Apple To Switch On Sleeping FM Radio in iPhone, iPod Touch

• By Charlie Sorrel

Rumor site 9to5Mac reports that Apple is on the cusp of releasing an FM radio application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. And get this: it will be for the current models, not for some new hardware revision. According to the rumor, Apple will awaken the slumbering FM transceiver already dormant within the devices, currently only used to talk to the Nike+ widget.

This speculation seems to fit in with Apple’s switching on of the Bluetooth functionality inside the second-gen iPod Touch with the 3.0 software update, but the rumor then gets a little weird:

The holdup on this app is that Apple is trying to integrate the Mobile iTunes Store purchases into the functionality of the program.

Yes. Apple, which has already managed to put tune-tagging into the iPod Nano, is apparently having trouble doing it with the way-more-powerful iPhone platform. This sounds like nonsense, but it doesn’t mean we won’t see a radio app. What great news. Now there will be, along with the stocks application, yet another app that I will never use yet cannot remove from my iPod.

In-house Radio.app in the works for iPhone and iPod touch [9to5Mac]

Image credit: 9to5Mac