I live in Norway and currently the VisualRadio system isn't of much use here as far as I understand.
Used to SE phones for a while, I really miss an RDS radio on the N80, with AF function. Can't find this feature on the radio software included so is there anyone that knows of a 3rd party software here?
No RDS support in the phone, and as far as I know, there is no additional software to do so that replaces/complements the radio app, either (possibly would actually also require different FM radio receiver hardware, if the chip(s)/electronics in the phone do not support it).
Over here RDS really seems to be mainly used to just broadcast the station's name. I don't know if it is different in Norway? Do they transmit other stuff, too, like advertisements or program/track details, too?. If it is only about the station name, then using the radio app's station directory and saving the stations takes care of that (for the 20 stations you can have saved at any one time).
The best RDS radio-phone is K800i. I had a friend with one, because that function. He does cycling, and the RDS is mandatory for him.
Radio on Nokia mobiles has Visual Radio _instead of_ RDS. There are advantages and disadvantages. Basically, I tend to favor RDS a little over Visual Radio (because of a less centralised and less vulnerable system) but it's a pretty even battle.
Pro Visual Radio
* Visual Radio means that you can download (gprs/3G) station names from places you haven't even been to. So you can even prepare your radio listening in a place you're going to by accessing the world radio station list that Visual Radio includes.
* This is also a very fast way to survey radio stations in one place/city. With RDS, you have to scan the complete frequency band and you depend on which stations are strong enough to show RDS text at that very moment in that very place. With Visual Radio, all stations are in one list. Always.
* With Visual Radio, you, as user, decide what exact name a radio station should have in your local mobile list. You can change it whenever. It's like a tv channel in many tv sets. With RDS, you just receive whatever RDS text (phone numbers, slogans or whatever), the radio station happens to transmit at one time. If they transmit garbage some day - or nothing at all - then you will see garbage - or nothing at all.
* RDS texts may be unreceivable, although the signal actually is strong enough to listen to the station, eg. in mono. With Visual Radio, you still always know the station's name, if you can connect to the Internet.
* The main point of Visual Radio is that is can send out graphics and other cool stuff via gprs/3G while you're listening. It can also receive information from the user making the whole radio listening experience much more interactive. But very few radio stations have decided to support this part of Visual Radio. Several European countries have no radio stations at all with this kind of features.
Pro RDS
* The advantage of RDS is that you sometimes get other information than simply the name of the station. There may be temporary a RDS text message that a radio station send out which say something that interests you. Of course, you will never see that RDS text if you have Visual Radio instead of RDS. RDS is very much uptodate and can contain other information than simply the station's name.
* It costs nothing to receive RDS messages. Station names via gprs/3G on Visual Radio cost some. And, with Visual Radio, if you have no gprs/3G coverage, you can't add station names at that particular time.
* In Visual Radio, the radio station list is sometimes not updated and show names of stations that no longer exists or have changed their names/owners/direction. It uses a centralized system and a site that may not function at a given time.
* Also, the Visual radio list is built along a system of stations in cities. If the city/village is too small, then there are no entries and you have to interpolate stations from cities close by. If you live in a village in between two cities, you may have to choose from two city lists and pick whatever stations are strong enough where you are situated. But yes, this works.
* One main point of RDS is supposedly that it sends out traffic information. Visual Radio never does this. That traffic information is usually not that detailed though.
I see no reason why a device couldn't use both Visual Radio and RDS. The main structure could be Visual Radio - although it should be able to disconnected. And then, when you use a station, you should be able to choose between seeing the Visual Radio name for the station (or have changed it) OR seeing the RDS text from the station. Such a combo system ("Visual Radio with RDS"😉 would be my optimal solution.
I am so proud of my posting %) on another RDS thread, that I will refer to it here:
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/forum//forum/thread/38771/&highlight=rds