I have got into the habit of listening to BBC radio on my iPhone using the BBC Sounds App. I find the ability to drag a programme back to the beginning when I come to it late particularly useful. It’s great to go back to the start of The World At One when it’s already 1:15pm. There are problems with this though. What if two of you are listening and you want to use your phone for something else? There is nothing quite like a dedicated radio, that sits in the same place that anyone can turn on and use.
So, I went in search of a Smart Radio. A Smart Radio is like a Smart TV – it’s a radio that can run the sort of apps you can run on your smart phone. Every TV on the market these days is a Smart TV. They can connect to the internet and can run the apps you have on your phone: Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime and so on. However, it turns out that there is no such thing as a Smart Radio. You can get internet radios that connect to internet radio stations but these do not run apps like BBC Sounds. Many will allow you to rewind a programme but only if it is already in the buffer of the radio already. You can’t switch on an internet radio and immediately rewind it 15 mins.
I was stuck. For a moment. Then I remembered I had an old iPhone in a drawer somewhere. I dug this out, cleared all the apps it had on it and installed BBC Sounds. I connected an external speaker and I had the dedicated Smart Radio I was looking for.
All I need to do now is make a box in the design of a cool retro radio to put all the bits in and my project will be complete. I wonder when I’ll get time to do that?