Bye, bye, FM radio

 I have a Samsung A50 smart phone.  I used to listen to the radio while in the garden with some wired headphones and the Nextradio app.  One day, my phone announced an update which I dutifully downloaded and surprise, surprise the radio no longer works on my phone. 

Well, that sucks.  Permission has been elevated for FM steaming in Android 11 so Nextradio doesn't even attempt to work.  Nextradio is bankrupt so what are the chances of a fix for the FM tuner app?  And a search through the app store finds hundreds of "tuner" apps that are really just internet streaming apps.  Which use data or wifi.  And suck.  Why is this so hard?  Why does everything just get pushed to a pay model, or subscription.  How can my phone lose features through an update?  Have you ever taken your car to the mechanic for an oil change and then found that your radio or headlights don't work?   Of course you haven't.  How can tech suck so much?  And suck even more as time passes. 

I subscribe to Spotify.  I watch YouTube and Netflix.  But sometimes I just want some plain radio.  Which is now gone from my phone. So screw you Android/Samsung. I'm going old fashioned FM tuner in the garden from now on and wearing a pair of analog headphones.

Philips Speechmike. Upgrade nightmare.

 I recently installed some windows updates on my wife's home office computer.  She does dictations with a Philips Speechmike USB microphone to Dragon dictate software.  The Philips microphone seems good quality but wasn't cheap ($400Cdn).  Upon reboot, I was greeted by a popup saying "new firmware available for your microphone" and the choice of "install now"or "later".  

Oh, I wish I had clicked "later"...  but I clicked "install now"...  So a dialog pops up with a green bar flashing back and forth urging me to not unplug the microphone as the upgrade can take several minutes.  So I wait.  And wait. And wait.  Then I notice that the Philips microphone software says that there is no microphone connected.  And the drop down menu to select the microphone cannot select the microphone model.  Troubleshooting suggestions are not helpful like saying the USB may not have enough power or that it might not like a specific port.  What the heck?  So I wait.  And wait. And wait.  Finally I bite the bullet and unplug the USB microphone and try plugging it back in with no result. 

The microphone is gone and doesn't show up as a device in Windows.  So I try it on a different computer with Linux.  No evidence of the microphone in dmesg. The USB functionality doesn't exist anymore.

So what happened?  Info is sparse online but it seems a failed upgrade can brick your device.  Who writes a firmware upgrade like this?  Is there no failsafe? I was relatively uninvolved in the upgrade (just click once), there were no warnings that this could ruin a $400 microphone.  Fortunately, my wife has an identical microphone that was not being used at work.   So once we plugged the new one in, the computer recognized it immediately indicating that it was not a driver issue caused by the update.

But is there a way to fix the old microphone?  The hardware still works, it seems as though just the firmware is missing or corrupt.

Opening the microphone reveals....  not much.  Some buttons, lots of test points, maybe a jtag connection.  Down at the bottom is the brains of the system, an NXP2364 chip.

Arm7 with on board flash, blah, blah, blah.  Not sure how Philips disabled the USB functionality with a bad firmware upgrade, but there you go.  

So, where to from here? I will try to access a windows 7 computer to see if older USB drivers magically fix the connectivity.  Maybe there is some way of forcing a firmware upgrade via some of the test points.  But seems unlikely...  so maybe this is just junk.