Review: Power Radio

The creative collective over at XDA Developers, namely member 6Fg8, has come up with a Power Radio Application with RDS support for the HTC Touch Diamond, Touch Pro, Touch HD, Xperia X1, Touch Pro 2 and Diamond 2 phones. RDS support is basically the ability to small amounts of digital information embedded in conventional FM radio broadcasts. It gives you the ability to display information about the broadcasts, traffic announcements, programming information, and other tid bits on your radio's display.

Power Radio covers three broad radio ranges; CCR (87.5-108.0 Mhz), Japan (76.0-91.0) and World (76.0-108.0 Mhz) with the ability to preset fifteen channels. Menus are accessible by pressing and holding on-screen control buttons. The command list is fairly simply and as follows:

• manual scan: long-press "scan" button to get context menu with various options
• preset buttons: long-press a button to get context menu with options for store, delete, rename
• ear/spk: switch between earphones and speaker
• mute/unmute: self explanatory
• blend: improves stereo reception and/or expands stereo base
• stereo: switch between mono/stereo

You will still need to use your headphones with this radio application (serves as an antenna) and in using Power Radio on the AT&T Fuze the channels picked up nicely.  The RDS messages were a nice addition as well.  I just have to figure out a way to get signal reception from my basement, windowless office.

If you're looking for an alternative to the basic FM radio, Power Radio is worth a try.