth for the app. The default settings lose audio for me on more than 50% of start ups, and the app has a tendency to hang on exits; I can usually recover audio after toggling several times between auto and manual settings for moto, but what a bother! Regrettably FM Radio, motos ancient application which I tried in desperation, does work more reliably for me.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mikereidis:
There can be little help from others when a phone is in the majority of "less popular phones". Even more so when a phone is not too possible, or less popular, for custom ROMs. My first few Android phones taught me that popular, especially with custom ROM devs, is at least as important as specs and price.

Use whatever works; there's a few UI modified versions of Moto's apps out there.

Solving audio problems has been over 50% of my work the last year. And I've learned over and over again that I MUST have at least one physical phone in my possession for a given audio architecture, for proper support.

And I can't justify buying this phone and spending the time. The facts that it's a "strange, new, unknown" Intel Medfield architecture with no public documentation, a non-ARM SOC and has no ALSA support just makes it worse.

If nobody had told me that Spirit worked on this phone, without any mods, my response would just have been "not supported". But it seemed to work, which was quite a surprise to me (Intel), so I figured support could be done or at least called "experimental", with caveats. And I watched sales figures to see if I could justify buying one.

The fact that there were/are few people using Spirit on this phone also led to a low number & frequency of problem reports, and offers to help with testing. Most people just swear at a problem, blame Spirit or Motorola etc. and move on in their busy life. Maybe 1 in 10 people might report a problem and maybe 1 in 40 have more than 5-10 minutes to help with useful testing.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mervluk:
:) Persistence pays off. Auto-updated whilst in use, from the store today (followed by a manual reboot to clear a temporary locking of the presets) and Spirit FM still good after several uses:

If default audio settings don't work on ics only but as long as you have a signal (no. in left hand corner is positive not zero), I've got it working on manual settings:

Audio Method - Motorola

Debug settings:

General:

FM Chip T1 Motorola

FM API OEM Proprietary

Audio:

Silent Loop checked

From my experience I'd try the above for just "no audio" problems on the RAZR i running ics as changing between earlier and later versions made no difference for me. I did have to swop back and forth between default and manual settings a couple of times to get the lost audio to return though!

Doesn't seem to me to be any compatibility problem with the phone's hardware or chipset. Main thing is good sound quality (subject to signal which is less affected by obstructions), and low battery usage half that of streaming radio (and given the way it's drained by everything else).
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mervluk:
Update: Spirit FM (v1) auto-updated through the store this morning (25 Feb 2013) - still on ics, of course; lost audio but recovered after a reboot. Fortunately settings retained, though station identifier and RDS is now erratic (intermittent, comes and goes). No noticeable change in performance, and no change in the (boring) UI, which I guess is because the Razr i doesn't support digital output from its ancient TI fm hardware (no option available), but as my screen is blanked out most of the time (battery saver) it's no loss really.

Add: one thing is that reception seems clearer with less inteference on weaker stations, below 10 RSSI. Supression on phone calls is also working OK.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mikereidis:
That's GREAT to hear. I made a major change (for all phones) and disabled a phone call state callback that was only needed on Android 2.1 and has been in Spirit since the beginning.

So far I've had no reports of problems with this, and think it will only improve phone call handling while FM is on, at least on devices that had issues with a double mute and unmute.

I don't think I made any changes that I'd imagine could cause these things. But if anyone else sees these, please report.

There are still VERY few devices that can support digitizing the FM audio. The TI FM chip doesn't have to be a factor if it's fed to ADCs. Multiple ADC->DAC conversions and back again are bad, but doesn't sound too bad on Galaxy S class devices I've supported this on.

Digital FM audio might be possible, I don't know. But I'm unlikely to support that on this phone, and many others, due to my lack of time.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] gigamatze:
Recording

Hi Mike,

just a quick question, is recording possible on Razr i (ICS) with the latest version?

I didn't try Spirit FM yet, but that would be a very nice feature to have ;)

Greets,

Matt
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mikereidis:
No.

Spirit Unlocked can support recording, bluetooth, visualizations, equalizers/effects and other digital audio features, but only on Galaxy S class devices and Qualcomm WCN3660/3680 based devices. Sony's also support recording.

It's possible the Razr I could do it, but I think unfeasible unless Motorola/the carrier supports it or someone puts 6-12 months worth of work into figuring it out. Maybe 2-3 months if schematics and programming info was available, but all this stuff is secret.

"Googarola" is pretty much dead to me, sorry to say. Tightly locked bootloaders are just the beginning of my reasoning.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mervluk:
Thanks Mike anyway. The core functionality is now best-ever with 26 Feb on Razr i. OK: no bells and whistles, out of reach of the JB fanboys, and unnecessary if you can always use internet radio, so the user base is miniscule; but the bugbear of fm is variable reception with which Spirit1 now copes admirably - I'm tempted to say among the best of any mobile equipment I've used over the last 20 years, and often for me as good as a dedicated radio - and, I think, better with weaker signals. Hope you get the well-deserved bit of r&r now.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Stuhl_im_Orbit:
Hmmm, all this means Spirit FM works again? Without rooting? Otherwise I would stay with 4.0.4!
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mikereidis:
Nothing has changed, except I re-enabled Spirit for Razr I a while back to provide a popup warning about JB updates at start. And I re-disabled the Razr I yesterday.

Motorola apps or Spirit work without root on stock ICS ROMs. Root doesn't even provide any advantages.

And no app, Moto or Spirit will work on stock JB ROMs.

So, nothing changed with regards to compatibility/support.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mazori:
Razr i radio

Hi

new to this ,

Razor i on Virgin in UK , how can i get radio to work? or will i end up with a brick? :fingers-crossed:

thanks
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mervluk:
Whilst you remain on ics 4.0.4 (check on About Phone under extended settings) then Shin's free FM Radio app (search on Google Play) - which is an old Moto application - still works perfectly on my RAZR i running ics, though as usual you need to connect headphone to the jack to act as an aerial, but can then listen through headphones (better) or though the loudspeaker, which is a bit quiet. Doesn't require unlocking or rooting so should be no greater risk than with any other app for the phone, just uninstall the app if problems or it doesn't work for some reason.

However on the JB upgrade (which we are still waiting for on GB Retail) Moto have apparently removed the hardware control necessary for the application to work so it will get no signal or sound. The alternative Spirit FM no longer shows as available for the RAZR i, but on this phone offers no advantages over the FM Radio app in my experience, as the developer can't support it.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] paulle:
can confirm Shin's free FM Radio app works fine on ics, but not with jb (i tried it). Shin's free FM Radio app is repackeged motorola app (from other moto phones), works fine for examle on a defy with cm10 but not on a razr i wit jb.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mikereidis:
No "official" support, but I'm still trying to help people, particularly any customers.

And even the "official" support was full of hacks and guess-work; almost impossible when I don't have the phone, ESPECIALLY because it's a very rare Intel based device and Intel public documentation for the chips is non-existent.

It turns out that Spirit DOES "work" on rooted JB devices, using /dev/tifm, but there is no audio.

I've tried looking at the ALSA controls, but I can't even find out what they are. I think this is because my ssd utility for this doesn't work on Intel.

Perhaps somebody with a rooted phone could see if this app produces ALSA info ? : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.skvalex.alsamixer

And the stock ROM doesn't have alsamixer or amixer utilities, but perhaps somebody has been able to load such utilities to get info ?
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] diogo.sena:
Tried, this app asks to install three files missing in xbin: alsa_amixer, alsa_aplay and alsa_ctl

The weird thing is app also says that dozens of alsa Conf files are installed...

Maybe these xbin files needs to be recompiled for x86? what about kernel? Somebody know if it needs to be recompiled for alsa support?

Enviado de meu XT890 usando o Tapatalk 2
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mikereidis:
Yes, could be.

An annoying thing is that ALSA utilities generally require ALSA libraries, and sometimes config files, be available.

My ssd utility bypasses that and uses kernel ALSA APIs directly to avoid this problem on many phones.

In theory, I may be able to build my ssd for Intel architecture. But I'm still using an old version of NDK and have no Intel phone to test on, and I'm hesitant to spend too much time on the still very rare Intel architecture.

Kernel seems to support ALSA fine. That's how I know it's there.

Maybe there is some ROM with ALSA libs and utilities ?
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] cslaviero:
Hey mike,

since you are talking about the razr I radio support in JB in this thread I thought about asking here instead of the official post: II've read the messages here and my question is: is there a GOOD chance of having support for razr i again (when in JB)? I'm inclined to buy this phone for myself, but I'd would be more inclined to buy than ever if you say "yes, there's a good chance of having Spirit FM working on this phone" :)
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mikereidis:
I'm focusing on where my "financial support" is coming from, and that's on custom ROMs where there is no other FM app available.

For that reason, I'm moving away from Motorola support. Moto makes fine phones, but it's not a good option for custom ROMs. And even the custom ROMs on older Moto's were able to run a stock Moto FM app. Including this Razr I. Also, most high end Motorola phones recently have not had FM support, officially or not. And... currently, only 4% of my income is from Moto, and 95% is from Samsung and HTC.

I don't think the chances are good, and are pretty much impossible if we're talking about stock, un-rooted. You'll have to find someone who can do the hard work this takes, and again, likely on rooted only.

Let's say Moto came out tomorrow with another update that re-enabled FM. Based on all the problems I've had, I don't expect I'd officially support this device again. It's too much work for too little gain.

Sorry, this is just reality. Samsung is my main target, and the GS2 alone is the biggest fraction of my income, around 30% last I recall. And yet, there are still plenty of little issues, and a few larger ones. I have to focus on that. And still, I'm one person trying to reverse engineer AND kind of do the work of multi-person teams at multiple companies. Google said they didn't have the resources (LOL, 1 of the biggest companies in the world) and they'd have access to all the docs they need. Now that 2+ year old statement was somewhat disingenuous, but still...

Nobody else has been "crazy" enough to even try what I've been doing.

This year I hope to get outside more & spend some family time. Unlike 2011 and 2012.

I can't do everything. Somebody else has to step up.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] cslaviero:
I got your point and I totally agree with it. May I ask you a quick question? There is a new cellphone in Brazil from Motorola, called Razr D3, which has JellyBean and FM Radio as one of its features. From your knowledge in this area (of hacking to make FM Radio work :) ) do you think it worth the shot of trying to "port" this FM Radio app to make it work on Razr I, like they have made with a previous version of this app from another phone? Along with that, what it is important to know in order to have the skills to do it? I'm graduated in computer science (I'm not saying that I know too much, just that I'll understand your tips :) ) so I think that (if I have enough time) I may try do work on it a bit. :)
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] diogo.sena:
Great idea, that may work,

i think we need a system dump to extract fm radio apk, and maybe compare libs.

(Theres razr d1 too, that ships with JB and fm radio)
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] free2live:
You will also need FmRadioService.Apk
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mikereidis:
The work I do requires reverse engineering skills, and LOTS of time and patience. Anyone with intelligence and time can learn those skills of course.

Nobody REALLY ports OEM apps IMO.

The easiest thing, which works on Razr I with ICS is to just grab the FM app and service from another Motorola phone and install them in /system/app. You can also use the Moto apps that some people have modified (not ported, really).

The problem with Razr I JB is that the "framework" libraries have been removed from /system/framework. Unfortunately there is not usually just 1 or more FM specific files that can just be grabbed from another phone. Usually the FM stuff is in other files that are shared for many things.

Nobody has really ever been able to move FM framework code from an FM working phone to a non FM working phone. It's almost impossible.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] cslaviero:
Probably I didn't use the word "port" in the proper way, I'm sorry :) Well, I'll try to find someone with a D3 who can grab the system files for me. Who knows if with some reverse engineering we can make FM Radio work again on Razr I :) The hardest thing for me right now is to find this nice person to help.

Thank ou very much for your answers so far. You've done a great job with your app, you should be proud of it :)
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mikereidis:
Just grab them from a popular ROM that has the stock FM app.

I guess you have lots of work ahead.

27 months ago I knew nothing about Android. (But at least I had plenty of embedded Linux development experience.)
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] vfsevero:
radio fm

Olá também sou do Barsil, antes da atualização para o 4.1 ele funcionava perfeito, após a atualização ele fica procurando e não funciona,sabe de alguma atualização nova ou outro radio que funcione offline no razeri versao 4.1.

---------- Post added at 11:22 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:11 AM ----------

tinha istalado o radio fm, funcionava perfeito até a atualziação para o 4.1, parou de funcionar, alguem sabe algum aplicativo que funcione radio fm no 4.1..
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] YaPeL:
Isn't the easist way, to get ALSA fully working on our devices? I mean, doesn't your app deal with that?
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mikereidis:
As "easy" as every post of mine placed end to end is "short". ;)

ALSA is just for audio routing, processing and adjustments. There IS ALSA support on this phone, but for some reason, my ssd ALSA utility returns errno 25 (ENOTTY) when using SNDRV_CTL_IOCTL_ELEM_READ .

ALSA won't help at all with access to the FM chip. And it may not be needed, assuming the historic "Motorola" FM audio method still works.

I've noted that my app still works OK on the Droid 4 and Bionic after their JB updates, but ONLY if your phone is rooted. The Droid 4 never worked without root, so that is no change.

But the Bionic situation matches the Razr I situation with regards to the JB update. The FMRadioService, and perhaps some other things, were removed. So my app doesn't work if not rooted. And previously working Motorola apps no longer work.

Ideally, we could make the Razr I situation like the Bionic's or Droid 4's, at least when rooted. All these phones still have a working /dev/tifm device driver in the kernel. As long as Google / Motorola / Verizon don't remove that, and don't remove the "Motorola Audio-> Method" we could have FM.

The biggest issue now is that Razr I is Intel based. Spirit uses a native library for access to /dev/tifm. I've always built these for ARM only, and have never yet enabled an Intel friendly library. Surprisingly, some functions in that native library still work, and I've just realized this may be due to some ARM emulation stuff that Intel put in.

Hypothetically, I may just be able to enable an Intel x86 library and it will just work. I finally updated my NDK recently and can try to build an Intel library. I'm just concerned that there could be dozens of little (or big) problems that could suck my time away quickly, especially since I don't have any Intel based phone and still don't plan to buy one.

I'll post if I'm able to build an Intel version to test. Again, root will be required.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] free2live:
If you need any files or a guinea pig for testing I'm here

Sent from Razr I using a bat ^o^
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mikereidis:
OK, if your XT890 is rooted, give it a shot:

Spirit Free April 24: http://d-h.st/bRF

EDIT: Thanks, I don't need any more logs.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] diogo.sena:
Any particular option to set before test?

Edit:

Just sent one with everything on automatic.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] YaPeL:
Yup, intel does some voodoo magic with this "libhoudini" to add arm compatibility, anyway, there are some x86 androd images floating around that can be run on a VM if you want to test, also, I'm pretty sure anyone here would let you ssh into their phone if you want further testing.

Nice to see you devote time into such a rare device like ours.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mikereidis:
April 24 "works" OK again, with little effort from me, which is great. But no audio. I'm looking at the ALSA stuff for the first time.

I probably wouldn't be bothering with this phone otherwise, but if it's not TOO much work, I'd prefer not to "abandon" existing customers.
[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] MauricioRPP:
I will keep an eye on this thread and the one about Spirit FM. xt890 is a really great device, too bad that intel only launched it on low-volume markets to do some research about the CPU. it sells really good in Brazil (idk about other countries where it launched).