Call it old-school streaming. There might be an FM radio hiding somewhere in your phone, and it could open up a new level of your travel experience.

Most global phones have come with FM radios for years. The super-cheap unlocked phones we reviewed, like the Blu Tank II , even have them. But U.S. carriers tend to edit them out to promote their own streaming services. That door opened a crack when Sprint made a deal with NextRadio to reactivate its FM receivers, and now AT&T seems to have sealed a deal to turn its FM chips on in 2016.

Why bother, though, with an entire Internet of radio at your fingertips? Most notably for travelers, sometimes the Internet isn't at your fingertips. International roaming means you count your data byte by byte, which counts out streaming. FM can also help over a long day on the road, because using the FM radio is much more power-efficient than Internet streaming; NextRadio says it uses one-third the battery of streaming radio.

FM radio is also local culture. Outside the U.S., it's an immersion in a place—not just the music, which shows you local DJs' taste, but even the ads. I fondly remember walking through Hong Kong listening to local pop radio DJs banter in Chinglish, with every tenth word or so peeping through: "number one," "top choice," "star."

But without a station guide, FM can be a real pain. Long commercial breaks make it difficult to figure out music formats, and too many similar stations get dulling. It helps to have a guide. Here are the best ones to check out before you set out on your radio adventure.

Full Service: NextRadio

The NextRadio app, which comes from a major owner of traditional radio stations, makes FM feel like streaming radio. It currently works on all Sprint smartphones and on unlocked phones that have their FM tuners activated, and by 2016 it will work with AT&T smartphones, too.

This is truly the next level. Loading up NextRadio on a Galaxy Grand Prime from Sprint, I found that I could sort local stations by genre or frequency. For many of them, I could see not only what was playing now, but what had been playing in the recent past. Unfortunately, that requires a station to work directly with NextRadio, so my favorite New York station, WFUV 90.7, didn't show what was playing. Still, it's a richer and more graphical FM station navigator than you're going to see anywhere else.

NextRadio works better on Sprint phones than on unlocked phones. On the ZTE Axon Pro ($899.99 at Amazon) , for instance, I found the NextRadio app always had the volume turned up super loud, which was unpleasant. But I could at least use the app as a station directory and jump over to ZTE's own FM tuner for listening.

Just the Directory: Radio Locator

If your phone can't run NextRadio, hop on over to the Radio Locator website and grab a screen shot or print a directory of stations.

Theodric Young's 15-year-old Radio Locator site has the Web's most comprehensive directory of local FM radio stations in North America. It tells you how far various stations are from your intended location and how strong a signal to expect, too. You'll get limited genre information, and you can always click through to stations' websites to find out more about the kind of music or talk they play. The site is better organized, simpler, and easier to read than RadioStationWorld, below. But you'll still probably need to turn to RadioStationWorld for your international trips.

Going Global: RadioStationWorld

RadioStationWorld is even older than Radio Locator; according to the site, it's been running since 1996. Young says the site has the most up-to-date listings of FM radio stations outside North America. To get to RSW's global directory, go here and pick the relevant country. Sometimes you then have to click "Stations on the Web." It isn't terribly intuitive. You can then click through to learn more about each station. While RadioStationWorld gives some very basic genre information, you'll often have to click through to find out interesting things about local stations—for instance, the fact that Berlin's Metropol FM is entirely Turkish music, or that M80 radio in Barcelona plays almost entirely English-language hits from the 80s.

Further Reading

Mobile Phone Reviews