Headphone jacks are easier to use with friends. A few years ago, if a friend was riding with me in the car, I would offer them a chance to plug their phone into the audio system using a 3.5mm cable. Now, most of my friends don't have a phone with the audio jack, and pairing their phone via bluetooth is a small headache that also seems to have a small random chance of failure.
Similarly, I used to keep a "headphone splitter" cable in my laptop back and backpack. If I were listening to something interesting or funny, I could share that with someone, connecting two (or more!) pairs of headphones to one device. I think it may be technically possible to do something similar on the latest bluetooth standards, but even thinking about trying to do it makes me tired.
On a different note, I have an old but nice hifi stereo in my home. It has a few different audio sources, but the one I use the most is my previous smartphone, which sits next to the stereo, permanently connected with a 3.5mm cable. It has no mobile data plan, but it connects to my home's wifi, and I use it to play music from a streaming service and to my media server that holds a collection of ripped CDs. I think it's a great way to extend the usefulness of an elecronic device, but that is only made possible by utilizing widely adopted standards.
i feel your pain about splitting of audio without a headphone jack. there are some devices like the Airfly Duo (no affiliation) that can connect via Bluetooth to two devices, but those require that at least your device has an audio jack
Splitting audio via Bluetooth works completely fine for me. Doesn't need any extra apps or devices. But I was also very surprised when found out that this works now.
I went searching for it the other day, and my impression for most tablets/phones is that it's supported at the hardware level by most modern devices, but it needs to be enabled at the OS level. Right now, only Samsung are really doing that, but presumably at some point Android and iOS will have it as a built-in feature as well.
IIUC, this is part of Bluetooth v5, it might specifically be connected to LE Audio, but I don't know the details.
Ok, I found out now that the feature is called "multi-streaming".
"Multi-Stream Audio will enable the transmission of multiple, independent, synchronized audio streams between an audio source device, such as a smartphone, and one or more audio sink devices"
I bought one recently for less than half the price of a cup of coffee. The electronics are so small that it is impossible to tell where they have been hidden, and any audio imperfections that may exist are below my personal threshold of audibility, which - if I may toot my own horn a little - is not a particularly forgiving standard. I am awed by modern technology.
I went shopping for a new mobile phone this year. Excluded anything that did not include 3.5mm headphone jack.
I don't own wireless headphones, and while I grant it does solve the various problem of wires it clearly introduces the problem of batteries and charging.
(Can you even replace batteries in wireless headphones that aren't holding charge anymore? Never mind, don't answer that, I can guess).
Anecdotally I feel like wired headphones run the battery down less than bluetooth broadcast.
I bought a Motorola something or other. Works fine.
I got a set of Fairbuds XL at work because it made sense to buy something that could last a long time and be repaired and I really wanted to support Fairphone's basic premise — repairable gadgets with long support. Here's my experience with them that nobody asked for.
First of all, the sound is fine. Nothing exceptional but certainly not bad. I'd say they compare pretty well to my Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro (80 Ohm) or my old Sennheiser Urbanite XL. They also sit pretty well on my head for extended periods of time, which is nice, but will obviously vary from person to person. They don't have any fancy Teams-integration, which is a plus for me but a deal-breaker to others. They hold battery very well. I haven't tested it in depth but I've used them for maybe 3 full workdays without charging them, so maybe around 24 hours of active use and they still had some juice left.
But the firmware... What a disappointment. The headphones have 3 settings, ANC, ambient and "normal". I personally prefer "normal" but the headphones don't remember the setting across restarts, so every time I turn them on I have to sit through the boot sound (because system sounds can't be interrupted), wait for the audio feedback to finish saying "connected", and if a second device is connected, "second device connected", then click a physical button, wait for it to finish saying "ambient sounds", and finally click a third time to hear it say: "noise cancelling off", and _then_ I can start using them. It's OK the first 5-10 times but then it just gets really, really annoying.
I went to their forums about a year ago to suggest it as a feature but learned that Fairphone actually don't interact with the forums, it's just user-to-user interaction, so suggestions don't really make it further from there. That's fair, so I contacted their support about it instead. They suggested that I contact the store that my workplace bought the headphones from. (I didn't think that was really going to solve the issue, so I chose to just ignore that.)
They've released 2 firmware updates since then, but no storing mode across reboots. They did however manage to glitch out the boot sound in one firmware update, so it played 2/3 of the audio only to interrupt itself and play the second half of the sound again. The last firmware update fixed that at least.
And before someone suggests that there might be no place to store aforementioned setting, they can store bluetooth pairings and EQ presets on the headphones. The noise cancellation preference could be stored in less than a byte. Unfortunately the firmware isn't OSS so I can't even fix it myself.
Wait, the firmware isn't OSS? Did they ever mention why? I completely understand that they can't open source stuff like a phone's modem firmware, but I don't get it here. Was it written in house or did they use some off the shelf solution (would explain why they can't open source it).
I mean, I know that fairphone doesn't market themselves as OSS centric (like purism does for example), but you'd think that it would fit their ewaste reduction goal in this case.
I agree. Making it OSS would definitely fit the spirit of their business, IMO, but the best we can do for now is to suggest that they open source it and hope.
I want to love these but at the price point you can basically buy 3-4 sets of (likely) technically comparable wireless earbuds that will (likely) last a year or two. How long can I expect fairbuds to last? I can't imagine it would be close to a decade even with replacing batteries
I guess that's also kinda my poorly made point -- I imagine that these earbuds are like any other electronic device in the fact that they'll break in a handful of years and end up being irreparable in some way that results in just replacing them. I'm not sure what the answer is to any of this of course
I used to be on the wired only train until I got bone conducting headphones (shokz). Those became 90% of my usage. I don’t really have problems with battery life or charging now that I’ve switched.
I had a pair of those and loved them until I charged them over night once. I forgot that you're not supposed to do that (or never read the notice, idk) and they were dead in the morning. Severely disappointed now. It's just such a basic feature that you can forget about devices on the charger.
They do compete with external sound. If there’s noise you want to drown out you can do it by turning up the volume. You can also plug your ears or wear ear plugs which I will do on occasion, like when grinding coffee while listening to a podcast.
Likewise if you want to be able to hear the outside world you have to turn down the headphones. On the quieter side you can hear what people are saying to you but you probably want to pause to talk. Medium volume i can hear people talking to me but cant make out what they’re saying. Louder volume they gotta be close or shouting.
They’re mostly used in situations where you want to hear your surroundings. On a plane I use airpods with anc. Around the house or on a run I use shokz. I can wear them all day unlike airpods which I hate the sensation of having the world dulled and something in my ear.
Probably the single best piece of tech I’ve found since getting a smartphone. I wear the all the time, if they break I’m buying a new pair same day. They kinda suck for music but i would never use anything else for spoken word unless I was on a plane or something.
Since they lack noise isolation over ear or tight fitting buds this can be a problem. I have the OpenSwim Pro and they are fine outside except for really high noise. But while on a treadmill in the Gym they could not overwhelm the background noise.
I have been using my current Beyerdynamics for about 8-9 years now, still going strong. I changed out the velour pads and they feel like new. I've lugged them around across the world and commuted with them day in day out.
They have no place in this world of planned obsolescence but I'm still more than happy with them.
Didn't realise motorola's made 3.5mm phones. I have been bound to Asus and Xperias who made smaller phones with water resistance and a 3.5mm jack. Now I think I'm back to Xperia again because Asus have vacated the small phone segment
I finally had to update from a phone with a jack to a phone without and it sucks as much as I expected...
The three first dongles I bought produced static noise in the background, the only that works is the apple usb-c to jack but it's super flimsy and doesn't allow full volume on android.
For the same reason as you I will never buy wireless headphones, it's the epitome of disposable tech, at best you'd get 3-5 years of use, then you'd have to trash them because there is no easy way to replace the batteries
Charging is barely an issue these days.
I use nothing ear 2a earphones. They last 7/8 hours on a charge but I've never noticed this as they charge when I put them in the case (the case has 40 hours charge I believe). I think, since April, I've plugged them in twice.
I switch between these and Sennheiser headphones, which I've probably charged 3 times in the same period.
Some of the other brands have wireless charging for the case too, so if you've set up the charger somewhere convenient that the case is used, honestly I don't think you'd notice it has a battery.
I changed the batteries in my Sony WF-1000XM3 earbuds without too much trouble. Unfortunately I don't think you can easily replace the battery in the case, so I still had to charge the case pretty often.
I'm sure you'd like my (over-ear) Sennheisers. A battery lasts around 20h (2-3x that on newer models), I can just insert a 3.5mm cable and they work, and I have successfully replaced the battery and the earpads. Been using the same pair since around 2017.
The only reason I'm seriously considering it's time for an upgrade is that they charge via a micro-B cable, which was quite frankly unacceptable for a "premium" brand even back in 2017. The question I keep asking myself for the past two or so years is: is that enough of a nuisance to spend another €400?
They missed my biggest frustration with Bluetooth audio. I want to connect to the TV or my phone, but my headphones want to connect to my computer upstairs or vice versa. Now I have to go upstairs, apologize to the person using that device, and reach over their shoulder to unpair before it lets me connect to my phone. With a 3.5mm I know exactly which device I'm going to connect to and I don't have to negotiate with any 3rd parties for the privilege.
Totally - the user interface is so much easier with a 3.5mm jack. Want to pair it to a different device, just unplug it from the current one and plug it in the new one. No limits such as being only able to pair with two or three devices.
This is incredibly frustrating with iPhones. At least Android and Windows lets you disable automatic connections, but on an iPhone your only choice is to unpair.
I think this apple in general. It astounds me that after so many years there is still no option in OSX to disable automatic connection to specific bluetooth devices.
There are many, many threads on various forumns on the web, going back years, looking for a resolution to this, and the fix from apples end would appear to be trivial.
The “don’t make me think” mantra got noticed by too many product stakeholders who made it their life motto, and so didn’t notice when it metastatized into “don’t let me think.”
I wish NFC pairing was more widespread. It's only really supported on Android phones but it solved that issue. Just tap the two things together and boom paired.
I too like the simplicity and standardisation of the 3.5mm headphone jack, and think it's a shame that it's fallen out of fashion in smartphones. But I think this is something that a small number of people get really disproportionately angry about. It's most obvious every time Fairphone crops up in discussion here, and all you see on HN are people furiously shitting on it over its lack of headphone jack.
> If you’re a fan of the 3.5mm jack, it’s time to vote with your wallet.
Not sure why the author thinks this hasn't been happening already, and the 3.5mm jack is simply losing the popular vote. I really just don't think that many people care about it, in the scheme of things. If removing it helps make the phone even marginally thinner, cheaper or more waterproof, I suspect most consumers will happily make that trade-off. Bluetooth headphones can also be more convenient in that you don't have to remain wired to your phone or deal with tangled cords, etc. Like the author, I also have a Samsung Galaxy S10 that still has the headphone jack but a few months ago I finally caved and bought a pair of bluetooth earphones.
> Not sure why the author thinks this hasn't been happening already, and the 3.5mm jack is simply losing the popular vote.
When you are buying smartphone, you can not selectively select the features. If you used iPhone and bought apps, you will buy iPhone even if it is missing jack or whatever.
I know that I disliked quite a lot about how phones were/are changing ... and when my phone life ends, I have to buy another one. I have no real choice when it comes to this.
Same, one generation 3.5mm was a given, next time I needed a phone I have no choice. Who asked me? I would have, if given the choice, bought a phone with wired headphones, an SD card slot, and an IR blaster like my previous phone had but none of those were options. Now the phone I have is bigger than I wanted, has worse battery life, and kills my run tracking apps once the screen has been off for 2 minutes with no option to disable that behavior (obviously spackling over the pitifully small battery by annoyingly killing anything using power)
On the plus side it has a 120 hz display that doesn't help me either.
The war has already been lost. Headphone jacks are basically only in low end phones now. They used to be in mid range devices too, but even there they are gone. You have to really compromise to get it which is a shame.
What I do wish is if somebody at least made is a USB C phone dock similar to what Apple made for 30 pin and lightning iPhones with audio out jacks. There are dongles that let you charge and do audio out but not in nice dock form.
It is truly bizarre that flagship phones are the ones that are dropping the most features.
And yet, we are approaching the day very soon where there's no point in getting the next year's flagship phone. It's not faster. It's not better. It doesn't have a better battery. The camera's not going to get any better. It's going to be the same form factor.
At some point phones will stop charging ridiculous amounts of money for 128 GB of RAM, when a terabyte of storage is approaching $50 in retail cost.
More ports SD card. I can see all of it coming back on the table. Cuz you're going to want features if you get a nice phone.
I think the flagship manufacturers' approach has always been to find the two or three things consumers will pay most for and aggressively optimise for them. So phones got thinner, cameras and screens got progressively better, for a few generations at least. Other features that got in the way and didn't add a huge amount to the phone's mass market appeal got dropped.
It will certainly be interesting to see how the manufacturers continue to find ways to differentiate themselves. Right now, unsurprisingly, all the hype seems to be focused around AI. So possibly future phones will be ruthlessly optimised for running LLM models. But if, instead, the phone manufacturers just decide to use cloud-hosted AI (or if the hype around AI dies down), then they'll need something else. The foldable form factor is the only other one that occurs to me right now.
I used to care, but eventually got good Bluetooth earbuds and haven't looked back. Credibly waterproof phones are a big selling point although there's still fine print on warranty coverage.
I think it's still the case that Bluetooth headphones cost more for the same quality, though.
My car is too old for bluetooth audio, so I have to connect either the dongle or the charger. The dongles i can buy from gas stations always break after about two months, while the gas station aux cable they connect to has lasted years. I also always run out of power on long drives.
Dongles exist which allow you to charge and play audio at the same time.
And… stop buying garbage products from gas stations? You are buying the most cheaply-built item possible from a manufacturer and merchant who have zero concern with repeat business. Pay a few bucks more once for something made by a manufacturer with a reputation and stop throwing more money down the drain.
A USB-C headphone adapter from apple is $9. I love my wired headphones. My iPhone 15 has an extremely capable headphone jack. This is such a solved problem.
This is definitely a solution, but for whatever reason using these destroys my charging port over time - and I’ve experienced this over multiple devices now. :(
Bluetooth headphones seem to add sufficient lag that they prevent me from playing an instrument (like a synth) over them. I'm not sure bluetooth can solve this problem, but I'd be pleased to be surprised.
Bluetooth builds in some buffering to deal with contention on the airwaves and packet loss while keeping the audio stream going. That buffer is the lag you are hearing. It is quite substantial, and there is a natural tradeoff here - you can use more power to (theoretically) reduce buffer size by improving the SNR of the signal, but if you run out of buffer, you are going to drop samples.
Even USB audio has some buffering to handle bus contention, but it is quite small in comparison.
I don't know what changes behind the scenes, but it does improve latency. The only downside I noticed is the reduced range, eg, it stops working on a different room where normal mode still works.
I prefer wireless locally, and wired when traveling.
I use a two inexpensive LG neckband style wireless headsets during workout, short (under 4 hour flight); and whatever I can get my hands on flat wired headset, for long flights.
Loss of buds: I have seen too many travelers freak out with their earbuds dropping on the floor on trains, planes, and taxis. With the wireless neckband and wired sets, there is much less chance of losing them, and even if I lose them the cost is minimal.
Battery runs out: I have yet to have a wireless headset that can do a good job on long flights. They will run out of juice, specially if I turn on noise cancellation.
Battery concerns: At several airports, I have to pull the wireless headsets out and place them separately because (justified or not) concerns over battery fires and "technology". No one cares about wired headsets.
Microphones: I have yet to experience small, portable wireless headsets (not headphones) that have good enough microphones without a boom. Even the "inline" microphones for wired headsets often out-do wireless earbuds and similar.
Size: Unless I use earbuds of some sort, a full around and even over the ear wireless headsets are significantly larger than some small wireless in-ear solution. When traveling size and weight counts. Earbuds although significantly smaller, they still have the charging pod/box that make them larger.
The flat wired headsets just rarely tangle, and easy to fold. I can shovel one (or more) in any pocket, not have to worry about batteries, batteries exploding, and recharging.
I do like the freedom of wireless when working out.
Q: Anyone uses earbuds for conference calls? The biggest issues for me are either they cannot hear me, the background noise is too much, or they die too fast. I would welcome some suggestions. It would need to be able to pair with Android, iOS and PC. Thanks!
Modern ANC headphones (over ear) have plenty of battery life for any flight. Most are north of 30 hours, some reaching 50 hours even with ANC on. For planes there’s just nothing better than over ear headphones for noise canceling.
I've been buying used QC25s, there are plenty of parts available to refresh and keep them working. I think everything in them is off patent now so theoretically someone could start making compatible main boards and then the user base would be able to fully decouple from Bose's product roadmap.
Why would you optimize for quick changing something that needs to be changed, pessimistically, every 2 years? You can swap the batteries in the newer models, it’s not that hard. In every other way the newer models are superior. Far better ANC, better sounding, better battery life, able to actually be charged… etc
> I prefer wireless locally, and wired when traveling.
I'd go even bolder: wireless locally, mp3 player (wired) when traveling.
I still have an IRiver from 2010s and its battery lasts forever. While my phone can survive a day, then, without me worrying about getting lost without Maps and power :)
> The headphone jack is a “just works” kind of technology: there’s nothing complicated about it [..]
While the connector itself is indeed simple, a DAC is also needed inside, and one needs a decent DAC/amp on the phone to get a decent signal. In a cheaper smartphone, you are probably better off with bluetooth/aptx. Moreover, jack cables "just work" until they start making weird stuff depended on how they get bent or stretched or the connectors touch. I experience a surge of anxiety even writing this right now.
If we're talking phones you need an ADC anyways to digitize the microphone signal (unless you're using a dedicated microphone IC). There are many ICs which give you ADC and DAC in one package, the only thing you potentially need is the output circuitry to drive the headphones.
On top of that you need a DAC for your speakers anyway and since phones don't use speaker and headphone outputs for different things you could just route the amplified signal from the DAC through the switch contacts of the headphone jack which disconnects the speakers if a plug is inserted.
Nobody uses the same DAC for headphone output as they do for speakers. There’s dedicated devices for each of these in every system, as it’s just more efficient. Also, most devices allow simultaneous output on headphone and speakers (think, notifications). These devices are all monolithic for the particular function, and generally for good reason.
We are talkinf about whether additional electronics were the death of the headphone jack – I argue no. If anything it is the jack itself that they wanted to get rid of. Also likely they additionally wanted to sell more earbuds (maybe that was even the primary driver). If anybody could tell us they probably are on HN.
Nobody is using a part like that for any speaker output in a cell phone, let alone a laptop. Modern speaker drivers are closer to 8-12W (even in cell phones) so the wimpy 400mW of that device is worthless. It’s also in a package completely unsuitable for a cell phone, and doesn’t have any of the integrated jack detection that is needed in modern 3.5mm audio codecs.
Also, there can be many reasons for removing the headphone jack. I personally think the theory that the primary motivator was to drive additional sales for headphones is silly. It’s purely a cost play and the manufacturers decision to say that Bluetooth headphones are finally good enough.
> In a cheaper smartphone, you are probably better off with bluetooth/aptx.
If we assume a cheap phone has a garbage DAC, we should assume a cheap phone has garbage Bluetooth. That might mean better audio quality when it works, but also connectivity problems and excessive power consumption.
Not true, modern BT codecs can be essentially transparent, and cheap 3.5mm jacks can have all sorts of issues. Bad noise performance, bad interchannel isolation, pop click issues, etc. don’t underestimate how badly you can design a 3.5mm jack especially if the phone only costs like $50 total.
As a non audiophile who designs this stuff for a living, you’re correct it’s not difficult or even particularly expensive. But it’s also surprisingly common to do it poorly.
It’s much easier to make a headphone output that is tailored to a very specific driver than it is to make a generic headphone driver that can drive any conceivable headphone plugged in.
My only complaint with the lack of a 3.5mm jack is that people apparently can’t figure out BT headphones, so they just play anything and everything through the phone speakers, whether others are around or not. It’s like the boombox era of the 80s, only with much more shitty sound quality, and it’s Grandma being obnoxious and not some punk teenager.
It's nowhere near as widely used, but there is such a thing as a 2.5mm jack, and you can buy a converter from 2.5mm male to 3.5mm female. Has any telephone handset ever had a 2.5mm headphone jack?
(Presumably no telephone handset has ever had a ¼-inch jack, even in olden times?)
My Bose QC 35 headphones have a 2.5mm socket but on the headphones end for when you'd want to use them wired. It came with a cable with a 3.5mm male plug for the source device and the 2.5mm male plug on the side that goes to the headphones.
Never seen a wired headset with 2.5mm male plug that goes to the source device however.
Not headsets, but Bose ANC headphones have used a 2.5mm jacks for years (and still do). They give you a 2.5 to 3.5mm cable, though. I imagine this is likely just to drive cable sales, though, as there isn’t any real reason you need the 2.5mm jack on their relatively big headphones.
The audio chips in phones were woeful. Not every headphones could be driven by them. There was a whole cottage industry of DAC that you had to plug between your phone and your headset.
As a very deep hole, the jack was also a dust/lint catcher, almost impossible to clean. And because of its length, it had a lot of leverage on the board, requiring fairly heavy-duty soldering to avoid damaging the board.
And the first reason the jack went out is not thinness but water resistance.
You aren't speaking to infants, we were all alive when the only real choice was wired headphones, and plenty of people still use wired headphones now.
I think it was wonderful when headphones always worked, usually sounded fine (sometimes magnificent), and were available for $10.
> There was a whole cottage industry of DAC that you had to plug between your phone and your headset.
If there was, it was minuscule. I've never heard of people doing that in the wild.
> As a very deep hole, the jack was also a dust/lint catcher, almost impossible to clean.
Back then, the products were expected to be used long enough for this to become a problem. After a decade, I bet some of those holes were pretty dirty, although who would know. Modern portable tech does not have the disadvantage of durability.
> because of its length, it had a lot of leverage on the board, requiring fairly heavy-duty soldering to avoid damaging the board.
It’s always been a problem for any higher impedance headphones. Being able to drive 300 or 600 ohm headphones is quite difficult, and many headphone drivers are not capable of doing it at sufficient volume. Not technically hard, mind you, just costs extra money that most don’t want to spend.
Yeah but if you're buying those headphones you know you need an amp.
I do wonder how hard/expensive it would be to offer this as a configuration option though. Like if your favorite set is 300 ohms you could just configure your phone with an amp powerful enough to drive them. Or, maybe whatever they do in the MBPs to detect high impedance headphones would also work. I'm obviously out of my depth here.
It’s not complicated, it’s just a more powerful amplifier which costs more money, area, etc. it’s not in most phones because very few people have 300 ohm headphones. That’s the only reason.
Z stack strength and rigidity is a huge driver because it reduces charge back. Margins are super tight for a lot of OEMs and the PMs eliminate any non-profit features.
Off the top of my head, there are savings in:
Pick and place
Stack Assembly
Testing
Improved phones/hour and therefore shorter/cheaper factory runs
Packaging, especially if you eliminate the shitty wired earpieces in the box
Less weight/volume and cheaper shipping
Reduced warranty / chargeback because things that don’t exist can’t fail
All of these savings are small. But remember that the goal is to make/sell 500K+ units. And, this is an industry where the bean counters will kill their mothers to shave a penny off of the BOM.
So, yeah, for the OEM eliminating headphone jacks is a complete no brainer.
Everything you said is true. But the cheapest phones still have the 3.5mm jack. People on a budget use wired earphones because they are harder to lose, price and even fashion (color n stuff)
Flagship phones on the other hand are sold to another population who seems happy to spend more money for a small inconvenience.
We long ago got to the point where audio circuits in phones were perfectly fine for typical headphones. Especially considering the circuitry was mostly built into the SoCs. Good audio circuitry that is completely transparent is easy to design and been known for decades.
I had multiple phones with IPx7/8 water resistance and a headphone jack (e.g. LG G6 and Samsung S10) that is a bullshit excuse.
Everyone gets to feel their own feelings, but there's just so much that doesn't resonate with me here...
> I can’t use my Bluetooth earbuds while they’re charging.
Many bluetooth headphones have battery life measuring in tens of hours. And every set I've used, long life or otherwise, recharge to 80% in a handful of minutes. I agree that an airpod's miniscule battery life is appalling, but you can stand to pull them out of your ears for five minutes every four hours, and you can charge them one at a time so you never need to stop listening, and my Bose QC35IIs still get more than an entire day of playtime after multiple years of recharge cycles.
> In a critical-care facility, it’s hard enough to find one free mains socket to connect a charger to, let alone two.
I haven't used a single-port USB charger in a decade. All of my chargers have multiple ports on them. GaN tech makes them very compact even at high power output.
> Sound quality is better.
Maybe in the abstract, but for most people this isn't meaningfully true in any way that actually matters to them. And if you're listening to "comedy shows and audiobooks" it definitely doesn't matter. Speech has an extremely limited useful frequency range, and those tracks are typically extremely compressed without any ill effect.
> The headphone jack is a “just works” kind of technology...
Nothing is ever fully a "just works" kind of technology. Things only just work until they stop working. The 3.5mm jack wore out after a year or so on every device I've ever owned that experienced plug/unplug cycles a few times per day because of accumulated minuscule amounts of force over time. This is more likely for devices like phones which are ultracompact and go in your pocket. Google for variations of "3.5mm port broken" or "loose audio jack" some time and you'll see that this is a common problem. The wires themselves also wear out from repeated flexing over time, even with strain relief. I had a pair of Shure E2c years ago that stopped working if I didn't hold a bend in the non-replaceable cable at a particular spot with a rubber band.
> Ordinary wired earbuds can be small enough to wear whilst sleeping. I’ve never seen Bluetooth earbuds that are.
Then you didn't really look IMO. Bluetooth headsets for sleeping is a whole cottage industry now. Anecdotally, I personally sleep fine in honking large Bose QC35 IIs, but that obviously depends on sleep position.
Now that you mention it, it reminds me that the 3.5mm headphone cable plug almost always had problems after a few months of use (or more - if carried in a pocket or in a bag). The wires inside the jack were getting damaged. This is something that wireless headphones "fixed" completely.
Completely agreed. Beyond that , the cost of adding a headphone jack is not the price of the physical component. It’s the fact that it forces the phone to be bulkier in one dimension or another. There is less space for other components.
> It’s the fact that it forces the phone to be bulkier in one dimension or another.
It’s also often repeated that it’s harder to make waterproof.
Don’t know how true it is, but given practically everything I own supports Bluetooth… I’d take the waterproofing over the jack in an instant, even just for a small improvement.
I've come around on USB-C headphones, which seem to be reeeeasonably decent and which, as an added bonus, bypass the absurdly terrible sound chip on my laptop to provide decent quality audio for two of my devices. But until phones ship with two of the ports, they fail to solve the "use while charging" issue, and there's still the secondary issue of 3.5mm devices being absolutely everywhere on this green earth, and not in the remotest way compatible with this fancy new USB-C thing. There's not a reverse dongle, and there really can't be, as the 3.5mm jack doesn't provide power.
My unpopular opinion is that wired earphones are really great if you really love the sensation of getting your ears ripped off when your cord hooks on something when you stand up, and you don't care much about maximizing battery life in your mobile device.
They are also truly ridiculous now that you can just swap out your cable for a USB audio cable. (If the cord is hard-wired to the headphones… okay so you have cheap headphones? Why even care then?)
My iPad Pro has no 3.5mm jack, so I must use the flimsy USB dongle to use my Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro headphones (great open-back headphones).
Why doesn't a "pro" iPad have a 3.5mm jack? It makes no sense. When the iPad battery gets low, I can't charge the iPad while using the headphones. There is nothing "pro" about this.
Sometimes I like to connect my phone to my powered studio monitors with a 3.5mm cable. Again, the phone can't be charged while I do this. It's why I keep an old iPhone 6s around because it has the 3.5mm.
> Again, the phone can't be charged while I do this
Magsafe!
(Yes, that's not a solution for your iPad Pro. I wish they'd extend Smart Connector — basically MagSafe for iPad — licensing to more charging devices, and build it into all models.)
Door handles loved to take them too. You could try to make the cord taut to reduce snagging but then turning your head or sitting down would pull them out. And I often had issues with cord noise from the cable rubbing against clothing.
I was glad when wireless headphone sound quality and battery life became good enough and was more than happy to use them over higher end IEMs.
My reason for sticking with the jack (and buying a phone that has one) is that I extensively jump between my phone, computer, tablet, 3ds, switch (and sometimes other consoles) and the jack is the most plug&listen I know that just works
It isn't even "Bluetooth vs 3.5mm" it's 3.5mm vs. Not having 3.5mm
Every phone prior to 2020 had both. If your 3.5mm broke that sucks, but that would just put you in the exact situation we have today generally. If you never use it anyway why do you care?
I just don't understand how so many people are arguing in favor of a company obviously making a move to force their customers into buying something they didn't necessarily want.
Tangent, but changes in the electric field travel at the speed of light (in a copper wire, which is slightly slower than in a vacuum). The electrons themselves move much, much slower. The speed of light is what matters for speed of information transfer.
It is analogous to a pipe of water.
If you increase or decrease the pressure of the water at the input of the pipe, you can detect that difference in pressure at the other end long before the water molecules at the beginning of the pipe get at the time of the change get to the end of the pipe.
It depends on the properties of the wire, such as the diameter, the purity of the copper, type of insulation, etc. In a twisted pair wire the length the light travels is also longer than the external lenghth of the wire.
Cat5 is has about the same velocity factor as fiber: 2/3, but Cat7 is closer to 3/4. Coaxial can get even higher.
All the phones I used were Nexus and Pixel. Pixel 3a XL was my last Pixel and now I switched to Sony. They're expensive - they're priced without care to competitor's pricing and sold at Sony stores only. Most people in the street wouldn't know Sony still make phones today.
I don't think I'll go back to Pixel until Sony drop the headphone jack as well, or someone invented a lightweight pluggable backpack that charges everything inside. Until then I'm not touching the backpack when I'm at home - the wireless mouse use disposable AA batteries, my portable battery stays uncharged, the laptop is charged while using it.
Also on Bluetooth, the phone connects to the Tesla and the Samsung soundbar with SBC as the only option. The only thing that use something else is my DAC with Sony's own LDAC. There's nowhere telling you why it doesn't use better codec. Wired always deliver the best quality your hardware could.
I use a Sansa clip because it has clickable buttons that I can feel for when I can't use a phone screen, like at the dentist or in a sky village with light restrictions. Also I don't ever load my phone with the 2GB of my favorite mp3s, and I don't want to (and sometimes can't) stream music from a service on the internet.
I use this too, since like 2013 or something. Still works. Also it has an SD card slot, so plenty of storage. And it includes a real working FM radio, weighs approximately nothing, and can clip to my sleeve. Battery lasts for ages. I never saw the appeal of putting music on my phone.
I was pleased to find that USB-C earphones are now inexpensive and plentiful. It was a must-purchase for my Pixel. The USB audio interface is mature and stable. It better supports the little remote button controls too.
There are unfortunately two drawbacks which may make USB inferior to other interfaces: the C plug is small and weak. Already my first set of earphones became unusable due to a loose, flaky connector. Also, given that phones only sport a single USB, the earphones monopolize it and, sadly, prevent charging, PC interface, tethering, etc.
So, while this is kind of true, and I totally support having headphone jacks in phones (I'm on a Pixel 4a) this post lacks many details and "alternatives".
Modern phones might have wireless charging - so charging while listening is possible even with a dongle.
There are USB-C only headphones - so not always a dongle is required.
There are (overear) Bluetooth headphones that support charging while listening
> The headphone jack is a “just works” kind of technology: there’s nothing complicated about it, and its not encumbered by patents, so anybody can make compatible equipment.
Oh boy did Apple have success using a proprietary chip for their volume control in EarPods[1] and preventing others except 1more from supporting it.
Although proprietary I just love the support oft TRRS driven playback control Apple introduced (play, Pause, rewind etc). Android also supports this these days, although not AS good.
I even submitted a PR[2] to audiobookshelf to support Apple like headset controls, but it has not been merged yet.
I still use an iPod Nano 7g to listen to audio books until today :-)
Some of the dongles are also absurdly unobtrusive. And stunningly cheap.
The main downside as i see it (besides the jack not being a default) is that few also are sleek and have usb power.
I also think people don't really grok how much complexity & size the jack adds. The footprint of the jack is significant (>3 the plug size). It requires physical reinforcement around it. Often it needs additional chips & passives that take up more space. Keeping water intrusion out requires more careful design.
I spent a decade quietly thinking I might never ever use Bluetooth, wondering why people would give up something so concrete for something a little more complex. But I bought some cheap Plantronics Backbeat 903's and found it quite enjoyable being untethered, used them for almost a decade, and have found few of my fears or concerns manifested in practice. It's been great.
I seem to have noticed a marked increase in the number of people in public listening to music with no headphones over the past several years, as in going from essentially 0 to it now being a thing. I wonder if this came from people not wanting use or buy USB headphones? Or because phones don't come with headphones anymore? (Personally, I have earpods but don't like them. I use a set of standard Apple headphones.)
If USB-C becomes the new standard for wired headphones, I'm ok with that, especially if it means thinner phones.
I inherited a Pixel 3A a couple years after it was released, and I still have it. I didn't even realize that headphone jacks were being phased out. It would be nice if we started to get more than one usb port on a phone, but I already have small USB-C docks for laptops that would work well.
In reality there is no "wired" and "wireless". Things which are "wireless" just use the air as a crappy wire.
Anything with current flowing is creating electromagnetic fields. The wires and coils driving the magnets also act like little antennas and lose energy to the surrounding environment through RF radiation. In fact, it is exactly the property that the field exists outside of the wire which enables it to push/pull the magnet in the driver. It is the RF emissions produced by the coils that moves the magnet which pushes the diaphragm which makes the pressure waves you experience as sound.
This is why crosstalk on cables is an issue. This is why little transformers can cause issues with wireless devices. Everything electronic creates some kind of RF emission. Everything electronic is a wireless emitter.
You can even end up seeing the contents of a wired display because of the RF leakage of monitors. These aren't "wireless" by any measure, and yet their video can be detected and decoded wirelessly.
I'd probably like bluetooth headphones more if they actually worked more than 50% of the time. Probably because the rooms where I use them are filled with RF noise from so many other devices, they just don't work reliably enough to be usable. They work for a while and then drop out, or simply can't connect at all. Luckily Sony still sell wired headphones.
Reminds me of the late Neil Postman, who gave space to consider that technological trends have secondary effects that can potential make life worse.
As an avid user of wireless headphones I think its worth briefly entertaining the side effects. Increased expectation of isolation in classically social settings, possible long term ear damage, increased baseline cost to consumer.
Obviously there is the cynical explanation of forcing consumers to buy pricey wireless headphone, but what are the stated arguments that manufacturers give for not including the jack? Is it literally the space requirements? (But ofc my wireless headphones and their charging case take up much more room.)
Separately on this:
> The way to discourage companies behaving this way is for us all to take our business elsewhere. It’s still possible to get decent cellphones from Motorola, Asus, and Sony that retain the 3.5mm jack.
Choosing the most important tool in your life based on this one hostile feature seems like a high price to pay. (Should I vow to never do business with Google in any form?) Maybe just better to commit to buying wireless headphones from an opposing company? That removes the manufacturers incentive.
I've read speculation that because the jack can pick up electrical fields, you have to design the phone around it. Otherwise the user will hear buzzing in their headphones.
But phones aren't really that thin, especially with the camera lenses. Why didn't they just put the 3.5 mm jack on the other side from the cameras, protruding a little bit from the rear housing, exactly enough for the phone to rest stably on a flat surface without rocking?
The iPhone 14 has a glass case while the iPod Touch 4th gen had a metal case. That alone accounts for a significant difference in thickness of the internals of the device.
I went to (Edited) A Mainstream Chinese Brand now that Samsung dropped the ball. I dont get audio jack, either, but I have IR blaster and double physical sim
I think you've missed the point a little or are perhaps are being slightly obtuse. Of course it's POSSIBLE to make a phone with waterproofing and a 3.5mm headphone jack, and of course it POSSIBLE to make a modern thin phone with a 3.5.mm headphone jack taking up extra space...
The point is, it's simply harder and more expensive to make a highly waterproof and slim phone, while having to have another large hole in the phone which requires a long connector to fit inside it. And when you consider that extra expense and R&D required to design the phone shell and internal architecture, versus the actual demand for wired headphones (basically zero these days), it's obvious why major phone makers don't bother to include it.
It's simply a matter of cost benefit analysis. Lots of cost, very little benefit. No mystery.
The waterproof 3.5mm jack connector isn't an R&D cost, it's just a standard component you can buy from Digikey; comes with an o-ring. A whole generation of waterproof phones had them, like the Sony Xperia.
Yeah, that might not be the best example. Normally you’d want a double seal or really tuned compression to reliably hit IP68. And the o-ring adds a manufacturing step. And you have to design the case to properly compress the oring. And case assembly is harder because screwing up that interface will increase chargeback. And you’ll need to modify the audio test fixtures to add a jack. And the audio test has to include a headphone test. Any failures increases rework, so you gotta budget for that too. Probably need to add a cheap earbud to the box, so you gotta add a packaging step and a bigger box. And once you sell the phone, any failure within the contracted return window will increase chargeback.
Seems like a lot of faf. I tell you what, why don’t we wait for a bigger OEM to remove the darned things, and if it doesn’t hurt there bottom line we’ll just quietly scrap the idea?
You're implying it's because of cost-savings, but OEMs still typically offer 3.5 mm jacks on their lower-end models (even waterproof ones, like the Xperia AceIII). It's the expensive flagships they've removed them from. I think a better explanation is that high-end models are fashion items while lower-end models are functional items, and it's fashionable to copy Apple.
"These days" that wasn't the case four years ago when they arbitrarily took it away. How would you know what the level of demand is? I would selectively purchase a phone with a headphone jack over one without, but that demand is meaningless without an option. Apple led the pack with the highest R&D budget of them all, with a premium smartphone. They, uniquely, took the headphone jack away while launching airpods.
i’ve started carrying the cheap wired Apple earbuds because the call/microphone quality on Bose QC45 headphones and Ultra Open earbuds is so bad, especially when outside. i really wish there existed some solution to use the phone’s built-in mic when using bluetooth headphones
I feel like Bluetooth earbuds are almost in the phase where they will, at the low end of the market, completely displace wired earbuds. At my local Dollar Tree, wired earbuds (and USB-C charging cables) are now available for $1.25. Micro USB charging cables are no longer in stock, but a couple of years ago, they were $1, while USB-C charging cables were too expensive to appear at the Dollar Tree.
At that same location, Bluetooth earbuds are now available for $5, but perhaps in a couple of years they will be $1.25, or whatever the least expensive items at a “dollar store” will cost at that time.
I own at least ten pairs of headphones, as well as some small amps and a DAC, but I end up going back to the $19 Aukey Bluetooth earbuds from Amazon. They sound good enough, battery still lasts 5 hours and they must be six years old, and they're cheap enough where I don't care if they are damaged or lost, but I haven't managed to lose them.
Sure, on an airplane I'll drag along some noise cancelling ones, and I keep a wired set of Sennheisers in my bag for a backup, but I never use them otherwise.
I recently tried out wired headphones (over a USBC adapter) after years of using true wireless ones and was blown away by the sound quality difference. I forgot how amazing things can sound, when I chose convenience. Apart from limitations of Bluetooth and the confusing landscape of codecs, there are physical limitations - wireless sets have to make room for antennas and batteries and chips that could otherwise be used for pure sound quality instead.
Nothing beats the cable. It simply works. You don't need to worry about running out of battery, bluetooth disconnections or getting hurt in case a battery explodes (as was discussed in a thread about someone who if I recall correctly got their Bose headphones turning on fire). Wireless audio should always be a secondary thing. All devices should come with the beloved jack. Even if you purchase some respectable audio speakers or sound bars is very likely they come without it. Is really lame. But as the article mentions, these wireless headphones are designed to be purchased over and over again, hence the reason to put this technology everywhere. As someone else said it, would be awesome to have a regulation to force companies to always provide the headphone jack.
Except when it didn’t. The cables got tangled, caught, kinked and broken. Sure, the well-made ones didn’t threaten to detach from the buds. But well-made wireless headphones don’t suffer the problems you mention.
> would be awesome to have a regulation to force companies to always provide the headphone jack
I suppose we should also require everything play vinyl?
Wireless headphones have an expiry date, when the battery is completely out you have to throw them away. Up to this date I haven't witnessed a single pair of earbuds that its battery can be easily replaced. Attempting to do so might break them beyond repairability. So is not only that is the wireless thing, is that these are also built so if you attempt to open them you break them, this for me is another reason not to buy them. I do own a pair of wired Audio Technica headphones. Since 2016 they have experienced use almost every day. I do still use them to this very day. Only thing I have to do is replace the earpads from time to time.
> do own a pair of wired Audio Technica headphones
They seem to work well for you. I respect that choice. That doesn’t mean it has to be compatible without an adapter with every device on the market. (In the same way every device shouldn’t have to support wireless headphones.)
Belkin, along with Anker, make pretty good things and I trust them... I don't know how to criticise a "charge whilst playing music" thing as it does both of the things it claims to do and I've not tried silly things like chaining this with other dongles.
My understanding of the advantages is that the 3.5mm Jack is "big" in terms of space taken on the internal of the phone, and that real estate is valuable. Also it was becoming a bottleneck for phone thickness. Don't know if that's all just marketing bs though
While it is hard to do damage to a 6.3mm TRS socket and plug, I wouldn't say the same of the 3.5mm one. As a kid / teenager I damaged a number of sockets and bent a number of 3.5mm male TRS plugs.
So I wouldn't call it a "just works" technology as it is far from perfect.
I've worn out more USB-C earphones in the 2 years since I've been forced to use them, than I have 3.5mm earphones in the 30+ years since I first got a Sony Walkman. The connectors and wires are so stupidly fragile. They're bulky. They're rectangular and can't rotate in the way the cable is pulled (unlike a 3.5mm jack). They always stick straight out (at least I haven't seen any 90° angled versions).
Converters only make the problem worse, because now you have a fragile USB-C dongle sticking out and a 3.5mm jack so it's extra bulky and prone to damage.
The wireless ones bug me to no end. Two more batteries to manage, two more single points of failure. Maybe I should dust off that old walkman.
This happened to one of my phones after a few years, turned out it was a bunch of lint compressed into the port preventing the cable from going in all the way. I got it all out with a staple (only thing I could find that was small enough to fit), then the cable started snapping into the port like new.
Just use wireless charging. It works fine. I've 3D printed a little cover for my USB C port as I just don't need it for anything. Will keep that little port fresh for years...
I'd choose a smartphone that offers wireless charging because that is the state of art and it just works. It makes my life easier. I can just rest it on a little charging pad and move on. No worries about broken cables, broken USB ports and whatnot. Yeah, maybe there's inefficiency while loading, but we're talking about so little energy that gets lost, I don't really care.
Just like Bluetooth just works and makes my life easier. My little Anker earbuds charge in their case, they can live in my gym bag without getting lost, sound quality is fine, no connection issues at all, even across the gym (like 20 meters) with dozens of other BT earbud users around. Oh, and the case also has three LEDs to show me how full the battery in the case is. Charge it an hour with a USB-C cable and I'm good to go for weeks.
True, but I find the 6.3mm to be overkill (except for commercial use). I'm hoping for the 4.4mm plugs that are used on hifi headphones to replace 6.3mm.
I used to own LG V-series of mobile phones. They had a better-than-usual DAC and a headphone socket. Then LG stopped making that series. Now I have a pixel.
Now I have a USB external DAC (TempoTec Sonata HD pro) that used to work with Spotify, but now the only way I can use it is with a specific USB DAC application that hooks into Tidal. I'm assuming Android updated its audio stack in such a way as to break my external DAC. It's the same with my little desktop DAC, a Schiit Modi.
I just want to be able to listen to music on my preferred headphones, using a good quality DAC!
I disagree with the sentiment "wired headphones are better by every metric" because when doing sports, cables are simply annoying. Having said that, my phone does have an audio jack, because once a year I actually do need it.
I've held onto my Pixel 4a5g as long as I could, being the last Google phone with a headphone jack. My Pixel 9 arrives in a few weeks but I was able to buy a used iPod to help satisfy my 3.5mm needs.
As much as I agree generally that headphone sockets are great, there's a couple of missed disadvantages with including them in your phone: waterproofing and thickness.
> The first manufacturer to make a point of dropping the headphone jack (I believe) was not Apple – as is commonly believed – but Oppo, and back in 2014. Their reason for doing so was at least a credible technical one: they said it made their phones about half a millimetre thinner. Maybe that was a selling point, maybe it wasn’t. But Apple couldn’t fall back even on this claim, because people found ways to fit a 3.5mm jack socket into the iPhones that lacked one, and even posted videos on Youtube showing how they did it. It wasn’t easy, but it was clearly possible. If Apple genuinely thought that omitting the jack would leave more room for other features, they didn’t actually provide any.
> Some manufacturers claimed that the presence of the headphone jack made it difficult to keep their phones waterproof; but there’s a whole range of good-quality phones from around 2019-2020 that are waterproof to a reasonable degree, without sacrificing the jack.
You can make them waterproof and the last thing I want right now is a thinner and even more fragile phone.
I want the old Nexus 5 just with newer chips and camera. Indestructible poly-carbonate shell w/non-slip rubberized coating, good sized screen, headphone jack, really good battery life, no nonsense OS.
Nothing added to newer phones (Pixel or iPhone) have improved my experience, all have made them worse in various ways. Newer phones are less durable and more expensive because they are made from fragile "luxury" materials like glass. They are thinner and have crappy battery life as a result (though this is getting better as batteries have caught up to design ambition). The thinness is rendered moot by needing a case. I didn't need a case on my Nexus 5, it was already indestructible. New phone + case is definitely thicker as a result.
Actual advantages of USB-C or BT audio mostly come down to a higher quality DAC in those devices vs crap they put on a lot of phones/laptops/etc.
Thing is that doesn't need to be the case, you can totally have a properly good DAC on-board. Especially if you aren't fighting for thinness and can put it on an isolated daughter board.
IMO the enemies of a good phone design are thinness and aluminium + glass construction.
It turns what should be a utilitarian device into a fashion accessory and because that is what the high-end looks like there is nothing but a sea of copycats doing the same thing but worse.
Many phones had great waterproof ratings with a headphone socket. Nearly all phones today are thick enough for sockets, a 3.5mm would fit fine on my Pixel 7 pro. The thinness wars ended when too many people sat on their phones and bent them.
Did you even read the article? The author points out both of those points are essentially just excuses. Phones haven’t been made thinner, and you can still fit 3.5mm jacks in most phones, and there are plenty of waterproof phones with a 3.5mm jack.
Dude, no one ever claimed that you can't have a waterproof phone with a jack, the point, which is fairly obvious, is that it's much harder to make a highly waterproof phone when you have a big ass hole in it for a 3.5mm jack.
I.e. it's cost benefit analysis. It's annoying, hard, and expensive if you want to make a phone which is say waterproof to 10m or 15m while having a 3.5mm jack hole in it, which most people don't care about anyway. So easy solution, stop having the jack.
I use to own expensive (~250+€) bluetooth earbuds, with ANC and all that jazz. I broke them by trying to clean them one time (my ears are very "waxy" and every earbuds always ends up coating in nastiness from my ears very quickly, so i need to clean them regularly).
So I went back to the cheap wired (but still USB-c) earbuds I got.
I do resonate a lot with this article. Wired earbuds just works. With wireless earbuds I cannot count how many time I had issue with bluetooth. The microphone on every wireless earbuds is awful because you cannot put it right to your mouth like you can with wired ones. You have a limited battery time. Wireless earbuds are bulkier so they get out of your ears easier, ...
The only thing I miss is the ANC, which was surprisingly working well on trains and planes.
And yeah, I which I still had a jack on my phone. My best wired earbuds use jack, so I have to carry this annoying dongle, usb-c is also flimsier, and I am way more worried about breaking it, since I also need it to charge my phone and transfer files.
Brings to mind a viral tweet I saw years ago, "my roommate asked to charge his cigarette but he had to wait as I was charging my book. The future sucks"
Isn’t adding a headphone jack introducing another pathway for liquid to enter a device, or would well-constructed hardware prevent that from happening?
> Some manufacturers claimed that the presence of the headphone jack made it difficult to keep their phones waterproof; but there’s a whole range of good-quality phones from around 2019-2020 that are waterproof to a reasonable degree, without sacrificing the jack.
Yep, and then they are much easier to lose, step on, have drop out of your ear while you are running and disappear.
I have literally found a half dozen sets of airpods out in the world, whereas before wireless earbuds became popular I never found a single pair of abandoned headphones.
The bigger headphones dont have this problem as much but they are significantly heavier because they have to include all the electronics and batteries in them.
Yep, and then they are much easier to lose, step on, have drop out of your ear while you are running and disappear
Somewhere on a rails-to-trails at the foot of the Cascade Mountains is a single Beats Powerbeat that was flung to the ground in the middle of a 50 mile race after I pulled a piece of clothing over my head. I was leading the race, so I spent just the barest amount of time looking, but never found it. Damned things ain’t cheap, either.
I should have just thrown the other one to the ground, so at least someone might have a matched set. At the same time, if I had to dick around with wired headphones, I wouldn’t have used them at all.
It's disappointing seeing the slow decline in the number of devices that include a 3.5mm headphone jack. Personally I don't want any hassle from my headphones, I just want to plug them in and use them.
Does it apply to usb-c headphones ? I am quite happy with the AKG usb-c wired headphone I got w/ my samsung phone (I even bought a second set as a replacement for when I misplace them).
I avoided phones without a headphone jack for a while for similar reasons. I didn't want to use a dongle or buy new wired headphones, and I didn't want to use a 1-to-2 USB-C/lightning dongle to listen to music and charge at the same time.
Then I invested on a Sony WH-1000XM3 and suddenly battery life wasn't a problem anymore. That was a big change from the cheap bluetooth earphones I had used until that point, which had terrible battery life. I could use them for a full day, maybe forget to charge them, and it never ran out of battery. So I stopped using wired headphones.
The downside was the price... the WH-1000XM3 wasn't cheap, but things have changed. Last year I wanted something smaller, so I bough the Anker Liberty 4 NC. Much cheaper, good noise cancelling, good enough sound quality, and from time to time use them for 8 hours straight (AAC mode) without putting them in the case. The earphones + case can last a week without charging them (with my usage of course). It wouldn't be a problem even if I was in hospital for a while, like in OP's case.
So I'd say that the list of downsides is getting shorter as good bluetooth headphones get cheaper. It's still more expensive, but it's a different world compared to 5 years ago.
If you still want to use wired headphones, then yeah, nothing has changed and losing the headphone jack is bad. But if you're willing to try wireless, then it's not as bad as it used to be.
> Some manufacturers claimed that the presence of the headphone jack made it difficult to keep their phones waterproof; but there’s a whole range of good-quality phones from around 2019-2020 that are waterproof to a reasonable degree, without sacrificing the jack.
...except when you can't make good contact and you wind up with one stereo channel muted and you have to fidget manically to fix it....which seems to occur with every damn headphone jack on every device without exception.
Amen; I'm surprised more people aren't bringing this up. I like the idea of having a wired headphone connection to my phone and other audio devices but I don't like the 3.5mm TRS headphone plugs/jacks. Make it a magsafe-style connector or something that's immune from wearing out or bad connections and I'd be delighted.
I just this weekend """upgraded""" from an S9+ to an S24+, losing the 3.5mm jack, but not without the exact sentiment of the author. I looked at every possible option to retain my jack, but ultimately found myself forced into either a new Samsung or Pixel due to their commitment to an actually reasonable-ish update lifetime promise of 7-ish years. (I'd really expect 10 at this point, but c'est la vie). I upgraded ONLY because I'm uncomfortable not having security updates/patches. Otherwise, frankly, I can't even tell the difference. Upon quick tests, I think I even prefer the camera on my S9+.
I absolutely, passionately hate Bluetooth. I hate not being able to share the jack in the car. I hate spotty connections. I hate needing a dongle. I hate the subtle loss of high end frequency content's quality. I hate the pain in the ass of pairing. 3.5mm had its share of problems, but this was a cartel making a cash grab and I am absolutely livid I have to play the game.
I've ran a poll in a lot of the tech group chat's I'm in multiple times. Over 40%, each time, is willing to pay $50 more to have the jack back. The manufactures know this, but know it pales in comparison to the profit of some new bluetooth headphones.
We don't need monoplolies to negatively impact tech, just a few big players to intentionally normalize boning their own customers. We need consumer protection laws that reflect that normal.
i don't get why the author makes it out to be some big conspiracy, many people including myself are very happy with wireless headphones and would never go back to the hassle of untangling wires
also there are wireless headphones which have 24 hour battery life
Voting with your wallet probably isn't going to work, because you probably represent a drop in the bucket of sales.
If you want this changed, start a campaign and write to your representative in Congress. If the EU could make Apple put USB-C on the iPhone, maybe you can get the 3.5mm jack back on your phone. But you won't get there by kidding yourself thinking your individual sale matters.
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I'm seeing any number of dongles that include a charge port on Amazon, like this one: https://a.co/d/hwiLAqp
Wireless charging for your phone is also an option.
Voting with your wallet by failing to purchase a phone from a huge corp like Samsung, is not something that will change Samsung's behavior, I agree.
Voting with your wallet by buying a phone with a headphone jack, especially from a smaller maker like Unihertz, is impactful and helps ensure those alternatives stay around.
But I checked Unihertz's site and it seems like their newest upcoming release, the Jelly Max, will be lacking a headphone jack too: https://www.unihertz.com/products/jelly-max
To their credit, it appears to come with an adapter.
My guess is that Unihertz, among others, is probably either reselling an existing design or contracting minor changes to an existing design. So unless you're voting with your wallet hard enough to shift the tides of the entire white-label phone manufacturing industry, I think I'm still doubting the impact here.
I don't think that Unihertz is reselling white-label phones; I've seen no other phone that remotely resembles theirs, and considering their form factor I don't think the innards are reusable without a lot of design rework.
The lack of the headphone jack on the Jelly Max is disappointing, though.
> Voting with your wallet probably isn't going to work, because you probably represent a drop in the bucket of sales.
I mean... it worked. People voted with their valets and the side who likes tangled cables to listen to music from their phones lost the vote. That is literally voting with your valet in action.
I understand that you probably mean "voting with your wallet won't work" in the sense that it won't change the situation. But it is also a bit like saying that democracy doesn't work because my party didn't win, because there were not enough people supporting it. A bit against the principle of the thing.
Similarly, I used to keep a "headphone splitter" cable in my laptop back and backpack. If I were listening to something interesting or funny, I could share that with someone, connecting two (or more!) pairs of headphones to one device. I think it may be technically possible to do something similar on the latest bluetooth standards, but even thinking about trying to do it makes me tired.
On a different note, I have an old but nice hifi stereo in my home. It has a few different audio sources, but the one I use the most is my previous smartphone, which sits next to the stereo, permanently connected with a 3.5mm cable. It has no mobile data plan, but it connects to my home's wifi, and I use it to play music from a streaming service and to my media server that holds a collection of ripped CDs. I think it's a great way to extend the usefulness of an elecronic device, but that is only made possible by utilizing widely adopted standards.