Yesterday the US patent office published a document in which we can see a request made by Apple for Register a patent for a radio application intended for the iPhone/iPod Touch. It appears from the patent that Apple is working on a radio application compatible with AM, FM and Satellite Radio, but that's not all because the application itself will be quite complex from other points of view. In addition to the main interface that displays information about the radio station, song and frequency, the application will show on the map the closest radio stations to your location plus the signal strength for each of them, so you will be able to choose the stations according to the signal strength to have of the best audio quality.
I have been waiting for such an application for 2 years, but in all honesty I can say that Apple will never implement something like this on the iPhone because it could affect sales in the iTunes Music Store. Of course, such an application could be implemented for countries where the iPhone is sold but there is no iTunes Music Store, but hackers will find ways to activate it on any phone, so it would not make sense for Apple to do such a thing. My opinion is that this application is just a "tease" that is meant to distract our attention from the real features that will come in iPhone 5/iPod Touch 5G.
