I lost my earphones for my mobile phone. I am just looking at buying some new ones. I was talking to someone working at Clas Ohlsen who informed me that I require "radio earphones". My phone is Orange Barcelona- and am looking for some radio earphones that is:

a) Cheap (around £5 ish)

b) actually works


Thanks, in advance.

Any earphones will work. The cable acts as an antenna. You probably have some in a drawer from a previous audio purchase or someone in your family will.

Idiot. Probably trying to sell you "radio earphones" at twice the price of anything else on the market. Earphones are earphones. Mobiles tend to use the earphone cables as aerials if you have an FM radio on your phone, but they have nothing special in them to accomplish this, or don't need to have. Absolutely any earphones will do. Even if there were such a thing, you would only need them if you were listening to the radio.

I did use my brother's earphones and it did not work on mine However it did work on my sister but she had bad reception.


I left the shop and not purcahsed any. Now, I know, thank you. I only need the earphones to listen to the radio on my phone. It is fm radio. thanks.

Appreciate it- both of you. thanks

Any earphone will not do for radio reception. Regular ear phones have 2 bands around the end of the plug, a left and a right, these are fine for MP3 players etc, however you will find on mobile phones the FM radio part is actually on a 3rd band which is the band for the mic, so if you use ear phones without a mic you won't get an FM signal or very poor at best.

What type of earphone would I need, then?

Earphones that come with any sort of mobile phone, they will have a built in mic, not all phones use the mic for FM reception but a good majority do.

OK, thanks mate.

Where can I buy these earphones? Do I need to ring up Orange or visit their store?

When I went to their store, in town- they looked at me weirdly.

Remember that older Nokia mobile phones did not use a standard jack but their own abomination of a connector for earphones which could include a gubbines for volume and track change etc so you can control the phone without taking it out of your pocket.

Amazon. Something like these would do http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nokia-WH-205...ref=pd_cp_ce_2

Should I got and buy these ones (the one you recommended) ?

Use to annoy me on my Nokia mobile in that you had to have the earphones connected to enable the radio but then you could disconnect them and play through the phone's normal speakers. Why?

Yes go for it

Thanks. Have done.

Never had this problem. Always used any old earphones to use FM radios on phones. Must have been lucky every time.

Either way, special "radio earphones" was the wrong term to use regardless of whether you actually need anything other than standard earphones or not.

Well I'm struggling.

Last month bought a LG-S310 and the earphones that came with it were (like all earphones that come with mobiles, regardless of price) tinny, crappy and always falling out of my ears.

No probs, I thought, I'll simply buy an adaptor so I can use my own ear/headphones, or buy some decent ones, as I've done in the past.

However, I was so wrong. The mini USB type jack thingy only seems to support the earphones that came with it and I've trawled high and low on the internet and no joy in getting an adaptor.

I've been to my local sparky shop to see what alternatives I have, even if they can cut the wires and make the original into an adaptor, but they won't as there are too many internal wires (5 I think). I've even tried buying better earphones, (from mytrendyphone) gut the ones that came were identical to the rubbish ones I got in the first place.

Don't want to change phone yet again (there must be a limit to how many 07 numbers there are in the world!!) but I do want better earphones.

Help!!!!

Most mobile phones use the headphone lead as the FM antenna. On Samsung models the phone states you cannot use the radio without headphones being connected.

I've been using sennheisers and they work fine, despite only having a L R channel only. Tried some old Sony's again no mic channel. The original HTC ones do have a mic channel but there is no difference when listening.
A bit unconvinced on the need for a mic channel.