is there such a thing?, and if not, why not?

It is very rare that a portable telephone question engages my interest, but I agree, DAB is one of the few things I might potentially want in a portable telephone. 🙂

Bloody genius idea

Ive been googling since your post and all i can find is a discontinued Virgin phone with DAB

Why no more?

My guess as to why no more is that as I understand the UK has a DAB enocoding system that isn't a worldwide standard, hence any phones developed with such technology would have a very small market, and also DAB in other forms still isn't that popular in other countries so even if we moved to a more universal format the market wouldn't be that huge at the moment.
I could be talking complete drivel though 🙂

R4 reported a while ago that DAB was pretty crap compared to other countries' choices of digital format and so it may not last.

I blame Thatcher.

hmmm, weren't they thinking of changing to "super DAB" and all the ppresent one aren't convertable?

DAB radios (apart from being useless anywhere apart from Britain, and therefore unlikely to attract the big phone makers) are about 3x heavier on battery usage, so you limit that, too.

Yes – AFAIK the virgin "lobster phone" (made by HTC) was the only one on the market.

It was actually built for the virgin mobile tv service (now defunct – who remembers the pamela andersen adverts..?) but as a happy by-product it supported DAB. I remember the last units being punted out on one of the freeview shopping channels last year (just flicking through channels by coincidence, honest..)

There's an ongoing debate about the viability of DAB in this (and many other) countries. The recent "digitial britain" report squashed the idea of a forced "switch-off" for analogue radio in 2015, so FM will live on.

In the meantime, we're stuck with the old DAB audio codec (mpeg-2) which produces poor quality sound for a given "channel" than the newer "DAB+" (or T-DMB) systems that other countries (who came later to DAB than we did) have deployed.

THe only reason why we haven't adopted DAB+ is that there are too many legacy DAB radios out there to "drop" (but, ironically, not enough DAB radios out there to drop FM and share out the freed-up radio spectrum to increase the channel size for the stations, which would go some way to overcoming the limitatations of the mpeg2 audio codec). You could have DAB and DAB+ co-existing, with only newer dual-mode receivers (of which there are already several) able to pick up the DAB+, but that wouldn't be a good use of radio spectrum. However, it's the only real solution that gets us out of this mess.

So, why can't you have it on your mobile? Blame the government/ofcom etc for not having the foresight/guts to do something other than watch DAB fade to grey. Next stop will be ubiquitous "internet radio" delivered over IP to your smartphone over 3G/LTE..

Disclaimer – all of this is based on a "little knowledge" from watching mobile digital radio/tv market from a technical perspective..

DAB is shit!! RDS is still better! especially on the move

For DAB to work, it usually requires a decent and static aerial. I can't imagine DAB works well on the move unless technology has improved markedly. I have recently bought another DAB radio that is no different to the older one I have, it was just cheaper.

DAB has been talked about for well over a decade. I had a PURE Evoke radio bought for me 6 years ago. It's not stunningly better than an FM radio. I don't see what all the fuss is about with DAB. Sound quality is actually inferior, it's just that we are so used to cheap receivers with very nasty speakers etc.

DAB technology is eco-unfriendly v traditional radios and this energy hungry digital technology is therefore not suited to portable devices.

I hear that analogue radio is to be switched off in a few years. This is insane seeing as there must literally be millions of FM/AM sets out there. What an uneccessary eco disaster! What an inconvenience, annoyance and penalty for radio owners.

DAB has been/is being sold at a hefty premium, but in many areas you still can only pick up a handful of stations, or none!

I think DAB is dead for all uses except outside the home. Given the big question mark about reception and power consumption whilst mobile, I think it's a dead duck. Internet radio will kill DAB for sure.

DAB+ will offer better sound quality for those who find DAB not such a good listen. No idea when it's gonna be launched though.