I was recently playing around with source code of the fmradio (borrowing code for other purposes ) and I must say that the radio handling part is quite easy (controlled via alsamixer).

Tunning is fully analog, riding on frequencies and checking audio level, when we discover peak, with a falling slope, we come back to the peak and set it as a station.

Power consumption is related to the fact that the stream is constantly recorded and played back. This also introduces quite a delay in the stream (over 200 ms), compared to direct output which is possible, but can break the phone speaker.

UI definitely needs some love, it is quite easy to interface with the control part of the application.

If there is any dev interested in investing his/her time into it, I would be happy to share the little knowledge I have. No time to take care of it, though...