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[Launchpad Bug Tracker <1489784@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

** Changed in: platform-api (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Confirmed

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1489784

Title:
  No access to the FM tuner/radio on Aquaris Bq e4.5

Status in Canonical System Image:
  In Progress
Status in media-hub package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in platform-api package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in qtmultimedia package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Device Aquaris BQ45 as a buitin hardware FM tuner.
  On "factory" mode this device works.

  The device does not seem known by the kernel and there is no API to
  develop an FM radio application.

  Some more details from mailing list:

  We discussed this topic lengthily on the list some time ago :) It's
  not like we don't want to
  support FM radio, but the lack of a common Android HAL for FM radio
  access would force us to
  maintain an FM radio abstraction ourselves (more on that below). In
  addition, most of the device-specific
  radio apps require elevated privileges to run as they directly access
  the FM radio HW (not multiplexed by a system service).

  > For some reason Android doesn't have an FM radio API and leaves it up to
  > the manufacturers to come up with something. I've looked at several
  > devices, among them the bq Aquaris E4.5, and every SoC manufacturer
  > seems to have a different opinion on how to do it.
  >
  > Some ship no FM radio at all.
  >
  > Some seem to ship drivers for the Linux V4L subsystem.
  >
  > MediaTek (Aquaris E4.5 and E5) decided to implement custom kernel
  > drivers with a custom character device (/dev/fm) and custom ioctl
  > commands. There seem to be userspace libraries (libfm*) including a JNI
  > wrapper in /system/lib of the Android container on our Ubuntu phones.
  >
  > Because there is no standard API, there are no generic FM radio apps for
  > Android, and pretty much every manufacturer ships a custom app for his
  > own SoC(s) and/or device(s).
  >
  >
  > I'll try to come up with a piece of C code for the command line that can
  > at least initialize and tune the FM radio on the Aquaris E4.5 and E5.
  > The long-term goal could be to turn this into plugins for an extended
  > media-hub.
  >

  If you are interested in helping to enable the functionality, the
  correct chain for integrating the feature would be:

  [1.] Add a (potentially limited) API to lp:platform-api, that exposes
  a simple common C interface to the Ubuntu side.
  [2.] Provide an implementation of the API in platform-api/android (see
  http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~phablet-team/platform-api/trunk/files/head:/android/)
  [2.1] Provide a dummy fallback implementation for devices that do not
  support FM radio of any kind.
  [3.] Expose the respective hardware functionality to media-hub.
  Multiple ways are possible, but we would need to significantly adjust
  the interfaces
  to support fm radio semantics (switching stations, rds, automatic scans etc.)
  [4.] Adjust Qt's radio abstraction and come up with a Ubuntu Touch
  specific backend implementation, that either:
    [4.1] Leverages the API in [1.] directly (would require any app to
  have special privileges in accessing the system).
    [4.2] Leverages the API in [3.] (which is the clean way of
  integration FM radio support).

  For starters, [1.], [2.], [2.1] and [4.1] should be good enough to get
  started.

  Cheers,

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