Good, and I'll keep avoiding phones that ditch the audio jack.
And let me be clear - the 3.5mm jack is far from being the perfect way of transmitting and sending audio. It's a vestige from an analog world where you have to take impedence and resistance of the load into account, and I don't use it much myself.
But the use-case where you have to stream music from your phone and you have just a humble set of speakers, an amplifier or some old headphones isn't that uncommon - especially for musicians like me: what happens when you're in a studio with your band, you want to play an mp3 on your phone, but you have no way of plugging your phone to the mixer or the amp?
Pretending that such use-cases don't exist, and force all the users to figure out an alternative, is an act of sheer arrogance on the producers' side. And such arrogance isn't even justified by the claim of water resistance: it's technically possible today to have an audio jack port AND be waterproof.
"especially for musicians like me: what happens when you're in a studio with your band, you want to play an mp3 on your phone, but you have no way of plugging your phone to the mixer or the amp?"
Is this common? what percent of the population would you estimate has this issue?
You build devices for the masses, not the very rare "use cases".
No. I listen to music via headphones while falling asleep, and require my phone to charge at the same time. The dongles available are complete garbage: they only work with the connectors in certain orientations and sometimes just don't work outright. Designers that remove useful features without a consistently working replacement are selfish assholes and should be fired.
I've been using a dongle in my car(an older model with no bluetooth), and it is quickly wearing out my phones usb port. Keeps falling out. The headphone jack was a lot more resilient.
Problem patched, more or less: you can easily forget or loose the dongle, and you’ve lost the ability to charge your phone at the same time. It still feels like a step back in functionality.
I've tried that, but it's not quite as convenient as I'd like. It sticks out in ways that make the phone harder to carry around. It doesn't fit in some of the bags I use to carry it, for example.
That's a small inconvenience, of course, but we're talking about a device that's with me all the time, and small annoyances add up.
This does not seem to make sense given the sentiments I've seen from reviewers and consumers.
Pixel 3A: widely praised for having a headphone jack
Pixel 4A: widely praised for still having a headphone jack
Pixel 5A: widely praised for still having a headphone jack
Pixel 6A: no headphone jack
Personally, I am not ready to give up the headphone jack. I wish I could go fully wireless, but bluetooth audio is too frustrating to use in many cases.
For example, my family has a bluetooth speaker. Managing and switching whose phone was paired via bluetooth was so annoying. There was frequently a mismatch between the device we wanted to be connected, and the device that was actually connected. We eventually reverted to just plugging our phones into the audio-in port of the speaker. Unplugging and plugging is quick, simple, and doesn't require fiddling with device menus. Guests don't have to endure the tedious "pairing" ritual. Of course, we have to have dongles anyway...
Another example is in rental cars. For one, pairing and switching devices with car media systems is dreadful. I've also had frequent problems, with multiple different phones and multiple different cars, where audio media and satnav announcements would not switch properly over bluetooth, such that the satnav announcements would get cut off. On the other hand, the "aux" port works flawlessly 100% of the time with no fiddling. Never travel without at 3.5mm audio cable.
If the wireless audio implementations were more user friendly, I think many current headphone jack holdouts would happily cut the cord.
It makes perfect sense. Reviewers want something to differentiate it from the iPhone and to rave about, so they choose the headphone jack.
Whereas users, and Google absolutely has the data for this, are probably mostly using bluetooh ear pods or headphones and so Google knows real users don't care.
> Whereas users, and Google absolutely has the data for this, are probably mostly using bluetooh ear pods or headphones and so Google knows real users don't care.
Well... what it really means is most users don't care but that also means they probably don't care (at least not directly) if there is a headphone jack. Those who are using headphone jacks regularly absolutely do care though.
I'm not suggesting they haven't done a lot of market research here, I am sure they have. What I will say is that they should be careful of frog boiling themselves out of a market. Having a headphone jack is one of those things that differentiated the Pixel from an iPhone. Sure most users who prefer a Pixel to an iPhone probably won't jump over this one specific thing.... but the less differentiated they become over time the less sticky customers looking for something different to iPhones will be for them, and this won't easily show up in market research because they are asking things like "If we remove feature X would you buy a different phone? What if we remove Y?" but may not be asking "What if we remove X and we remove Y?"
The times I use the 3,5mm jack on my phone are few and far between.
However if I didn't have that option at those times I wouldn't have had anything else to hand (eg no Bluetooth headset nearby or battery dead) so those few times are really important to me.
This is something you don't really get from just looking at data.
And tragically, the eventuality is you'll be forced to get a new device supporting 5g/6g/Ng in order to retain telco network compatibility.
Why do the dominant manufacturers (Apple, Samsung) insist we not have a headphone jack and expandable storage? It's starting to feel rather stupid and like a huge ripoff.
Wireless headsets are expensive, and after a year or two the batteries wear out and the entire thing is junk. What a ridiculously high tax on customer wallets over time, not to mention the e-waste.
USB-C buds have been 100% crap on my experience. If you have recommendations in this department, please do share.
They want to get rid of the headphone jack because it is a brilliant bit of open hardware design. You can plug a device with a headphone jack into near limitless devices and that is a problem for profit when you can force people onto bluetooth and break compatibility when it is convenient.
They want to get rid of it because the inside of a smartphone is very space constrained and they can use that space for other things.
Considering you can use a lightning or usb c to 3.5mm with a built in DAC that sounds as good or better than the ones they were putting in the phones, the 3.5mm jack was pretty redundant.
Yeah, well when they removed the headphone jack on iPhone 7, which has the same shape and dimensions as iPhone 6, it turned out they just put some piece of plastic in the place where previously the jack was. Youtube channel Strange Parts managed to implement working headphone jack on iphone7:
So I call BS on space constrains, I call BS on waterproofing (waterproofed phones with 3.5mm jack exist). Conveniently, when Apple released iPhone 7, they also released 1st gen AirPods :-)
> They want to get rid of it because the inside of a smartphone is very space constrained and they can use that space for other things.
Then stop trying to make paper thin personal devices.
I think the industry is hostage of some "visionaries" thinking hey will eventually make movie-like holo devices with no need for electronics, while the reality of engineering is much more complex and laden with trade-offs.
I know of at least one YouTube channel that added one back into the original iPhone that removed it, so I'm not sure how much "necessity" can explain it away.
Strip the phone down to the bare minimum. Obviously they just want me to buy a separate pocket PC instead, and only use the phone for emergency calls and businesses that don't have websites.
Not sure if you're joking but I bought a media player and a point-and-shoot camera within the past few years. I wanted to reduce the influence of a smartphone on my life.
They're both next level when compared the the capabilities of a smartphone. The camera has Zeiss lenses, has amazing optical zoom, all kinds of manual and automatic modes, and takes far better night shots than any phone. The media player's battery lasts weeks, plays every file type, and has actual hardware playback buttons and a volume knob. Oh, and it drives all kinds of nice headphones perfectly well.
And neither of these devices interrupts me with notifications or demands any amount of my attention.
I don't think I'll get another smartphone until I absolutely have no choice. It's better for my mental health anyway to not have some magic device that I rely on for everything and I can't stop pulling out of my pocket whenever my brain needs stimulation.
> And neither of these devices interrupts me with notifications
Not to take away from your valid experience but my phone doesn't interrupt me with notifications because I turned off everything I am not 100% bothered about (which leaves just a couple of messengers, phone calls, and bank transaction notifications) and all those are silenced 2000-0800 (or during workouts.)
I'll take the lack of space from 3.5mm jack inside the phone over the headaches and awkwardness of an external device (which now I also have to pay for)!
It's crazy to me that the modern headphone jack has in some form been in use since the 1800s. And now the lack of competition is causing this incredible invention to disappear, in favor of shitty bluetooth buds (with the exception of AirPod Pros which are great).
The vast majority of wired earbuds are so awful they are almost a crime. Passive ones have no cancellation and very few have passive isolation. Even moderate background noise makes them unusable without dangerous sound levels.
Phone earbuds are mostly used on the go. Having a cable is way too much of an inconvenience in the age where Bluetooth exists.
Especially if it reduces the waterproofing or increases cost to add the jack.
I hated that my Pixel 3 had no headphone jack, I swore I'd never buy a phone without one, but when my Nexus 5X broke and I needed a phone, I got the Pixel 3. I didn't even realize it didn't have a headphone jack until I got it.
It came with a USB-C->headphone dongle and then I discovered that USB->headphone dongles were cheap, so I bought one for each of the headphones I used regularly, and it was really not a big deal.
But now I've switched almost fully to bluetooth headphones, except for my old expensive Etymotics that I use on airplanes since they are small and easy to pack, and the in-ear style is great at blocking noise.
I remember those. They all broke within a few days of use, and google sent me like 20 of them after 6 months, because they weren't very good at tracking requests.
I'll never get another phone without a headphone jack after that
I have noticed that the main reason my phone screen breaks is due to headphone wires though. It'd be great to have a magnetic equivalent to the wired headphone
Bluetooth still is flakey af. Astounds me how bad it is still. Audio dropouts on the reg. Terrible documentation for design n dev also. Legit PITA technology.
All 4 Apple laptops I've owned in recent years have had significant latency with my Sony WH-1000XM4's too. Like, sometimes over a full second. I have to regularly disconnect and reconnect to address.
And then Apple removed Bluetooth Explorer from Xcode 12, meaning I have no real way to even diagnose that on the newest macOS releases.
Depending on what codec your headphones use when talking to a Mac, a mere second of latency is a good result.
The only thing you can do is use apps like IINA which have delay features to allow you to account for the latency (I needed to use sound delay recently when watching a movie that fell off the back of a truck, even with Airpods).
The future might be brighter, with Apple seemingly designing its own bespoke wireless sound standard to support uncompressed and latency-free headphones.
I guess? But I did not used to suffer these problems, they don't occur on my Windows or mobile devices, and they're temporarily addressed on macOS by reconnecting.
If that is needed for the situation at hand, like it is with headphones, why would it be unreasonable to complain about a road that doesn't fulfill the basic requirements?
What? However many lanes you put in a road, it'll always be true that you can have more traffic going in one direction if you disallow any in the other.
It’s certainly not a technology without flaws, but being overly locked down is definitely not one of them, no? Too many things have Bluetooth now, rather than the reverse.
Makes the argument that the headphone jack was removed for lock-in reasons pretty weak when the replacement will probably start coming with your produce in a couple of years. There is certainly no lack of Bluetooth headphones you can buy, even if they have all of the flaws above. The lock-in is not the problem.
Yeah but that wasn't OP's argument. Their argument was that Apple removed the headphones to lockdown their phones. Bluetooth can be crap, and also the antithesis of an Apple controlled standard.
May I point you at the MFi program? Its a program which prevents some accessories from being used with iOS without registering with (and paying) Apple.
One of the biggest usecases for the 2.5mm jack was the square cc readers. Guess what has to be MFi certified now?
USB devices can still be controlled by the OS. iPad has USB C but you can't use everything on it, some external SSDs don't work, displays don't work etc. You can still control it.
3.5mm has one purpose, but you have no control over what is using that audio device. Less control = Less $$$ to be made. NOBODY bought Apple earphones after-market before AirPods were a thing, and even though the iPad has a USB C, most people are buying apple peripherals due to locks.
Is the average user mostly using Bluetooth now? Genuinely curious if there's any empirical data.
And regardless of the numbers, I also wonder at what rate people are actively switching to Bluetooth because they want to vs. because that's what their preferred phone line is forcing them into.
Every time I do an on the street observation, I see that wireless headphones are pretty much universal. It would be 100 wireless to one wired user. Sure, some of that may be because the jacks are removed, but the average person has chosen to use wireless instead of the $9 adapter or picking a phone with a jack.
The average user does not care at all. HN has a tendency to attribute everything to some global conspiracy from the elite’s to make you use technology their way. It’s inconceivable that most people just don’t care about flac quality audio or having to charge their AirPods once a week.
I do find it interesting that here, on the techiest, nerdiest forum there is, people are lamenting the loss of a physically large jack. Did you think it would be around for all of time?
If in 5/10/50/∞ years, phones never get smaller than 3.5mm thick, how does this community respond? It's classic 'where's my jetpack?', right? I'd like to think that we all want phones that don't exist other than as a chip in our arm, or as a component of a ring, or as a wafer on our sleeve, or as our glasses, or [whatever other techno nonsense you fancy].
Those of you who want the jack are saying that this is it. For all of time. Three-point-five-mils is as thin as any of our devices can be. It's weird! :-)
I don't want my phone to be thinner. If having a 3.5 mm jack means that I will have headphones that just work without fuss / charging / bluetooth codec ass, and it prevents phone designers from making my phone wafer thin, then I consider that a win-win.
And obviously, I wouldn't be advocating for a 3.5 mm jack in an implantable device. That would be silly. There can be multiple classes of devices, each with different features. For the class of phones that are rectangular objects that live in my pocket, I want a 3.5 mm jack.
Tbh I’d take a few mm shorter or narrower; phones seem to be much bigger now than they were when they had a headphone jack.
That companies have responded to increasing narrowness by making foldable phones suggests there really isn’t much demand or even usefulness in a razor thin phone.
I don’t know, but considering that iPhone gained thickness and iPad earned bendgate when they lost the jack, we still have plenty of time until the diameter of the jack is going to be a major concern.
Actually, while I was a wireless headphone skeptic, I don't feel I'm missing 3.5" audio jack much. There are two reasons for this.
First of all, Apple's own adapter is a brilliant DAC. It's output is really nice, and when I need wired audio, I can get very good sound with it and a couple of nice monitors (RHA MA750i) or high-ish end buds (Sennheiser MM70i).
However, wired headphones are not limitless in life either. My MM70i set is almost unusable because the jack has worn down from so much use, and one channel is not making contact on 8/10 systems I plug it in.
Secondarily, entry level wireless headphones came a very very long way in terms of sound quality and battery life (both per charge and total lifetime terms).
I have two wireless headsets. A Philips SHB 3075 (Made by Gibson Electronics IIRC) and a Sony WH-CH510. Both are entry level systems. Philips should be lasting 8 hours or so per charge, but it lasts at least twice long. I use it every day at office and plug while leaving, and it never told me I need to charge it.
Sony is a completely different beast. I could only use half of its charge if I really try to. They forgot to tell that it needs to use the charge in the battery.
In terms of sound quality, both are excellent for their price points. Philips is not the most detailed, but it's very nicely balanced and non fatiguing. Sony really hits above its price point. It's enjoyable even in focused listening if the source material is mastered with some minimal effort.
I say time to time, but as a person who played in orchestras and an owner of an old school component Hi-Fi system, modern wireless headsets are miracles in sound quality terms.
Apparently matching the amplifier and the driver at the design time has a really big effect than we have thought. Bang Olufsen was right to add ICEPower amplifiers to their speakers and sell them as tuned units. It changes a lot.
I also want to add that Apple's sound dosimeter is a very nice technology which presumably works by getting some metadata from the headphone to calculate noise levels for protecting the hearing, which is extremely underrated.
>However, wired headphones are not limitless in life either. My MM70i set is almost unusable because the jack has worn down from so much use, and one channel is not making contact on 8/10 systems I plug it in.
That's why you buy wired headphones with replaceable cables.
> That's why you buy wired headphones with replaceable cables.
Headphones with replaceable cables don't make sense from a price or size point of view for the most people on the move, incl me.
Getting 10+ years of life from any equipment is generally acceptable esp. when both RHA and Sennheiser systems' size and the abuse they go through is considered.
Using such sets for desktop and studio settings changes the requirements drastically, and both price and size are justifiable in that case.
There is no shortage of people who have spent lots of money on good quality headphones that want to use them though, but that doesn't matter to companies like Google or Samsung or Apple because they don't make or sell those products, instead they want to sell you easy to lose, overpriced, sub-par quality, "they look cool and just work**" buds and the best way to do that is to just kill any other choice. Want big headphones or noise cancelling? Not our problem!
They also finally realized that you can buy a 512GB sd card for like $100 bucks so no one was paying an extra $350 to get 128gb more space, so again, just eliminate the option because they literally can and no one can stop them.
I think it's less than you think in terms of the overall customer base. Most people are happy with the Bose noise cancelling headphones, or AirPods, or Sennheiser earbuds/headphones. Just look at the highest selling headphones.
I don't think they "finally realised" Apple has always had internal storage. Samsung Android devices have been on both sides of the coin and have backflipped before.
The problem with SD cards, IMO from having worked at a Telco, is that the OS and SD card for the devices doesn't integrate seamlessly for the average end user. What people want is to be able to add an SD card to their device and have a uplift in storage across the entire device. I can't count the amount of times a customer would come in asking why their devices storage didn't increase when they added an SD card, not knowing that they needed to configure the device to take advantage of it or copy their photos across too it. I'm sure times might have changed but that's how it was 5 years ago.
The average and I would say the majority, don't want to deal with buying more storage, they just want the right amount of storage from the get go and smartphone companies know this. I would prefer to buy a 128GB phone than a 32GB phone and have to add an additional 128GB SD card anyway. Also, if you have 512GB of storage filled on a mobile device, surely you have that backed up no? So why not just stream it from the cloud.
I have expensive Bose noise cancelling headphones and they are wired and I don't want to rebuy for a new phone. BT and wireless is usually nothing but trouble and crap quality in my experience, so I never would intend to buy wireless if I can help it.
I can understand a Telco pressuring phone makers to do things to reduce their support burden (which is probably also reducing their own support burdens) because of the dumb way SD cards interact with the phone OS, but it's an annoying situation where the people who know what they are doing and have valid use cases are held hostage at the mercy of those who do not. All I hear from people is that they run out of space on their phone, especially on Android which creeps worse than windows did for sucking up space.
If you know how much SD cards cost, then it's very hard to think, hmm yeah, I'd rather spend $300 for an extra 128gb then get 500gb or 1tb for like $100 and I can remove it and add files to it 1000x faster on my computer.
If a feature has always been there and provided value, then removing it to save $0.05 in design costs seems ridiculous unless there are ulterior motives like, we need to sell more expensive phones and/or get these nubs off of our call lines (if you can even get phone support with phone manufacturers).
I know that obviously they don't give a shit about people who know what they are doing, because it's a minuscule part of their market share. It's all about the bundling and upsells. Fuck the entire headphone market if we can get another $100 by selling our buds. Fuck the entire storage market if we can get another $250 with our internal only upgrades. Fuck the consumer, they'll just buy a new phone in 2 years and lose our buds and buy new ones, we can only win here because no one can stop our oligopoly where everyone just copies each other to have "modern", "best-in-class" design choices and features. Teens don't know what good features or quality are, they'll just get their parents to buy them new stuff over and over forever and the parents don't fall for the constant upgrade trap as hard and stick with their S9's with headphone jacks that you just plug in and they work.
People who spend big money on headphones were probably using external DACs anyways, which you can still do just fine.
Not to mention that the 9 dollar lightning or usb c adapters that Apple and google sell sound as good or better than the DACs they were including in their phones.
It probably does. Then again, I accidentally tossed my phone in the laundry a few years back and it somehow managed to survive. While it is no longer in daily use, I still keep that decade old device around as a backup and it has outlived several phones since then. Something tells me that the vast majority of phones fail for reasons other than water seeping in through the headphone jack.
I wash my phone's regularly. Lol kind of need to if you drop it in a fresh cow poo which I've definitely done hopping over fences.
Xiaomi phones have had good water resistance for ages. Hell I don't even turn it off. But then again I wash lots of electronics. It's generally fine as long as stuffs not got any active or residual power.
The Sony Xperia series is a vote-with-your-wallet candidate for those of us who like card slots, 3.5mm jacks, water resistance, notification lights, and notch-free screens.
The wallets have spoken for years; phones without headphone jacks sell exceedingly well despite this missing feature. Jane Shmoe doesn't care; she uses a dongle, or gets Bluetooth headphones from the Chinese knockoff bin at the pharmacy.
Man, I wish they still had the compact line. I had an XZ1 compact and it was amazing. I still use it for playing music (via the headphone jack) and it is just wonderful every time I pick it up - so small and light compared to this humongous pixel 6 I replaced it with. I keep thinking of going back to a flip phone. Man I miss that little phone. Wish there were something non-Apple to replace it with.
If they wouldn't stop publishing security uogrades exactly 3 years after each phone's first market introduction in Japan, I would have bought one...
Oh, and they cripple the camera permanently when you root the phone.
I was surprised to discover my new OnePlus N200 5G has a headphone jack. That will keep you on the networks for at least another couple of generations.
Low end for Android. It runs PMOS very well though. Not only are Linux apps faster but you can run overlapping window managers and do other things while you're waiting for things to load/download/etc.
Ooo, yes, all those linux smartphone apps that let me get driving directions, check my bank account balance, and flirt with cute people and arrange dates with them.
can't help you with the sd card slot but if you don't mind carrying a wired headset, a usb-c > 3.5mm adapter can't be the dongle that breaks the camel's back..?
> if you don't mind carrying a wired headset, a usb-c > 3.5mm adapter can't be the dongle that breaks the camel's back..?
I never carry a dongle or a wired headset. I use an aux wire in my car, and a pair of over-ear wired headphones at my desk. When I travel to visit family, I can plug my phone into their old stereo receiver (which works as great now as it did 30 years ago). When a friend wants to play music in my car, they can plug into the aux wire I have. A usb-c dongle is one more thing I won't have with me and I'll be stuck using the speaker in the phone, and it will be garbage. So I will once again hunt for a phone that has an aux port.
I do this by using a phone that has the port built in.
> They sell things to attach it to your keys. You can buy a few adapters to leave at your desk in your car, they are cheap.
My "keys" are a single key with nothing attached.
> People always seem willing to die on the hill of this incredibly minor inconvenience. Literally solvable with like 10 dollars.
Yes, I am willing to buy a different brand of phone over a port that I use daily. The aux port is worth more to me than getting a slightly-more-stock android, or a probably-better camera. Is that hard to understand?
> My "keys" are a single key with nothing attached.
But you could attach something to it. My point was mostly that you (presumably) already carry something around with you all or most of the time, something that a dongle can be attached to for basically no cost.
> Is that hard to understand?
It really is hard for me to understand. It's not like they took away to play music over a wire, that I would understand being a problem.
Cables and dongles and adapters are just part of life.
> It really is hard for me to understand. It's not like they took away to play music over a wire, that I would understand being a problem.
No, they added an additional inconvenience to something I use every day. So I'll get a phone from someone who hasn't. Easy peasy, no workaround or buying and carrying dongle to worry about.
> Cables and dongles and adapters are just part of life.
Not for me so far, and I'll continue to make consumer choices to keep it that way.
Many people stand up for their principles by putting their money where their mouth is.
I'm not as extremely opinionated, but I also continue to buy phones with aux ports to support the headphones I already have, and mostly to not worry about misplacing those dongles.
I mean, it's more like 1000 dollars once I lose or break 100 of them, or the dongle breaks my phones charging port because I sat on the phone with the headphones connected.
I can live with a phone that doesn't play music, but I can't with one that doesn't charge
I've spent between $5 and AU$60 on usbc-3.5mm dongles, and every single one has had issues. Can't use it for walking around because the slightest jog to it will cause a connection issue, which will cause the music to stop, so you have to manually make it start playing again.
People gave Apple a _lot_ of flak when they originally killed the audio port, but the $10 dongle they sold lasted me at least 3 years and I don't really remember any connection issues.
Now I'm the sucker they'd always envisioned, owning a Airpod Pros and a Bluetooth Bose headset. At this point though, whether it's Stockholm Syndrome or not, I still do generally prefer the wireless life.
Come on. It isn’t removed it’s just not built into the unit. You can appreciate why, right? The engineering problem for building a phone is literally physically packing technology into the form factor. A headphone jack does not pass this test.
You are joking right? They've managed to fit it in for >10yrs what changed now? Lol I won't buy a phone w/ out a headphone jack. Non cabled audio sucks for latency and quality, dongles aren't an acceptable answer either...
Say rather "the headphone jack no longer passes the test".
There's all kinds of things they could add to phones - bigger battery, headphone jack, sd card slot, heart rate sensor, infrared remote, and loads more, and then all the hundreds of components they do include.
They have to pack it all into this tiny tiny amount of space and they have to make decisions about what to include. That used to include headphone jack, now it doesn't. You're upset about that, while I'd really love if phones included heart rate sensors. But we're both in a minority it seems.
It's important to remember that when you see lots of people on the internet complain about something, that doesn't mean that the majority care.
The majority don't care even a tiny bit so they don't speak about it at all. Only the minority who do care speak up. And if the majority of headphone jacks go unused maybe it's not reasonable for the remaining few who care to demand they stay - they are another potential point of failure and ingress in a phone, after all.
The jack space is just replaced by a jack shaped piece of plastic though. I take apart every phone I've owned to replace the screen many times, and it's not like it's a tradeoff for something else that could take the space. Just BOM reduction
Not sure about the 6a, but the regular pixel 6 arguably only has the bigger battery and even then I still can't get 2 days of use between charging. No headphone jack, no SD card, no IR remote, heart beat sensing is done via camera instead of its own sensor. Maybe the tensor chip takes a lot of space.
It's switched from an included feature to a paid accessory. How is that not removed?
It's not like phones can't fit it in, it's just not as profitable as selling separate dongles or Bluetooth headphones. It's a loss to consumer friendliness and competitiveness, in favour of vendor lock in profits
> Come on. It isn’t removed it’s just not built into the unit.
I assume this is a reference to being able to use a usbc-to-aux dongle? The aux port is literally removed from the 6a...
> You can appreciate why, right? The engineering problem for building a phone is literally physically packing technology into the form factor. A headphone jack does not pass this test.
Aux ports have fit in phones for years. Still do in lots of other phones. Volumetrically, it takes up maybe 6mm diameter by 16mm long - 450mm3, out of the pixel 6a's total dimension of 97,258mm3
I had actually been hoping to pick up the 6a, as I need a new phone soon, but I'll be getting something from a different brand (one that has an aux port and a microSD slot). edit: moto g52 is looking pretty tempting for what's available now.
I'm sorry if my word order affected your understanding of what I meant, but I don't believe a usbc-female to aux male cable exists. If it does, it's certainly not common enough to warrant correction.
Having worked on Audio Codecs and even though my livelihood depends on it, I would like to say 3.5mm jacks suck! You need to figure out how much resistive and how much capacitive load any headphone has. You need to detect if it has mic, if it does is it US or China standard. Need to make sure that the DAC and amplifier don’t consume too much power yet have a good dynamic range for arbitrary cable length. Let the phone send digital audio data along with power using USB-C and have the earpieces play the audio, it’d be much simpler IMO
Those all sound like good things to optimize to make a really good headphone driver, but they aren't strictly necessary are they? "Standard" line level analog audio has been a thing for what, 90 years? I could explain to an 8 year old how it works. It's very simple.
Embedding an IC into a cable that talks USB 2.0 doesn't seem like a simplification to me. I'm a staff level embedded engineer, and I wish an 8 year old could explain to me how that all works.
Any DAC still ideally does all the things you listed optimally, so you're just externalizing the same complexity by leveraging the marvels of modern technology. It's a pain to have to carry another dongle. They feel like they're going to damage my USB-C port when plugged in inside my pocket. Do buttons even work at all with those adapters?
I'd rather the smartphone engineers build an awesome DAC and charge me an extra $15 for the phone, rather than have to buy a $15 dongle of questionable quality on Amazon, or a $50 dongle of even worse quality from Best Buy or something.
The USB-C audio mode just pushes analog audio over the pins, so the hards DAC stuff stays inside the phone and just gets harder with all the multiplexing required.
And fully agreed on USB-C ports being even more fragile in the pocket than 3.5mm.
Bluetooth is terrible. My gripes are:
1. Re-connect from mobile to desktop takes minutes.
2. Batteries need to be charged (and are always not charged when it matters)
Dual connectivity on the XM4 is horribly broken for me. As soon as you try to use the mic, nothing works reliably anymore : the headset randomly stays blocked on one profile on another and you invariably end up with either crappy sound for your music or no voice for your zoom call.
Now I use it exclusively on my phone for music and I have another headset for voice calls on my computer. Which is a shame given how much money I had to throw to buy this thing.
Still, I have to acknowledge, sound is awesome, so that’s why I keep it anyway.
AAC and LDAC should be good. I even use them with PipeWire. Once you switch the mic on though, you end up with a different (low quality) audio profile. It should switch back to high quality profile after but I guess it does not?
Also does dual connectivity even work with LDAC? I feel like the best way is to use software to connect manually. You do have to specify the address and such, and execute the action, and you have to disable Bluetooth when you don't use it. Advantages are less tracking and interference.
As for XM5 it is expensive compared to XM3 and XM4. If you want to spend that extra money there are better targets (victims of current war for example).
Same with Bose. But I have two desktops and a phone, and never know which two are connected. Why limit it to two? Seems arbitrary and unnecessarily limiting.
For developers, yeah, Bluetooth is like a torture device, but for consumers, it's wonderful.
I take my Soundcore buds out of the case. They connect in seconds. I put them back, and put the case on a wireless charging pad. There is no interruption to any of my other Bluetooth items.
I wouldn't even look at anything non-wireless. It would have been nice to have pro audio grade latency, but it's fine for music and not particularly noticable in calls.
As a user I don't love having the sound keep dropping out because I went too close to the train station, or because my phone was rotated slightly wrong in the pocket.
I noticed when stepping out of a train BT drops for a brief moment, what causes this interference? The powerlines ?! Interference from other commuters?
...where on earth are you guys that this happens? I'm commuting every day with Bluetooth headphones and never, ever had a dropout while listening to podcasts and stepping on/off trains.
Sure it it's good enough if you're just playing audio, but it's garbage if you need to keep the audio in sync with the video (if you can't do latency compensation), so it's useless for games. And the other major problem is that the audio quality drops down to garbage if you want to use the microphone, as it needs to switch to HSP or HFP. I find it ominous that the marketing for LE audio has completely ignored these problems, instead focusing on minor improvements like streaming directly do both buds.
Bluetooth is fine, it's just the codecs that suck.
As soon as you enable the microphone on a headset, the codec switches to "American cell phone circa 1990" -mode and everything sounds like shit.
Airpods Max seem to circumvent this with the W1 chip though and it's a complete game changer. I can actually use noise cancelling while having the mic enabled.
I tend to doubt that. Even ten years ago on enthusiast music piracy sites it was quite rare to see pirated analog recordings of DRMed digital audio. There isn’t even widely used end-to-end audio DRM like HDCP, is there?
Yeah let's dump decades of electronics relying on different sized Jacks to the landfill for your convenience.
And let's not forget that you can upsell the mini usb-c dongle for a decent margin!
There's a middle ground working for everybody without going into audiophile territory.
>You need to figure out how much resistive and how much capacitive load any headphone has.
Why would you? That's part of the headphone's characteristics. People who buy high impedance headphones should know when to use an amplifier. That's not the DAC's job.
Your Bluetooth headphones have their own batteries. They also have terrible sound quality compared to equivalently priced wired IEMs because powering multiple drivers/speakers per ear for maximum quality takes more power.
I'm pretty sure USB-C adapters have tiny little DAC ICs embedded inside them. They show up to the phone as a USB sound card.
A lot of USB-C cables have little ICs built into them. It's required as part of the PD spec. A port isn't supposed to provide a laptop with 60W or whatever unless the cable itself communicates that it's rated for it.
There is both. Some phones, e.g. OnePlus, have analog audio output on USB-C and can use a passive adapter. If the phone lacks analog output, e.g. Samsung, it needs an active adapter with a USB controller and DAC like you mentioned.
Passing an analog signal fractions of a millimeter from a bunch of digital signals is a recipe for very crappy sound. I have yet to find an analog USB-C audio adapter that didn’t have terrible quality and usually some hissing or other noise too.
I have some balanced armature earbuds, and they are sensitive enough to pick up noise from poor digital grounding even in the 3.5mm jacks in a lot of phones. Additionally, they are often too loud even on the lowest digital volume setting. 8 years ago I actually made an inline attenuator, which solved the problem on my phone at the time.
My current phone is a pixel 6. I got a USB-C adapter with a DAC built into it, and it actually sounds pretty good. The volume levels are reasonable, and there's no noticable noise other than perhaps an unnoticeable hiss.
Years ago, I had a desktop case front IO panel with a really bad ground loop. I ended up cutting the molded over plastic open and cutting the PCB traces between the audio ports and the USB ports, and the problem went away.
That is unequivocally false. Amplifiers (inside the DAC) are not ideal voltage sources at all loads and frequencies. Depending on the capacitive loads the amplifier might need to adjust compensation to make sure it remains stable in all situations. For resistance you will need to limit the output voltage to ensure you’re not going over the over current limit, or you can get hurt on dynamic range for high resistance loads. To make a good product then you’ll need to dynamically detect the resistance and adjust the voltage. All of these problems are trivial and would increase efficiency greatly if you know exactly how much load there is connected. With all the crazy 3.5mm jacks there are it is inefficient to make a product that fits all. And don’t even get me started on splitters and all the types there are.
Headphones are mainly inductive charges. A short cable won't have enough capacitance to change that. (maybe in audiophile crazy-land, that is).
> amplifier might need to adjust compensation
You're pushing audio, not a cable TV signal...
> For resistance you will need to limit the output voltage to ensure you’re not going over the over current limit, or you can get hurt on dynamic range for high resistance loads.
What crappy device are you plugging into a headphone jack that's even an issue? Short protection is common in most ICs.
Or, you know, use a regular headphone with an impedance between 32 an 100 ohms and that should be fine.
> crazy 3.5mm jacks there are it is inefficient to make a product that fits all
What's so crazy about it? Yes, stereo and mic inputs might be unpredictable, but for usual stereo audio it's pretty predictable
People are saying that like if most USB headphone vendor is not going to plug the cheapest DAC they could find and push whatever to the headphone.
> This is not and has never been a problem for consumer based devices. All headphones are made +/- with the same impedance.
A quick search for "high-impedance headphones" might be enlightening on this topic.
For example, Beyerdynamic offers 32, 80, and 250 ohm versions of several of their models.
> If cable length is an issue for you then you're using a really bad cable. I mean, really bad. Or have a severely underpowered output amplifier.
A cable has both resistance and capacitance, which means every cable is also a low pass filter.
If you are tuning the DAC/amplifier with power consumption as one of the criteria, then actually, yes, you will want the output power as low as possible -- which means cable length is a factor in the optimization.
> For example, Beyerdynamic offers 32, 80, and 250 ohm versions of several of their models.
Yes and you know what happens when you plug a higher impedance phone in a low impedance output right? (and the point is moot because we're talking about consumer devices)
> Headphones with impedance greater than 100 ohms are typically older or professional studio specific design
> A cable has both resistance and capacitance, which means every cable is also a low pass filter.
A cable is a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_line and while it is technically a low-pass filter you have to show me actual numbers to convince me that it will significantly affect, let's say > 10kHZ at usual headphone cable lengths.
For years I swore I would never get wireless headphones. I always made this mental mockery of running out of battery and not being able to use them. But now that I have a pair - and ones that have noise cancellation, at that - I can't imagine not using them. I plugged in headphones to my laptop once and it felt so clunky. Never thought I would say that.
I'm in the same position but have the opposite conclusion. They cut out when using the microwave or in busy areas of the city. The fact that they're not attached means I forget my phone on occasion and have to go back. Pairing with new devices is much more hassle than using the cable, so I only use bluetooth with my phone and cable otherwise. Even then it sometimes just doesn't connect. The battery life is amazing, but I have on many occasions just used the cable or my backup wired earphones instead because it was flat.
In conclusion the noise cancelling is awesome, but the wireless for me is at best a very situational improvement and I wouldn't be less happy without it. I certainly will continue to use wired earphones and avoid products without an aux port.
Did you try the AirPods though, or some other brand? I literally had no problems from the ones you listed: they don’t cut out, they connect to all my devices automatically (they are paired to your every device that is logged in to your Apple account) and it takes only a few seconds to do so.
AirPods Max are way more expensive than what I'd consider paying for headphones, the case I wouldn't trust in my backpack, the battery life doesn't even last a long international flight, nor does it come with airplane adapters, it doesn't have an aux cable for backup and I don't trust apple to integrate with anything outside their walled garden - which includes pretty much everything I own.
As for other brands the cutting out is inherent to bluetooth and so is the pairing process. Even with longer lasting batteries they'd still run out eventually. It sometimes not connecting automatically is likely related to my phone, so I doubt an alternative would change that. I'm extremely happy with my Sony XM4's, but to me them having bluetooth makes little difference.
I can only guess that no one at Google ever tried to use bluetooth headphones for anything serious. Or they would know that thanks to the gigantic latency, particularly on Android, with anything more demanding than videos those headphones are absolute trash, total garbage, useless junk and utter shit. But of course, Google never gave a flying fuck about audio on Android, so they didn't bother to check if it works reasonably. Bluetooth headphones make some noises when connected, so it must be fine.
I’m an iPhone user so I can’t comment on the Android audio stack in day to day use. Apple’s magic Bluetooth chips in the AirPods seem to work really well for me. I imagine the Google equivalent would work well with Google phones
IOS not only has decent audio APIs (from what I hear), it even has some kind of a third-party software bus wherein apps can send audio to each other, in the manner of VST/AU: https://audiob.us. Around for many years, and apparently with many apps using it.
As a person who just won't get into the walled garden, I have to hold back tears while poking at Android apps that are trying to make decent sounds each on their own. In fact, there's Audioroute for Android, which sounds quite analogous to Audiobus, but supported basically by n-Track and four apps from one other dev: https://audioroute.ntrack.com
AirPods definitely have significant latency on iPhones. (I'd estimate at least 100ms.) Perfectly fine for movies or podcasts, detrimental for calls, and awful for anything gaming related.
They don't seem worse on the Pixel 4a, but they definitely don't seem better.
“AirPods Pro and Powerbeats Pro that are wirelessly connected to an iOS device, such as an iPhone 11 or iPad Pro, should have very little, if any, latency in audio with respect to the visuals on the screen.”
AirPods and AirPods Pro in my phone or laptop (linux) both have no noticeable latency.
My wife and I pair both our AirPods pro at the same time to the Apple TV to watch shows (daughter sleeps in the same room) and never have any latency issues.
That's because the video is delayed as well, to match the audio latency. AirPods switch between Headset Profile HSP) (low latency, mono, best for voice) and Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) (high latency, stereo, good for music) to accommodate both use-cases.
I know it's popular to screech and yell and rage on the internets but... you people do know that USB-C to jack adapters are a thing you just throw next to your headphone cable?
They work fine with my iPad, Huawei Android tablet and S22 phone. I'd guess they'll work well with Pixels too? You're not forced to use bluetooth/wireless headphones.
I recently got the new fairphone, which also doesn't include a headphone jack. I have been using the same 17$ in-ear headphones for years, and they have been working amazingly (they even got multiple times in the washing machine and still work). I'm not in for the sound quality, I just want something that works out of the box.
First problem: the USB-C to jack adapter from fairphone is out-of-stock. Okay, I guess I will buy from a third party (22$). It was written for iPad, Samsung, I guessed that it could work for my fairphone. Well, it didn't. I give the cable back, shop for another, doesn't work either.
Second problem: there is no way I will buy for more than >100$ headphones. So I cave in, buy the fairphone wireless headphones (82$). They arrive, and the experience is terrible: sound quality is worse than my 17$ headphones (everything is muffled except bass), the touch interface is terrible, the ANC really bothers me and the latency is horrendous. If I use the piano app on my iPad (for rehearsing vocal music), I feel the latency and it is really unusable. Switching between devices (windows laptop, smartphone and tablet) is terrible.
Yes, I could go out of my way to find a quality USB-C to jack adapter that works, or look at all the reviews of wireless headphones, but the fact is that if you are not an Apple user and use the Airpods (which are quite expensive), the whole experience is just terrible.
While not being a fan of dongles and adapters, I have to note that afaik the power and data/audio signals of usb-c are independent, which allows for charging and audio to coexist on the same port.
Again, I have to deduce from what's unsaid that in your world ‘normal users’ are so boring that they don't even play video games, much less try to do anything related to making music. Kind of a ‘I'm a Mac, I'm a PC’ deal, apparently, specifically the ‘PC’ side.
What you're saying is simply not true. I use wireless Momentum 3.0 and Creative BT-W3 tandem and don't have any noticeable lags or "trash" experience as you describe it.
I'm on my third pair of airpods, and have no plans to get another eventually. The first pair I misplaced(later to be found)...obviously my fault. But the second pair, the firmware is stuck in limbo where both buds have a different firmware version, both old. I took it to Apple and hilariously enough they have no process for forcing a firmware update. They literally said 'go home, try some stuff, hope it works, if it doesn't, come back and buy another pair'. The third pair the left bud has 50% audio. I still use it daily, but its ironic that a product that was supposed to be seamless is consistently operating at subpar level.
I've blown close to a thousand dollars on lost and damaged earbuds. No wonder these anti consumer companies love them. But I'm not spending more, I've basically lost the functionality from my phone.
I spent a lot of time with a Pixel 3, and I'm happy with my Pixel 5A. The latter has a headphone jack; the former doesn't.
With my Pixel 3, I replaced the fancy headphones several times, at a cost of about $30. I really did like the Google-brand headphones (they stay in very well while running), and I didn't find it inconvenient to be unable to charge while listening.
But I really like being able to use very cheap earbuds. They break or get lost, I buy more. And they're available anywhere, while the USB-C ones are a specialty item.
I also use the USB-C port a lot, when I'm driving, and that works really well. I never did find a set of bluetooth earbuds that worked well enough when I was running.
I feel like there's an adequate market for a phone case with a high quality headphone jack, extended battery, sd slot, etc. It shouldn't more than double the thickness
I have a recent Nokia that has all of the above. Except for maybe the "high quality" part, I'm not sure if the phone or aging headphones are to blame there. But the battery is a monster, though not replaceable. There seem to be plenty of others on the market.
I have joined the bluetooth headset world though, shokz openrun finally had a compelling feature set that I couldn't find with wired headphones.
There used to be a market for battery cases that were double thickness but that pretty much dried up when phone batteries became good enough and chargers charged in minutes rather than hours.
It's almost like features like card slots in smartphones are not particularly important to the mass market!
The discussion on HN when headphone jacks come up is always quite amusing. The market has demonstrated now for years that removing headphone jacks from phones is a perfectly reasonable decision for a manufacturer to make. I wonder how much longer HN commenters will keep insisting that it's a terrible mistake.
> It's almost like features like card slots in smartphones are not particularly important to the mass market!
No shit most users don't care about this. If they did phones would still have sdcard slots. There is _A_ market for devices with sdcard slots however. It's not the biggest one but it's sizable for sure.
It could still lose with Apple branding - we heard people online complain for years about how phones are too big, Apple finally released an iPhone Mini and by all accounts it's not selling well and will not be renewed.
Customers don't necessarily have a choice in the matter, they'll buy what's available because it's a life requirement. This is really the kind of thing that needs government clamp down
There are a wide variety of phones available with and without headphone jacks. There's no reason the government needs to intervene. The ones without headphone jacks are, as far as I can tell, much more popular. I don't really consider it when selecting a phone, since I don't care one way or the other (I haven't used the jack in years, but it doesn't hurt me if the phone has it), but most of the phone I've owned recently haven't had one.
In these respects, to me, it feels similar to PS/2 ports, floppy drives, optical disk drives, USB-A ports, or any other number of previously-useful things that many computers no longer have. A bunch of people get upset when you remove any feature, no matter what, while the majority don't care very much, and after a short while it's completely normal to not have the legacy feature.
If at all, the "-a" pixel phones should have traditional/stable features like headphone jacks, fingerprint sensors on the back (no experimental/slow in back of glass sensor) , and the "smaller" form factor. It's really disappointing that this "high/low" market is not exploited.
I've read through so many comments on the headphone jack debate throughout the years since they started removing them from phones, and I've still yet to see a fair justification for their removal.
You can still use wireless earbuds perfectly fine on phones that include a headphone jack, so the argument that wireless earbuds are more convenient is moot.
Arguing over the benefits and downsides of bluetooth do nothing to address the subject at hand, which is the removal of a feature that used to come standard on any phone on the market.
For better or for worse, Apple is often ahead of the curve.
They love to get rid of ports, but years after going all-in on USB C/Thunderbolt for 2016 MacBook Pro models they actually backtracked and added some of the missing ports back (though I wish they'd kept 4 - or more! - USB C/Thunderbolt ports!)
I never understood why they removed MagSafe, fair enough it meant you should use USB-C which is more standardised. But it was an excellent feature, which kept my charger working for 10+ years.
Yes but they influence the curve too. I don't think the phasing out of 3.5mm jacks was inevitable - if Apple kept them so would have every other company!
Comparing the specs between the 5a vs the 6a right now, there don't seem to be any compelling reasons to wait. Other than the different placement of the fingerprint sensor, the only major difference seems to be the processor (Tensor vs Snapdragon). In fact, the battery in the 6a is a downgrade from the 5a (by sheer mAh if not by actual life), and you lose the headphone port.
Yes, clearly the iPhone was just an IBM Simon[1] with a "bit more polish". Probably took just one or two weeks of engineering effort. Unclear why the IBM sold 50k and the iPhone sold 6M, perhaps just due to marketing budget?
I mean there was plenty that happened in this space between 1992 and 2007. Smartphones were already ubiquitous for business users by 2007 but not for general consumers, including Blackberry, PalmOS, and Windows Mobile devices. As late as 2010 Blackberry was still dominant: https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press-Releases/2011/1/comS...
Me: May I tap to pay?
Cashier: Yes.
Me: Great. :pulls out Pixel:
Cashier: Oh, is that Android? We just take Apple Pay.
Never mind that Google Pay came out first, it's now dubbed Apple Pay like Apple invented it and cashiers are convinced the NFC reader only works with iPhones. Because Apple, apparently.
Uhh, NFC devices really didn't work with google's service. This is not "cargo cult", this is pure and total google / android stupidity. Every time you claim it's just cargo cult you underestimate apple here.
Google had Google Wallet. Yes, it came out first, but then there was android pay. Then there was google pay send. Then there was Google Pay - which was a mishmash of chrome autofill and an actual app. Internationally its even more confusing, especially in india. Google pay picked up messaging (!!) explore for personalized ads (ugh). There was also peer to peer features.
Then they did a NEW google pay (2020?) that got rid of google accounts (!!!) and uses just your phone number, and you can't import folks you paid from previous app (!!!!). They have a combination of barcodes - 1d and 2d etc etc.
I'm not sure what the latest is. Android Pay taking over? Google Pay taking over? Going back to google wallet?
Keep on going on about the apple "cargo cult". I pay attention to this space a bit, and even I'm confused.
> Uhh, NFC devices really didn't work with google's service.
Isnt the NFC payment technology the same? I dont think Ive ever come across a payment terminal that accepted NFC payments that didn't work with my Android phone.
The naming thing, well that's Google for you. As a user it hasnt really been a problem though, I've just set up whatever the default app is on the phone when I buy a new one and never dont think about it again for another few years.
Google Pay came out in 2018. Apple Pay came out in 2014.
Perhaps you meant Android Pay? Or Google Wallet? Probably not Google Pay Send.
The tendency to release products half-heartedly and haphazardly, then replace or rename them periodically, is likely why a company with a quarter trillion in annual revenue can't seem to establish any new brands.
Apple Pay was first by about a year (2014 vs 2015). Google had a payment product but it was browser based and not integrated into phones, didn’t work with tap to pay through existing nfc chips or anything special.
They seemed to respond to Apple Pay by changing the name (of course) to Android Pay. And there were also specific payment methods for some manufacturers like Samsung Pay also coming out about a year after Apple.
This is not accurate. I had a Nexus S 4G which debut in 2010. It had Google Wallet tap to pay (NFC). I don't exactly know when Google started offering NFC-based payments nor do I remember exactly what it was named as they keep disastrously rebranding their products, however it did come well before Apple Pay which launched in 2014. As per who popularized tap-to-pay in the U.S., there's no question that Apple wins.
The fact no one seems to be able to exactly pinpoint the moment Android phones were able to support NFC payments kind of tells you why everyone credits Apple for making it popular. Because they did!
Huh. Where is this? Where I live (UK) the terminals seems to be universal, and even much more obscure payment services (like Garmin Pay) work absolutely anywhere that accepts any kind of contactless payment (which is almost everywhere that isn't cash-only).
Americans have this whole idea that all their payment woes somehow apply to the whole world. Just recently, John Gruber wrote a lengthy treatise excoriating Europe for trying to force Apple to open up their NFC access. His whole argument was that Apple created the tap to pay market and was due its monopolist rent-seeking because of that. The reality is so different from what is happening in the US that Gruber looked like an Apple fanboy trying to defend the capitalist monopoly from [he checks his note] democracy.
Europeans and Canadians actually prefer to use bank-issued cards with NFC chips instead of phones, because it arrived first and is far more convenient.
Make sure to watch the Google Io from yesterday to see what Google actually is about.
Apple makes high quality luxury hardware and that's it.
Google tries to save the world (android, maps, secure by default, 24x7 renewable...). Of course overstating a little bit as google is still just a company who earns money
Remember that time Google premiered an AI during the IO keynote that would call a business for you to take an appointment on your behalf? How often have you used this service since its been released? That's right, zero, Google never released the product. They always present things at IO they have no intention of doing. They're not trying to save the world, they're pretending that they're saving the world, one vaporware product at a time.
You do realize that google makes MOST of its money from corps (through marketing crap to you).
Apple incentives are somewhat better aligned with consumers, as they make MOST of their money selling consumers actual stuff, including incredibly hardware!
Somehow, my Zenfone 8 has a headphone jack and nevertheless is IP68 and thin.
These days, I buy phones based on whether or not they're suppored by Lineage, and if they have a headphone jack or not. That's it; that's the criteria.
It's interesting that marketing teams at large companies sort of inherently lack long-term marketing consistency. Or at least, had the product team been in sync with the marketing team about their long-term vision of removing the headphone jack, then maybe they wouldn't have marketed the "roast".
Headphone jacks on mobile devices, especially mobile phones that you handle numerous times during the day, is a big problem. Personally, I almost destroyed my phone multiple times back when I wore wired headphones plugged into my phone. I'd get up my seat on a bus to get off and the wire would catch on the seat handle, pulling my ears and the phone off. I've damaged multiple headphone plugs this way and hurt my ears (I wore those stage in-ear monitors that go around the ear).
Apple did a tremendous job pushing the industry towards wireless earbuds. I'm sure they did it partly (or if you ask some, wholly) to sell you more expensive stuff, but I'm happy paying more because not only has it eliminated the safety issues with the wired buds, but it's created completely different ways of using ear phones. I have one set of speakers in my ears, which I barely feel they're there, and I listen to content from my watch, my phone, my computer and my TV in what I can only describe as "magically". They take up less space and are much easier to take out and put away compared to their wired counterpart. I can walk around my home while on a phone call, meeting or just doing house chores. Oh and wait for it, I can share playback with my partner in a noisy environment or on a plane.
Most of my use cases mentioned above is either impossible or quite cumbersome with a wired set. I am one of those who's happy as a hippo because of Airpods. And I used to own Senheisser over the ears, Shure in-ear monitors with stacks of DACs and amps, so there. Convenience and freedom for me outweighed the 2% extra detail I could hear with those setups.
Not having an audio jack sucks. They said it’s because Bluetooth is the future and my phone can be .01mm thinner. Well- I have AirPods and their battery life sucks. They die before I get home. I always lose the adapter. It may be a first world problem, but it’s still a measurable regression in my quality of life.
Is my understanding correct, that any wireless solution uses a lossless codec. Therefore the highest quality audio iPhone is the original wired SE from 2016. Any modern iPhone will have lower quality audio by design, no matter how good the wireless buds are.
Sometimes I read the comments about the headphone Jack and it’s like. How did we move from VHS to DVD to BluRay to Streaming with all these people who are so attached to the past they can’t move on…
If you are into music production, then you really care about audio latency. And no, the consumer wireless headphones you can buy have terrible latency.
I wouldn't say that wired headphones are stuck in the past. VHS to DVD was a huge jump: you didn't need to rewind anymore, quality didn't suck so much, you could have multiple languages. Going from wired to wireless isn't so much an improvement in technology. There are still lots of advantages of wired technology: it is cheaper, you don't need to recharge, latency is better, no findling with Bluetooth problems.
Sure but that’s audio production and people in audio production don’t tend to use a 3.5mm headphone Jack… on phones people more often than not can’t tell the difference in audio quality.
Headphones meant for audio production tend to come with a 3.5mm headphone jack with screw thread that allows you to securely fit an adapter to full size jack.
I find it very likely that people who are into audio production want to use their cabled headphones on their phone. I do. And the people who are into hi-fi too. It’s just that it’s too small of a part of the market.
The answer is by having carrots and not just sticks in the whole ecosystem. Modern video formats and screens are much higher resolution (to take but one important dimension), even for old movies that get an HD re-release, there are many incentives to move on especially once you've already bought into one aspect (like replacing an old CRT TV). The ecosystem around the audio jack isn't the same, there are fewer incentives, and a less clear improvement trajectory -- people have ancient wired headphones providing superior sound to some latest wireless thing, but there are no VHS cassettes that can match the clarity of 1080p or higher.
That's a great comparison. Streaming and wireless headphones are both really convenient but initially a step back in quality. Streaming is frustrating on a good quality large tv and Bluetooth audio on good quality headphones.
In a few more years the quality issues will hopefully be solved. In the meanwhile the majority of consumers don't care and will drive adoption.
"I can't believe we managed to moved on from horse wagons to cars when people are so attached to wheels.." Everything that is old is not per definition bad.
I feel like first some obscure or Chinese manufacturer will do it, then apple will copy it, ironing out any issues the previous manufacturer faced. Only then will the rest of manufacturers do follow suit.
And the 5a has a broken jack. The volume up button starts the assistant and there is no way to configure it. If the assistant is disabled it does nothing.
I used to be such a Google fanboy that I made my career as an Android developer for the last 10 years. But nowadays I'm disgusted by the company and am cynical of every product announcement. I resent feeling like I have to pay attention to the soulless Google I/O. I'm thinking of switching careers even if it means a significant pay cut.
Mine has both and it is from 2021. Removing the ability to expand your phones storage locally is just a way to justify the cost structure Apple and others created around "more storage = more cost".
When you can add 128GB via a card slot for $30 but Apple charge you many multiples of that to get the same as embedded storage it just looks stupid.
It is also to get you to pay for iCloud when you run out of space on the cheaper iPhones.
All my other electronic devices have a audio jack and it works perfectly fine, so why not a phone? Analog headphones are also cheaper and guaranteed to work so avoid the vendor lock-in and licensing scams Apple and others try to set up.
I can also (shock) charge my phone AND have headphones connected without a stupid dongle.
Floppy disks were worse in every way than a USB stick or CD.
The headphone jack and SDcard slot are always a benefit (to the consumer at least, not to Apple/Google trying to sell you Cloud storage and overpriced accessories).
the worst thing to me about the push to replace sdcard based storage with cloud based one (as expandable and "sharable" storage) is how incredibly US-centric (or..."rich country" centric?) that is. Forget places like India even in the US there is a huge section of the population that live in places with very poor cell reception and are just starting to see post dial up speeds. Yea, cloud storage is cool if you're like me - i live in a major metro, never really venture outside of downtown and my wifi and internet could easily get me >1Gbps speeds if i really wanted but it's a REAL pain when i'm on vacation somewhere and have taken a bunch of photos and need to share it with people, or running low on storage so need to upload it to clear some space...you ever tried to upload 200 photos taken by an iphone 11 or whatever at a random resort in mexico somewhere?
And those cloud data charges, yikes. I mean the lowest priced tier on both google and apple are $0.99/mth which is not gonna break the bank for most people but like, apple for example the free tier is only 5GB, that is absolutely nothing.
With UFS sizes where they are at, I can get quite a bit of media on my device these days even without an SD card. Back in the day when eMMC was topping out at 64 GB, with a hefty premium, it was a bit different.
Expandable storage is definitely a nice longevity / future proofing feature, though.
imo it's all about good alternatives for enough use cases. when floppy disks were going away it was being quickly replaced with things like CD, and while the latter had it's growing pains if i recall, it basically still covered most use cases (at least as far as I remember, though feel free to correct me on this).
SDCards: it's similar here, the first few generations that did this did it too early even in places like UK, Canada and USA while the internet was mostly ubiquitous enough to replace sdcard for quick sharing of files it wasn't until sometime later that we really started getting 64GB and 128GB storage on phones. Nowadays ofc, 128GB and more is super common so there's less need for expandable storage. However, SDCard isn't just about expandable storage, it's also about data transfer. It's ok if you're like me, I live in a city with 5g data and >1Gbps wifi and internet everywhere, jsut upload everything to google drive or whatever. But this is much more of an issue when i was in india for example and needed to switch phones. Transferring all those photos, videos, pdfs etc via a usb cable was really slow and annoying, back in the sdcard days i'd just pop out the card and pop it in into my new phone. This is crucial - in general we need to keep in mind as many use cases as is reasonable (forget india, there are plenty of places in USA that have bad data connections and poor internet what do you do if you live somewhere with poor wifi and data and need to switch phones?). That being said, it wasn't bad, especially these days, fast internet and "everywhere fast data" is becoming more and more common and the sizes of the built in storage is large enough.
(Note: I could go on about Apple/Google etc shift to force people into using cloud services more and how INCREDIBLY US-centric that is).
Headphone jack: As i said, the important thing is to keep in mind different use cases. Yea bluetooth is great and things like square payment has quickly replaced their headphone jack based connection with bluetooth but there are too many uses cases here from people who rent cars to people for whom bluetooth simply isn't reliable enough yet. Bluetooth is not a simple drop in replacement like CD was or even built in storage to a large extent - bluetooth devices need to be able to power themselves for example.
Honestly to me, removing the headphone jack so you can sell more bluetooth headphones (which is usually cited as a possible reason?) seems silly - but that's just me maybe. Bluetooth is ubiquitous and convenient enough that those who are up for it will already be using it, or looking to use it. But you're not going to convert too many people into using bluetooth just by removing the headphone jack - worst case you're gonna get a lot of people buying those little dongles. Do those little dongles really make that much money? Is it just about shaving whatever you can, i can't imagine a headphone jack adds to much to the BOM but maybe every little bit counts?
Ultimately with any of these things it's all about thinking about other people in other situations. Yea for me, i don't really take a lot of photos to begin with and was lucky that for the most part i lived in places with good data and internet so the switch away from sdcard was a no brainer. I've been using standalone music players since before ipods were a thing so, again, no headphone jack doesn't bother me. I didn't really rent cars or use any of the many myriad of devices that used the headphone jack to connect either so again, meh. The problem is, there are entirely too many people for whom these things are crucial. And as much as I hate to say it, this is a bit of a "check your privilege" moment as well (I am about as big a google fanboy as you can get, but YIKES, that company - i'm positive, has NO IDEA that other countries exist).
And let me be clear - the 3.5mm jack is far from being the perfect way of transmitting and sending audio. It's a vestige from an analog world where you have to take impedence and resistance of the load into account, and I don't use it much myself.
But the use-case where you have to stream music from your phone and you have just a humble set of speakers, an amplifier or some old headphones isn't that uncommon - especially for musicians like me: what happens when you're in a studio with your band, you want to play an mp3 on your phone, but you have no way of plugging your phone to the mixer or the amp?
Pretending that such use-cases don't exist, and force all the users to figure out an alternative, is an act of sheer arrogance on the producers' side. And such arrogance isn't even justified by the claim of water resistance: it's technically possible today to have an audio jack port AND be waterproof.