Hacker News Reader

Comment by kdamken | Hacker News Reader

I'm always blown away out how little cell phone manufacturers seem to listen to customer feedback. I don't care about my phone being paper thin. I'd guess most people don't either.

Often I'm sitting at work with my headphones plugged into my computer to listen to music. I'll then see a little video or something has been sent to me by a friend on my phone. I unplug the headphones from my macbook, plug them into my phone, watch the video, then plug my headphones back into my macbook. Simple.

Can you imagine what an annoying hassle it would be to have to pair and unpair the same bluetooth headphones between two devices like that? I'd be paranoid it's not connected to the right device and suddenly I'm blasting music to the people in my office. Not even including the fact that I now have another thing I need to worry about charging.

I like my apple earbuds. They sound nice, let me control the volume and playback, and don't need to be charged.

Also, all my nice headphones are 3.5mm. I don't want to have to get new ones, and I don't want to have to carry around a stupid lightning adaptor for them.

View on HN

The problem is that explicit customer feedback doesn't line up with reality.

Many companies have tried making slightly thicker phones with bigger batteries (which many people claim is what they want), no-one buys them. Companies make thinner phones, lots of them get sold.

These companies (mostly) aren't idiots, they do huge amounts of measurements on what people say they want to buy, and what they actually buy.

it fails not because of what you think.

I always claimed I wanted qwerty keyboard. now blackberry finally has a phone with it that is not selling. the priv.

well, while id kill for a keyboard on android, I'd also need a non-phalet size and open firmware. so I continue to use my keboardless motoX developer edition first gen.

nobody buys phones for one feature. you cant add a thick battery but sel a device with 300x200 screen, which was the case I think you're talking.

Yes! I hate hate HATE trying to type on a glass keyboard, and I really wish I could have a plain old QWERTY button keyboard back. I'm delighted to see Blackberry offering one with the Priv. And yet - a phone also needs to fit in my pocket, and it is difficult to imagine how one could do that with a Priv. I don't really need a huge screen because I don't find the web very useful on a phone, but writing text messages and emails is my phone's primary function. The device I actually want is something the size of my Moto X equipped with an actual keyboard. Make it twice as thick, I don't care, just let me type without stumbling constantly.

You might enjoy the Kyocera Rise (but it is CDMA only AFAICT, so only if you are in USA). It's slow and outdated but it's the best emailing phone I've ever used.

I have a Priv, you will like it. You don't sacrifice any Android features (or security updates), and the keyboard is there. I have had it since December and only typed on the touchscreen about 3 times. It is a bit big, but it is the same as any other phone manufacturer makes. I find it is fine in my front pants pocket and it also fits nicely in a shirt pocket.

https://neo900.org/

I had a Moto droid. It has a physical keyboard. It was fking terrible. Keys are so small as to be nearly unuseable. The onscreen keyboard was so much better... error rate was about the same but correction made it much better in practice.

I had quite the opposite experience, actually. Yeah, the keys were small and took some getting used to. I'd imagine if my fingers were bigger it may have become a problem. I felt lightning fast on that thing, though, and rarely needed to correct anything, which really added to my effective typing speed.

I had a Droid as well as various BlackBerry products, including the Bold.

I found the Bold keyboard to be fantastic. I could type 60 wpm without looking at the phone.

I found the Droid keyboard to be terrible and unusable.

Not all keyboards are the same, but I do know the best-possible keyboard experience can be far better than the Droid (or any iPhone I've used).

I had a T-mobile G2 and I loved the keyboard on it. I used to type entire emails on that without a problem but with my touchscreen phones, it's an exercise in frustration. The swype-style is nice, but it still gets things wrong that I have to correct all the time. I'd buy the Priv if it wasn't $400 and exclusive to AT&T.

> I always claimed I wanted qwerty keyboard. ... nobody buys phones for one feature.

Barebones BB Curve 9310 user here for ~4 years and counting, which replaced a Treo 755p when seemingly everyone had iPhones back in uni. Been meaning to purchase a spare for when this one inevitably hits the pooper. Battery obsolescence is my biggest sustainment worry. QUERTY keyboard requirement has made me a perpetual mobile luddite.

Definitely feels like the last man standing now that our senior-most engineer's wife forced him off his flip phone this past Christmas. Personally don't know anyone who doesn't own a smartphone these days...lonely world.

The main reason I bought my Galaxy S7 is because they made it thicker and with a bigger battery than the S6.

I went for the Samsung Galaxy Note for the same reason. I don't know about any other customers but I for one would buy a long battery life phone in a heartbeat regardless how thick it may be.

Same with the iPhone 6 Plus. I did want a bigger screen, but the battery was the main draw for me. Paper thin phones never appealed to me. I used to use an HTC Apache (Verizon XV6700) with a bulge battery. That thing was over an inch thick and it barely lasted a whole day, but it still fit easily into the front pocket of jeans. Phones were rugged enough back then to not require cases. I think manufacturers realize this more than we give them credit for and consider cases a personalization option, but IMO the best phone design would be a back-plate-less design where the case provides some of the structure as well. This would allow a choice: thin backplate only if you want that, or more protection without tons of thickness, or bigger battery as part of the case without some hacky battery-charging-the-other-battery-and-blocking-the-charging-port ugly super thick case like we've seen for e.g. iPhones.

I have thick amzer case on my note to keep it safe. Who cares about paper thin phones!? Not like the phone is always in my pocket ; but actually thicker phones are usually better to grip on to

You might want to checkout the Elephone P5000

Same reason I went with the Droid Turbo over other choices.

It's the coffee question. Ask people if they like coffee and look at coffee marketing and it's all about "rich, dark roasts". Marketing focuses on deeply aromatic black espresso. Work as a barista for 5 mins and most of the 'coffee lovers' are ordering single shot lattes with syrup.

And I wonder if the barista's opinion takes into the account that a) coffee at Starbucks is a different experience than coffee at home, and most importantly b) they probably price those single shot lattes better.

Same thing with the airline industry. People often say they'd pay more for extra few inches of leg room, but when they shop online, it's the cheapest price that wins.

Flyers routinely pay more for direct flights. International travelers often pay much more to avoid transiting unpleasant countries like the USA with its awful security procedures. Lots of people want to pay more for more width and recline in seats on long haul flights; no US carrier offers those but W class on foreign carriers is often their most profitable space.

But few want to pay more for leg room. It's just not much of a benefit compared to the five things I mentioned (and several others like comfortable lounges at hubs -- but not apparently decent food). The airlines want to sell leg room because it's very easy to adjust.

Avoiding US would be a big reason why US airlines are not doing so well (among others).

US airlines are doing fine now that fuel is almost free. We'll see what happens when oil prices rise again.

Do you have a source about international travelers avoiding the US? That sounds odd to me.

Not that it's on the way to many other countries...

I've read about it before, at https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Avoiding_travel_through_the_U...

Basically, the problem seems to be that the USA does not have "sterile transit"; if your plane stops there in the way to somewhere else, you have to disembark and go through customs, and you need an expensive visa.

It's not the money but the abuse they can dish out at you. Even if you get a visa (which is a pain in the neck and a total time sink on it's own), customs can just tell you "You know what? Go f yourself." After you've landed...

Try pricing tickets regularly between Latin America and Asia. My peer groups buys a lot of such tickets and the AeroMexico tickets that fly with a change of planes in MEX and go on to PVG and NRT with no USA transfer cost about US$500 more than tickets that change planes in LAX, SFO, DFW, and SEA. YVR is usually priced in between but sometimes Air Canada has deals.

There are no other flights directly between Asia and Latin America (unless you count the EK GRU-DXB flight), though NH may be flying to MEX soon.

Flying in the US is a consistently miserable experience. Airports which are too small for the number of flights they handle - leading to cascading gate changes and flight delays, slow & interrogative customs which you must go through even if you're getting a connecting flight straight out of the US, obvious complaints about the TSA and airlines who all (apart from Southwest in my experience) really just have no interest in making flying a pleasant or comfortable time for you.

On my most recent trip to the US I selected cities that I could get between via train to avoid the entire mess apart from arrival into the US (and made an effort to depart out of Canada).

Part of the reason that people go for the cheapest price is that all of the other variables in flight aren't really verifiable.

Among a wide variety of industries, a large portion of revenues come from "upsales", pushing some impulse buys extra like insurance. Which is to say that the impulse buy extras are shitty ripoffs and consumers over time have grown to expect promises to be worthless and to only pay for things they can clearly verify.

And that relates to selling cellphone with longer battery life - all the companies make unrealistic claims, how could someone feel safe giving up something that can see (like a feature or a smaller size) for something they can't see?

Discoverability of things like leg room is also practically zero when booking. Even if it was easier to see it, there are usually very few options anyways and they often differ hugely on other criteria like number of stops, departure time and price. I might be happy to pay fifty fiat extra for a free inch more leg room even more on a longer flight. Am I willing to have an extra stop for that out get out of bed at 4am instead of 6am or leave awkwardly in the middle of the day to arrive in the evening my vacation spot and effectively lose half a day at my vacation spot? No

I think the airline market hardly ever offers real choices and many things that look like choices end up actually being the same flight sold by different carriers from the same alliance. Alliances are a huge pet peeve of mine anyways. There are certain (US based) airlines I strongly dislike and would like to avoid. However, it's almost impossible. Even if I book another carrier the flight often times end up being operated by them again. Sometimes it gets changed after I book. This is a dysfunctional market. I want Delta and United out of business and I've had the same from others. Yet we are all stuck flying them because we can't avoid it.

I'd sort by legroom if the flight search engines offered that information, but it is not available: price is the only discriminator.

Exactly.

Want +3in legroom? For each flight, go to a flight forum and punch in the route to figure out what plane they're flying. Google the airline and that plane to figure out how much legroom is available.

Give up and just fly jetblue and/or southwest, and if they don't go, decline to travel.

Skip the forums.

1. Flightaware

2. Seatguru

3...

4. Comfortable flying

(Step 3 is becoming a millionaire that flies business class.)

thanks for the link to seatguru

All airline seat selection pages I've ever seen show a map of the plane's seats, nobody needs a forum for that.

You have to select the airline and buy the ticket before you get that map, don't you? By then it's too late. I'm talking about the initial search process, where you decide which flight you're going to take. The only data present are the price, arrival & departure times, and the airline name.

And how much leg room do each of those seats have?

Or look up the seat/cabin details on Seat Guru.

KLM lets you pay extra for sitting next to an emergency exit, which gives you a nice legroom increase.

I try to avoid emergency exit seats because they take away the storage space underneath the seat in the front. I'd rather have provisions, laptop, pen, book(s), tissues etc. available without fetching them from overhead storage, and sacrifice the extra leg space.

It still depends on the price, though. Is the difference $10, $50, or $100? For $10 or $50 I might select more leg room, but not for $100.

Speak for yourself... I almost always try to get a first class seat, unfortunately when I travel by plane, it's usually on short notice, and I'm generally stuck with whatever is available... worst yet is when the seat you select when buying your ticket isn't the one you're assigned when you checkin. First class is usually 3x the price, and yet I always look... as a fairly tall fat guy, comfort is something that I probably value more than someone who weighs in under 180# at 5'9 though.

Most consider flying first class a luxury reserved for the wealthy or those who don't fly very often. The majority of flyers could never consider a first class ticket a responsible purchase.

Usually because it's ridiculously expensive. Would I pay 20-50% more for a first class seat? Probably. Would I spend 2-3x more? No. I'm still going to be miserable, the flight is still going to take just as long, and once it's over I'll be out all that extra money.

Those who fly a lot may get frequent upgrades through an airline's loyalty program. Some programs will upgrade you automatically if there are any seats available.

Last long distance flight I did we took economy premium, considering the amount of luggage we had, it was actually cheaper, and the leg room was very reasonable.

There are also cases, like with larger phones, where every manufacturer starts making bigger and bigger phones because "that's what customers want", without providing any options for customers that would prefer smaller phones. Customers then buy the big phones but are unhappy with them because that's all that was available.

I'm glad Apple didn't go in the same direction and released the iPhone SE, but even they were surprised by the demand for it:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/04/26/apple-faces-constr...

There is also Sony's Compact models. Same internals as their namesake, but physically smaller.

That said, i wonder how much the "big phone" issue comes from the paradox of wanting slim phones (needs to fit those jeans after all) longer battery life (Wh pr volume is largely a fixed value based on battery chemistry). Stretching the phones on the X and Y then allows a bigger (Wh) battery to be installed.

Never mind that they can also then market it with a higher screen inch number...

You're right, there are lots of reasons why manufacturers want to make larger phones, and there are lots of reasons why some people want to buy larger phones. I don't think that these reasons are wrong, but I also think it's fallacious on the part of the manufacturers to assume that just because a lot of people like large phones doesn't mean that everyone does, and that they shouldn't make smaller ones to cater to that market.

May be an ROI thing. A smaller model means additional design, testing, retooling the production line, etc etc etc.

On top of that you have things like store commissions, carrier subsidies, and who knows what else, going on between the OEM and the end user that affects the choice of model.

One relative of mind went from a small featurephone to a large smartphone, because another relative had gotten the same one. This with the idea that said other relative would be "tech support".

I recently got a 6S. What I really wanted was an SE, but they took so long to release the larger capacity ones that I couldn't wait.

I have a 64GB iPhone SE. What I really wanted was a 128GB SE, but sadly such a thing does not exist.

Maybe, but I think one can only really test if customers are willing to pay for battery-life if there are two otherwise identical models with different battery life available. Otherwise it's the thinner model with all the latest engineering built into it vs a high-battery life model that was implemented by a low-resource team because it's an experiment. (do you want a iphone 6 or iphone 6 w/ extra battery life...)

Something similar happens with TVs. If you ask people what they want, they say: "good color reproduction" but if you let them loose in a big box store they all gravitate to the brightest most blown out sets.

> If you ask people what they want, they say: "good color reproduction" but if you let them loose in a big box store they all gravitate to the brightest most blown out sets.

Big box stores are usually brightly lit (which is usually compounded by having all the light-emitting TVs next to each other, whatever their brightness setting is); human perception of color is strongly influenced by background, and in that environment not having a set configured at the brightest makes it looked dull and washed out rather than seeming like accurate reproduction of color.

This is, of course, very different from what looks good in typical use conditions.

Most big box stores I've been in the last few years, all the TVs on display are configured for maximum brightness and contrast anyway, I guess so they don't look washed-out next to all the other TVs that are configured the same way. It's impossible to tell what's good and what's not.

I'm thinking about getting a new TV soon, and I plan to order one online sight-unseen based solely on reviews. I don't want to sway myself by what they look like in a bright showroom with the brightness and contrast cranked up to the max.

They don't need to make it thicker. Just not thinner and with a better battery.

Battery chemistry gets in the way. You can only pack so much Wh into lithium with a given weight and volume.

If you could make the phone smaller from shrinking components, don't. Instead keep it the same size and fill the extra space with a bigger battery.

Or, if you could remove battery because of lowered power consumption of components (and then make the phone smaller) just Keep the battery the same size.

Phones have a huge set of features for consumers to choose.

I would not bet anything on phone companies marketeers ability to run multi-dimensional hypothesis tests on the market. And I do actively doubt they have any intention to, given the opportunity cost they'll pay at the beginning of such test, and how long the test results will probably stay valid.

The idea that the Market is an all knowing beast always operating at maximum efficiency is hilarious.

Not only that, another hilarious idea is that customers actually influence much in a market like this. People don't choose the closest phone to the hypothetical most perfect one for them - they choose out of what's available to buy, and the decision which one in particular is mostly driven by a) price, and b) marketing.

I'm yet to see a person who'd say "You know what? It would be cool if the new phones had heart-rate sensors.". It's always "oh, they put a heart-rate sensor in that phone, cool.". Driven by what manufacturers do, not what the consumers want.

People come up with all kinds of stuff they'd like to see, all the time. It's just that, for the most part, those ideas are not: * feasible for current mainstream tech * compatible with manufacturer's business models * forwarded to decision makers and prioritized.

Also the fact that people end up buying something different than they were initially requesting doesn't help to put more weight on their suggestions. But if you don't hear people asking for features, you're not listening all too closely.

If that was a real $100 bill someone would have picked it up already.

Could you name a few of the many "slightly thicker phones with bigger batteries" that no one bought? I must have missed them somehow.

The Droid MAXX comes to mind... except that everyone who bought them loved them. 5.86oz, 2.8 x 5.41", 5" 720P super AMOLED, 3500 mAH battery. The worst thing about them was that they were Verizon-exclusive.

Typing on one right now and cannot agree more. Great hardware ruined by Verizon exclusivity. Moto and Verizon teased the us with an upcoming lollipop update for a whole year before cancelling it and tried to make us pay more for the newer models with a discount, thank you but no.

Before that I owned every Droid qwerty slider including the elusive Droid 3. I love the form factor mainly because once extended the phone becomes a very natural reading/typing device not unlike some of the early PDAs. The keyboard was getting better with each iteration and Droid 4 was probably the best phone I have ever used for remote management with the row of dedicated numbers keys. We have all lost something when qwerty sliders faded out of the mainstream.

The iPhone 6 Plus is selling huge volumes with a bigger battery and a heavier phone for $100 more.

The LG G4 was slightly thicker than the others, has a 3000 mAh battery. I can go two days unheard of before I had this phone.

aka "last year's model"

Where are the phones with similar specs to the current flagship phones, but that are thicker and have a bigger battery? All the big battery phones have slower hardware and poorer screens. That's why they don't sell.

The closest thing I've seen is the S7 Active. It looks good, but I'm on T-Mobile, so it wouldn't be a great idea to get one.

I wonder if they work hard to eliminate effects of their own sales & marketing from that "research". People don't really give back much of a feedback about mobile phones - most average folks get whatever seems hot (i.e. mostly what the operator markets the most) or whatever the operator gives them as a cheap option to extend the contract.

I haven't seen a market that's more driven by what is being put for sale than mobile phones. People don't choose shit, they pick from the few somewhat cost-effective options that are available any given year.

It's about what companies can afford and are willing to purchase as well.

I doubt the technology to have higher density and more energy efficient battery is far off, but I fail to see any report of mass manufacturing of these, only article about new technology advancement in labs. And if there is no incentive from buyers (the device manufacturer) for better parts (in this case the battery), then the alternative is just have something that is good enough and that won't be dwarfed by the competition.

Agreed, also, customers value different things at different times: when buying a plan ticket, they value money more than comfort, but when actually flying, they usually regret that decision.

Also, when buying a smartphone, they rarely think "I should go for the uglier one, with a bigger battery", but after they notice how often they run out of battery, they'll buy an external one.

I bought gionee marathon m4 because it has the best battery. so some people do buy phones with better battery.

> I'm always blown away out how little cell phone manufacturers seem to listen to customer feedback. I don't care about my phone being paper thin. I'd guess most people don't either.

We can only guess based on what we hear. Cell phone manufacturers have a lot more data than we do and they keep going for thinness, so I have to imagine there's a demand for it.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that most consumers prefer battery life to thinness in surveys and polls but actually wind up buying the thinner phone when presented with actual hardware. Thinness is easy to see. If you're comparing phones in a Best Buy, the thinner one might feel more modern and impressive. Battery life is a hard feature to demo in that environment.

In other words, maybe the average person only wants battery life in the abstract, but opts for thinness when making a purchase.

You may be confusing "because of" with "in spite of". If your phone breaks and you need a new one, you buy one that has new features. If the only choice is thinner than you buy it and grumble on HN. I've never been asked to fill out a survey about the features I like/dislike about my phone.

> I've never been asked to fill out a survey about the features I like/dislike about my phone.

I've never been asked which political candidate I prefer, but I see polls on the news every night.

> We can only guess based on what we hear. Cell phone manufacturers have a lot more data than we do and they keep going for thinness, so I have to imagine there's a demand for it.

I worry about this being "data driven design", where X sells so lets try X+1. Problem is that phones do not sell on their own. Most customers buy them with some plan attached, meaning they often grab what gets the biggest carrier subsidy (or whatever gets the seller the biggest commission).

That or they get whatever their neighbor/relative/coworker/friend has.

There are a whole pile of perverse incentives between the OEM and the users that may or may not show up in the data hitting the meeting room table.

I remember this being one of the things that caught Blackberry by surprise. BB had better battery life and functionality etc, so BB co-CEOs never thought the iPhone would catch on.

Then again, the iPhone had years of iPod install base to bootstrap from. People in part bought it because it was an iPod with a mobile radio attached. The tech press had been hammering Apple for years to get into the phone market, as Nokia etc was eating their lunch with MP3 playing featurephones (at least in Europe).

And i seem to recall the stated surprise for BB was how much of the iPhone was battery.

I have worked in tech retail and the customer's needs are actually quite flexible with a bit of marketing. In any case the thinner and bigger trend seems to have ran its course: With the current UX design in iOS and Android, phones with screens larger than 5in are uncomfortable to a lot of average people and thus manufacturers can no longer cheat the thickness game by making the screen and chassis bigger.

> I don't care about my phone being paper thin. I'd guess most people don't either.

Sales seem to prove otherwise

> Can you imagine what an annoying hassle it would be to have to pair and unpair the same bluetooth headphones between two devices like that?

Bose seems to have come with a solution to avoid un-pairing and re-pairing: https://www.bose.com/en_us/products/headphones/over_ear_head...

> I don't want to have to get new ones, and I don't want to have to carry around a stupid lightning adaptor for them

Well, you can always not upgrade, or purchase a phone that has a 3.5mm jack. If enough people feel the same, manufacturers will continue to produce compatible products.

I suspect that (outside of HN), you're in the minority, however.

>> I don't care about my phone being paper thin. I'd guess most people don't either.

> Sales seem to prove otherwise

I'm not sure that sales have proven that people prefer a thinner phone. I know that when I buy a phone, I never look at the thickness specs, just at the height/width. My phone could be another few mm thicker and I wouldn't notice or care -- it would still fit in my pocket either way.

I may end up buying the thinner phone since it has more of the features I'm looking for, but not because it's thinner.

> Bose seems to have come with a solution to avoid un-pairing and re-pairing: https://www.bose.com/en_us/products/headphones/over_ear_head...

"Manage your headphones with an app" still sounds like an annoying hassle to me. Even if it works seamlessly, it's still a far cry from hot-plugging at will.

Do you expect "everyone" to buy $350 headphones, or for headphones with the same capability to be viably cheaper in price?

My $20 totally off-brand bluetooth headphones support multi-pairing. Does it always work 100%? No. Do I think cheap multi-pairing capable headphones will get a lot better as it becomes more important? Definitely.

> My $20 totally off-brand bluetooth headphones support multi-pairing.

What do you use? I also buy $20 totally off-brand Bluetooth headphones (I wear them while exercising, and sweat ruins them every few months), and mine don't have this feature, which I would love.

How often does it need to be recharged? Will it last a whole day at the beach?

Sales can be distorted in so many ways it is horrifying to rely on it as a trend indicator.

They don't listen to their customers because there is tremendous financial pressure to close "the analog hole".

Once data has to be transmitted wirelessly, there is a much better chance that you will do it in ways that can't be pirated, but can be controlled, monitored, and profited from.

It's hard to find DRM-ed music these days. Both iTunes and Amazon will sell you DRM-free music. Not convinced this is a driver of the design.

The continued availability of DRM-free music (just as we had before they first tried to introduce DRM) might be viewed as a temporary setback – I don't think they gave up their DRM push because they were suddenly convinced by the philosophical arguments, but rather because there was too much market resistance.

Once all the necessary pieces are in place to decisively force it on the consumer, why wouldn't they try again?

I wasn't talking as narrowly as the RIAA. I meant even USB ports are disappearing in favor of wireless charging and bluetooth.

If there's a USB port, most people will just plug in and back up to their computer. But if they do it over wireless, they'd just rather use Google / Apple's services, which means they get your data.

It's not about music. It's about movies, or why else should anyone be interested in a 4K phone screen?

And with movies, there's the ridiculous HDCP crap... and I highly believe that the MAFIAA would give manufacturers with a fully protected AV path cheaper licensing.

All you would be able to steal is the soundtrack then.

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content...

> it must not transmit high definition protected video to non-HDCP receivers; and DVD-Audio material can be played only at CD-audio quality[7] by non-HDCP digital audio outputs (analog audio outputs have no quality limits)

Analog hole is still analog hole, and the MAFIAA wants to close it.

If you can play CD quality audio, it's hardly a hole. Better quality is only useful during creation/mixing. It's not like DVD audio is better, even if it has a higher sampling rate (probably worse then actually) or higher bit encoding.

There are other problems why the analog hole is hard to exploit:

1) Multi-channel streams are easy to grab in digital, but expensive to grab in analog - simple reason: six channels that have to be captured in exactly the same time, without offset. Most consumer-grade sound cards only carry one line-in, not three of them.

2) Power supplies in computing tend to be NOISY. I mean, REALLY noisy. So basically the PSU adds noise to the output DAC, and then the PSU adds noise at the ADC stage. It most definitely is a quality loss.

3) Naturally, headphone-outs and in a lot of cases line-outs tend to be engineered in a way that their output impedance can drive headphones, too. This can massively distort the signal.

4) Clipping. Hard enough to avoid when using a professional mixing table, next to impossible to avoid when ripping audio via the analog hole.

Humans can hear up to 28khz when paying close attention. "CD Quality" is slightly below the threshold of hearing, at a point where most people don't notice the difference or care to notice the difference.

It's also somewhat poorly-defined, because "CD quality" can mean lousy mid-range performance when rounding 24-bit to 16-bit, or high frequency hiss when noise-shaping 24-bit to 16-bit.

So "CD quality audio" is quite a degradation when you listen in a 100% quiet room with expensive speakers and your full attention.

28kHz is either a typo or you give too much credit to human ears. 18kHz is more likely the real figure.

That depends on the ears, that's why the ultrasonic youth drive-aways are so successful. Old people simply can't hear them due to age and external degradation (loud rock music concerts).

I, for example, can hear these ultrasonic weasel defenders, which operate between 20 and 30 kHz, again - when I used to work on outside construction works using massive jackhammers, excavators etc. I couldn't because daily stress would fuck up my ears.

I have my doubts that humans can hear above 20kHz.

It's more likely that the sound produced by those devices, even if ultrasonic, may produce intermodulations in the audible range.

28 kHz is in fact correct, although only in lab conditions:

> The commonly stated range of human hearing is 20 Hz to 20 kHz. Under ideal laboratory conditions, humans can hear sound as low as 12 Hz and as high as 28 kHz, though the threshold increases sharply at 15 kHz in adults, corresponding to the last auditory channel of the cochlea.

(ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_range)

Even 18kHz is too high. Adolescents can only sometimes hear as high as 17kHz, and adults can often only hear as high as 14kHz.

Is the "analog hole" still an issue for music, now that all-you-can-eat streaming services have become the norm? Is anyone using their 3.5mm jack to capture a Spotify stream?

Every day I plug my phone (or tablet) into my kitchen DAB radio's auxiliary socket to listen to stuff I play on these devices whilst cooking, sitting round the table chatting with friends or just staring out the window watching the birds in my garden. I guess for me it's less about "capturing" streams but that every audio/amp device in my house, that's attached to speakers, has a line-in cable with 3.5mm jack on the end.

Not having an analogue hole would be a right royal pain in the arse.

[edited to fix my english]

I download songs to Spotify with premium and use the 3.5mm jack to plug it into the aux jack in my car.

I guess a lot of newer cars have bluetooth pairing, but mine doesn't.

I have a car that does. My last phone would play audio on it for about 30 seconds and then immediately disconnect. On a previous version of the firmware it would reliably panic and reboot after ~20 minutes of playing music. It worked fine with other speakers but there was something"magical" going on between it and the car.

While streaming music currently gives lots of music for cheap, it is doing because it is competing with piracy. And efforts to control piracy are a bit hampered because of the potential to use the "analog hole" (if you could only get a given song with analog recording of Spotify, then people would do it).

Further, a lot of the anti-piracy impulse is not simply a desire to charge get more money from everyone but a desire for control. Essentially, the music industry is reconciled to most people paying little for their music (or better yet, most people forced to hear advertising mixed with their music) but the industry want to have the ability to sell to people at a variety of levels. Perhaps charge more for just released music or certain artists or music connected to movie sound-tracks or for "audiophile level" audio or whatever.

For a commodity that's infinitely reproducible, the ideal position is being able to separately charge each consumer exactly what they're willing to pay. Maximum utility for the owner, which would imply minimum utility for the buyer.

Possibly, considering that the industry historically lagged significantly behind current reality when it comes to business practices and mindset.

I know you're right but at the same time I can't remember the last time I had to use the analog hole to save some kind of media.

I doubt they'll be HDCP over USB-C. There are much easier ways to rip DRM music anyway (and most of the stuff people play today isn't under DRM unless you rent your music from Spotify).

  what an annoying hassle it would be to have to pair and
  unpair the same bluetooth headphones between two devices

There are actually bluetooth headsets that can be paired to two audio sources at the same time [1] and switch between sources automatically.

That said, such headsets are pretty rare and command a surprising premium for what looks like a purely software feature.

[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jabra-Easygo-Bluetooth-Headset-colo...

I don't think they are that rare or expensive so long as you don't insist on hi-fi brand names. My Awei earbuds pair with two devices and they cost under NOK 150 (about USD 18) including shipping from China to Norway. They are not as good as my wired Sennheiser HD 595s but are plenty good enough for casual listening while on the move or working, considerably more portable, and about a tenth of the price!

In this case (as in many others) the standard desire of a Hacker New user may well not line up with what the rest of the population (consciously or unconsciously) desires. And as others have pointed out, these manufacturers will have data on what actually sells.

This. Exactly my take too. Manufacturers are not as tuned in to user feedback as most might think. Many think they know better. No one worth any chops in UX though sees the removal of the audio jack as good. I've read and heard all the arguments in favor of removing the 3.5mm audio jack. Everyone ignores the fundamentals of good UX principles though. Too many companies have a very narrow UX scope though.

I would like to point out that any individual's opinion is mostly likely just for him/herself. He/she might be more tech-savvy, or knows more than average consumers, but that does not translate to be more representative.

For example, I absolutely love thinner phones. I cannot revert to thicker ones after each time I switched to thinner ones. I guess my experience aligns with the majority of the consumers, but I do not know.

I totally respect Apple's (or any smart phone manufacture) decision, they certainly know much more than me on how to cater millions and billions consumers.

"...I'll then see a little video or something has been sent to me by a friend on my phone. I unplug the headphones from my macbook, plug them into my phone, watch the video..."

Why don't you just watch the video on your laptop? Even with a simple 3.5mm plug, moving the headphones over sounds like a lot of work for something that you can just do on the laptop.

Even if your friends send you an SMS with the video, there are plenty of ways to get an SMS on your laptop.

> Often I'm sitting at work with my headphones plugged into my computer to listen to music...

Perhaps the videos aren't reachable via his work network, or the OP doesn't want his "work" to know what's being viewed at the office? I'm sure there are other reasons to use a cell network (which is the assumption).

> Often I'm sitting at work with my headphones plugged into my computer to listen to music. I'll then see a little video or something has been sent to me by a friend on my phone. I unplug the headphones from my macbook, plug them into my phone, watch the video, then plug my headphones back into my macbook. Simple.

For this I just connect my phone to my computer so that all audio comes out of my laptop.

Regarding the pairing, there ARE headphones out on the market that support being paired to two devices (maybe some support more). I think this is specifically to address your concerns, and it seemed to be a pretty common feature in any $50+ Bluetooth headphone I looked at the other day while shopping.

> I'd be paranoid it's not connected to the right device and suddenly I'm blasting music to the people in my office.

This regularly happens to people who sit near me and use bluetooth headphones. It is pretty awkward when they are listening to pick-up artist tutorials on Youtube.

Modern Bluetooth headphones, like my Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless ones, pair and connect to multiple devices at the same time.

And should I exhaust their (measured, actual) 22-hour battery life, they can be used in wired mode, as well.

Apple earbuds aren't 'nice' headphones.

Can't your headphones be paired with multiple devices?

On the UI side just need the OS to present local bluetooth devices as output options, just like they switch to usb/hdmi/internal/headphones

Most bluetooth headsets that I've tried really only pair with one device at a time, and it can be cumbersome to impractical to actually switch with any convenience.

Completely agree. It feels like Apple is now focusing their features entirely on marketing alone -- "look how small it is!" -- instead of how people actually use their devices.

I find it incredible that you think a company with an installed base of hundreds of millions of devices and a ludicrously high customer satisfaction rating somehow ignore how people actually use their devices in favour of marketing.

I don't have to un-pair and re-pair my LG Tone BT headphones. It's paired to my laptop and my phone all the time

I love my bluetooth headphones at work. Sure, about once a year my co-workers get subjected to Mars Volta for about 3 seconds, but I also don't have a cord getting stuck on everything and keeping me literally tethered to my desk. An entire port just for audio out seems silly to me. But, I do seem to be in the vast minority here. haha

It's the same with ultrabook manufacturers killing the ethernet port :(

Difference is that there's huge variance in laptops, but phones are all largely similar, and build off each other. If they start swapping off 3.5, it's gone. You can still get ultrabooks with fold-out Ethernet jacks, which while a little flimsy, are still there.

Why don't you plug your nice headphones/headset into the computer and pair your phone bluetooth to the computer? That way you can listen to audio from your phone and your computer without swapping jacks.

Great, until I use my Playstation Vita to play a game on my commute home. Then open my computer at home to watch a video. Or maybe plug my headphones into the PS4 pad. I’ve got 5 different systems I regularly plug my headphones into.

I think you are overestimating how functional real world bluetooth is...

I plug my phone into my car. It as 3.5" jack and no bluetooth. I don't have to buy yet another device to plug into the jack to provide a bluetooth interface.

I installed a $10 a2dp to 3.5mm device, powered by usb into my car, works quite well. Better than bluetooth built into cars which seem to start playing music instead of the podcast I've been listening to.

I got my Bluetooth headset to pair and work with my laptop (2015 Dell) and Windows 8.1 for all of an evening before the audio stream quit. After around 4hr of troubleshooting and a few subsequent sessions in the office, gave up. That was about 6 months ago. I've reverted to a USB wired headset.

I have a bluetooth speaker and bluetooth earbuds. Both worked fine under Android 4.4, now both stutter under Android 6.

It's too bad, especially since the SRS-X3 was not a cheap purchase. And NFC speaker pairing is all sorts of cool. But music that stutters constantly? The crappiest $2.50 earbuds you can find make for better listening than that.

Both my Nexus 4 and 5 stuttered constantly when paired with a Hyundai i30's head deck. I'm of the opinion that the Android bluetooth stack is not the greatest thing ever...

Less problems with CyanogenMod 12 and 13's stack, though.

It'd be great if device and OS developers made that a thing you could do!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com