I second your point of view - I want FM reenabled on my older Sony, but the response has been in many different words - no. My daughter bought that phone originally for the FM features, amongst other things, but it was a factor - she was surprised when she gave it to me and I went to use the FM feature and learned that it was disabled - we weren't sure when it happened as she hadn't used it in a while because she was in the US working and the phone had been off, so it was not in use and her employer provided phones for her and husband. But when I turned it on, an update did come down and when I went to use FM, nope it didn't work.
So yes, the carriers play fancy free with the settings on phones, yet give no explanations as to why, so on the FM side, I figure it is to get us to use data for listening to music - I still carry my old BB10 to do that for me as well I still have an MP3 player that provides it, but I would prefer one device that was designed to do it, purchased for the feature included.
I am not a big Apple fan, just never have been, but at least with them, they keep control over the updates and feature sets on their phones as far as I have heard. Google has done as Microsoft has done over the years, make their product available to any producer, but unlike Google, Microsoft does not let the manufacturer change the core functionality of Windows as designed, we are free to uninstall and adapt within the range of ability provided to all users, and manufacturers are free to create apps to complement the features in Microsoft through their API's, say like a manufacturers own backup tool, tapping into the Microsoft backup feature set, and so forth, but ultimately the user can take it all back to the core feature set originally put out by Microsoft even if it means doing a clean install with no manufacturer add-ons.
Google pretty much lets the carriers have their own way to turn on and off feature sets and carriers provide the argument that it has to meet the requirements and abilities of their network, which I agree with that point, - a 3G network cannot provide 4G obviously and that is why we can check what services a provider is capable of when choosing a carrier, but often we learn once we get the phone, purchased through the carrier, that they disabled features that have nothing to do with their network - FM for example does not require the phone on a network at all, or they restrict access to things like VOLTE and WIFI calling on unlocked phones that do not have their core branded version of the software. This I can only explain as an attempt to force us to more data - sorry, but I find other ways to get access to services like GPS through a GPS tool that does not require network access - it functions off FM based traffic updates, and to force us to buy the device through them.
So I also place some of the responsibility with Google android for allowing carriers to do this, and also manufacturers to also allow them to do it.
And challenge is that you can't even follow priniciple of buyer beware - when we bought the Sony with FM enabled, Rogers and some other carriers changed it later.
In a sence, which actually is true, we own the device (the hardware), but the use of the software that runs it all is licensed to us under the licenses and practices of the software licencer.
Bruce
