Stop trying to kill the headphone jack
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1. Bluetooth headphones require extra charging. I'm always looking around for somewhere to plug in my phone AND
my bluetooth headphones. And no, I don't want to buy Apple's easily-losable ear bud things. Since the batteries
may die on my bluetooth headphones, I always still have to carry around the original headphones that came with my
iPhone, leading to extra cord/dongle #1.
2. Bluetooth headphones require a charging cord that isn't the same as the one on my iPhone. Extra cord/dongle #2 to
take with me everywhere for the old-style 8mm adapter.
3. My traveling Bose noise-canceling wired headphones require the carrying of extra cord/dongle #3 to take with me
everywhere.
4. Bluetooth headphones don't interface in situations like that healthclub exercise bike I want to plug into. Neither
do the standard iPhone headphones that come with the iPhone 7. So I need to carry extra cord/dongle #1 with me
everywhere, the old style 8mm ones off a previous phone.
5. Bluetooth headphone batteries eventually stop working. I was making due with going mostly wireless for about 2
months and then the headphones I bought stopped working. Judging from Amazon reviews, people don't get a lot of life
out of these little rechargeable devices - whereas normally the wired headphones I get with an iPhone last me
for the life of the phone.
6. On the iPhone 7, at least, the headphones go into the combination charging/headphone jack. That means that I need
extra cord/dongle #4 with me because of items #1 and #3 above, if I want to charge my phone and use headphones at
the same time.
It's a shit show.
[edit: tried to make formatting less hideous and to make a couple of items clearer... and because I miscounted]
1. Bluetooth headphones require extra charging. I'm always looking around for somewhere to plug in my phone AND my bluetooth headphones. And no, I don't want to buy Apple's easily-losable ear bud things. Since the batteries may die on my bluetooth headphones, I always still have to carry around the original headphones that came with my iPhone, leading to extra cord/dongle #1.
2. Bluetooth headphones require a cord that isn't the same as the one on my iPhone. Extra cord/dongle #2 to take with me everywhere.
3. My traveling Bose noise-canceling wired headphones require the carrying of extra cord/dongle #3 to take with me everywhere.
4. Bluetooth headphones don't interface in situations like that healthclub exercise bike I want to plug into. Neither do the standard iPhone headphones that come with the iPhone 7. So I need to carry extra cord/dongle #4 with me everywhere.
5. Bluetooth headphone batteries eventually stop working. I was making due with going mostly wireless for about 2 months and then the headphones I bought stopped working. Judging from Amazon reviews, people don't get a lot of life out of these little rechargeable devices - whereas normally the wired headphones I get with an iPhone last me for the life of the phone.
6. On the iPhone 7, at least, the headphones go into the combination charging/headphone jack. That means that I need extra cord/dongle #5 with me because of items #1 and #3 above.
(Please don't reply to this comment so that I can delete it if the parent comment is edited. Thanks!)
So it's still a pain, although the main thrust of my post was that if you try going Bluetooth like vendors seem to want us to do, you still need lots of cords.
1. I have to carry around a mass of wire that it always getting tangled with its self and other items in bags and pockets.
2. I have to fiddle around to plug a port into my phone, that often scratches the surrounding material.
3. I have a port that gets full of lint and I have to pick it out.
4. The headphone cord gets caught on things and rips the headphones out of my ears.
5. When ever I knock the cable it amplifies the noise into my ears (isolating earbuds).
6. The little remote dongle gets caught on my collar or buttons and rips the headphones out of my ears.
7. When I jog I get a cable bounding up and down, often tugging on my ears.
8. If I just want to use one bud, I have to have the other dangling around.
9. If I want to switch between devices I have to manually plug in and out, often scrabbling around on the floor for a desktop computer.
10. Cable connections ware, and can result in audio only coming out of one ear.
I have a set of wireless headphones that use the same cable to charge as my phone. I charge my phone once a day when I sleep, and my headphones about once a week. If I want to use wired headphone I have them permanently plugged into a free dongle that came with my phone, but I haven't in months... they are in my bag... tangling stuff...
[Edit, as above, formatting etc]
People loved and still miss Micro SD slots on phones too.
I use BT headsets in my phone when I run for the same reason you do, but my phone certainly doesn't last a full day running BT, nor does anyone I know tbh. Sounds like your phone is magic, or you're not using your BT often as it's a power hog on every phone I've used. I believe you're not being disingenuous, but it's not a standard experience for most people.
I also forgot the worst point, when the headphone cord gets caught and rips the 3.5mm jack out of my device resulting in it blurting out (my secret love of the Moana soundtrack) at full volume to a train carriage of commuters...
Don't think me some luddite, I love my wireless buds when working out, or riding a bike. But when I want it to 'just work', no drivers, no batteries, no formats, just a plug and good sound. It seems steange to me, as apple used to be known for its quality D/A converters, and they are cheaper than ever now.
Wireless certainly has its advantages but I am unconvinced that it should be the only way to connect headphones or other things "going forward".
But given the economic incentives, it's not surprising why things are moving in that direction.
Essential broke my heart when they launched without the headphone jack (okay, not really, but you they did eliminate me as a customer for this version -- maybe I won't need the headphone jack for their next release).
Survey from Nov last year: https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/01/life-without-the-headphone-ja...
It is a survey...so who knows how real it is, but 55.86% were negatively impacted Apple removing the headphone jack. While Apple customers don't have a choice, Android users do and we will vote with our wallets.
Some of us have old cars that we see no need to upgrade.
Analog line level audio is a ubiquitous standard.
In an article about how too many phone manufacturers are removing the headphone jack? A lot of people are playing along. The market for bluetooth headphones has blown up, covering a range of prices and form factors - it's absurd and perhaps wishful thinking to say this isn't a real trend. I also don't believe there are no benefits to the manufacturing process.
I predict this article will feel very outdated in a couple years. I was very skeptical of the removal of the headphone jack, but six months ago I tried out a bluetooth headset, and I would never go back. It's easier and doesn't snag, and is easier to put away. This isn't to say everyone should get rid of the headphone jack, but I don't see why manufacturers shouldn't be able to.
Sound quality.
Bluetooth is not able to offer the fidelity of a standard 3.5mm jack. Until it is capable of doing so, I will not even consider using bluetooth headphones.
Plus, industry standard high-fidelity and studio quality headphones don't come with bluetooth due to the fidelity issue. I already have a several hundred dollar pair of awesome headphones. Why would I purchase a phone that I can't connect them to?
Let's call the removal of the headphone jack what it is: a cash grab. The only reason manufacturers are doing this is to increase profits. By removing the 3.5mm jack companies no longer have to pay for the part or attaching the part to the board. On top of this, manufacturers can now charge for special dongles and proprietary wireless headphones.
I think the manufacturers didn't want to add cruft to their headphones, as the batteries and decoding circuitry would probably begin to crowd out the actual sound reproduction hardware.
Of all the complaints I've heard (and agreed with) on removing the 3.5mm jack, inability to send high-fidelity audio over BT is the one I think I disagree with the most.
(I agree with the rest of your comment, though.)
To be clear, I'm not someone who romanticizes audio quality. I'm really about hard facts. But bluetooth audio quality is a known issue, and although there have been attempts to address it, it seems like nothing is really quite there yet.
Yes, there are higher-quality audio bluetooth standards, but not everything works with them, and there's interference, and general glitchiness, etc. Bluetooth audio quality is one of these things where there's a huge difference between what's on paper and what reality is.
To be fair, I think there's issues with wireless and wifi audio in general (not necessarily with quality, but the whole package: quality, reliability, open standardization, adoption, etc.). I also think bluetooth audio is fine for some basic level of audio quality.
But bluetooth audio as a general standard is just not up to snuff. It's certainly not comparable to other AV jack/port/interface standards, like 3.5mm jacks or HDMI or whatever.
I definitely do not consider myself an audiophile, but I can only listen through bluetooth audio for so long before it drives me crazy. The closest thing I can think of is mono AM radio or something.
This was a random page about bluetooth audio--I just picked it because it was the near the top of a Google search. It sums up the situation with bluetooth well, though, and being random from my perspective kinda underscores it's not a niche perspective:
https://www.lifewire.com/what-to-know-about-bluetooth-313459...
Personally, I'm pissed about getting rid of headphone jacks, and for the general trend of manufacturers to think eliminating things in the name of minimalism is a good idea. It's ok to a point, but 3.5 mm elimination is past that point IMHO.
I fully suspect someday 3.5mm jacks will be outdated, but we're not there yet.
Yes, you can experience wireless issues with poorly designed devices. But I know people that use BT audio as their primary ways to listen to music, and I'm personally building such a device for my car. I can send audio to it from further than I am willing to test, and I haven't yet had my audio interrupted.
As far as I can tell, as long as you're making sure you're using the highest quality standard possible, you'll receive a decent experience.
Where the experience breaks down, as I mentioned earlier, is the lack of high-fidelity sound reproduction options due to the size of the decoding circuitry and battery pack. BT audio headphones, though usable, are generally not great. If you have something externally powered (e.g. my car) it is fine... but that use case occurs less often.
Perhaps your devices only support the SBC codec, mandatory for inclusion in the standard. Or perhaps your devices have chosen to communicate over the hands-free profile instead of A2DP, which is another issue I've had.
I don't claim that 3.5mm jacks will be outdated, and I certainly don't think so either. I just think that BT audio is "good enough" strictly in terms of fidelity, and that other factors confound its inclusion in high-fidelity headphones.
On sound quality, the current bluetooth headsets are 2-3x priced over the same brand's top wired headphones, for fraction of the quality. Not just because the aptX HD is not “good enough”, but because the poor DACs. Good enough DACs are power-hungry bugs, it is unlikely to see them built into wireless headsets in 2-3 years time.
My point isn't that decent quality audio with BT isn't possible, it's that I don't think BT standards are at the same point as 3.5mm. As you yourself said, if you're saying that BT is fine "as long as you're making sure you're using the highest quality standard possible" then there's a problem.
It sounds like you've run into some of the same issues ("choosing to communicate over the hands-free profile"); I think my broader point is that with BT, it seems like there's a lot of those sorts of things.
Something like car audio or home stereo, with a nice, well-configured set up, is fine, but for a lot of things it doesn't have the same plug and play kind of simplicity of 3.5 mm.
Maybe we agree more than we disagree, although come to different opinions about jacks in phones. To me, BT is a promising thing that's not quite foolproof enough to compare to 3.5mm.
In general I feel like mobile device design has this tail-wagging-the-dog problem the last few years.
The cable problem almost went away when I switched to a coiled cable, I really would gain little to nothing with going wireless, specially when accounting for the extreme nuisance that is having to worry about the battery of yet another device.
You get what you pay Apple prices for.
I giggled a little at the idea that testing was required to find out that the iphone 7 had ditched the headphone jack.
But I must say, after I got my airpods, my usage habits have changed. That is how wireless headphones should be. Heck I have never used even the wired headphones as often as I use the Airpods.
Seriously, if you don't intend to use Airpods like wireless headphones all the time, its going to be a pita to use a headphone jackless phone. As of now, there's no Bluetooth headphones out there that comes close to the amazing UX of Airpods.
So think about buying that jackless phone based on how you intend to use it. Airpods will make a huge difference.
Genuinely curious. What is so amazing about it?
2) I don't have to think about charging the headphones, with a dinky small usb chord, which I had to carry with the Bose. The Airpods charging case actually makes a big difference in the whole UX of Airpods. You use it as a storage case. But it charges the Airpods. I charge the chase once or twice a week when I remember to charge it.
3) It feels so comfortable in ears that i tend to forget that I'm wearing the Airpods. The only other earphones that were as comfy, were the ones from Bose with the silicone ear tips.
4) seemless pairing and switching between devices (Mac and iPhone) makes it even more amazing to use. (Certain apps on Mac though have a problem working well with the BT headsets, so I hate the MBP for that)
That isn't really enough for me to say "lets ditch wired headphones". Here is my "Amazing UX" list:
My headphones always work, across an incredibly wide variety of devices. Phones, Tablets, TV's, stereo systems, mixing consoles in studios. Basically, if it can reproduce sound, there is a near to 100% chance my headphones will work with it.
never have to charge. I literally never have to worry about charging them, or battery life, or fancy charging cases (that would need to be kept on a charger) or anything like that.
extreme comfort - in-ears don't do it for me, and cause me ear infections. I used to own a pair of custom-fit etymotic in-ears that would give me the comfort and quality I wanted, and would fit under my motorcycle helmet, but after a while ear infections started coming up, and my physician advised me that in-ears were not for me.
superb quality - I enjoy listening to Sennheiser HD-280, HD650 or when traveling, the HD4.20s, and when the mood takes me, the AKG K701. I'm not an audiophile or sound quality snob, but once you have heard good quality playback through a pair of high quality earphones it is really difficult to listen to something else.
never have to worry about using them - I plug them in, put them on my head. Done - a UX so slick and smooth, I never even have to think about it.
I really don't understand why phonebuilders are getting rid of jacks. I know I won't be joining the ranks of wireless headphone users.
But in my case I'm fine with no headphone jack iff there's something like Airpods with me and I think the lightning adapter is a good compromise. I'm sure those who love their wired headphones wont agree with me. If number of phone buyers who don't care about using wired headphones (like me) is >> ṭhose who care (like you) then headphone jack will die.
Secondly, I personally own a pre-USB-type-C phone and a Sony bluetooth headset with a 3.5mm jack option. I'm looking at buying a new laptop, with as many USB type C 3.1 ports, as possible. Why? Because I buy one for about 5 years, and its the future, and I'm happy that we are converging to a single laptop charger and data port. Don't get me wrong, I don't say that it hurts to have a jack as an option, but I do say that it hurts not having an USB type C port. If I got the latter, but not the first, I don't mind. Anyone can buy an adapter, the USB 3.1 supports analog audio in and out and has an audio controll interface (http://www.anandtech.com/show/10719/usbif-publishes-audio-ov...), so no functionality is lost. Of course, it is a change, and people tend to take changes quite badly. If someone is afraid of losing the adapter, just tape it to the headphones, if they are using a 12 dollar one, I'm sure it won't make worse the experience. As for quality, I'm sure audiophiles will welcome that now they have more power over the DAC. And yes, it can help a lot.
So stop whining, if you want a phone with a 3.5mm jack, buy one, there is plenty, and there will be quite a few for many years. Postpone the change, but keep it in mind when you buy your new pair of headphones.
Wireless is convenient, yes. But I'd rather have a living room keyboard with a 24-foot cable than a wireless keyboard from which my neighbour's kid can steal my passwords. I'd rather have a pair of wired, electric earbuds for a decade or more than a pair of wireless, electronic earbuds which last a year or two.
Getting rid of the headphone jack isn't courage: it's folly.
Another advantage: wired earbuds are easy to retrieve if they fall out of your ear. Depending on when and where they fall out, you might not be able to retrieve wireless ones.
Any manufacturer who gives this as a reason for ditching this ever-useful connector, please explain how other companies have managed.
I do prefer the convenience of bluetooth, but I also like that I can use a cheap 3.5mm cable to connect my phone to the stereo in my car, which does not benefit from a bluetooth adapter. It also means that when my bluetooth headphones run flat, I can switch to cabled while they charge.
The looping gif at the end is a masterpiece.
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/09/17/airpod-accessory...
For a highly mobile device like a phone a wireless solution like Bluetooth makes a lot more sense.
Meanwhile, for audiophile scenarios, a powered digital connection offers better options.
Phones are space constrained so you really have to consider whether a large single-purpose port is worth it when there are better options avaialable.
Here's another way to put it: if the 3.5mm jack didn't already exist it is nothing like what you'd propose for an optimal audio interface. The only thing it has going for it is the historical ecosystem. That's certainly not nothing, but given it's drawbacks and the availability of better options, it seems worth the cost to move on.
I think it's close to optimal --- and for a while, the slightly smaller 2.5mm size was also extremely common in dumbphones and media players.
The early conversion to analog has other implications. Distortions in the signal can more easily affect what you hear than digital, which can do error correction.
Also, you might want your headphones to do signal processing. That probably needs to be done digitally, so if your signal is analog you'll have to digitize, process, then convert back to analog.
And the 3.5mm jack doesn't deliver the power. So if you want to do any processing or amplification you'll need a battery that you have to charge or some other power supply.
3.5mm also allows for only very basic controls.
The AirPods even pair right away with my linux laptop (Dell XPS 9550), as well as my linux desktop workstation. I've begun using them with the new Xfinity cable box, for which Bluetooth can be toggled in the 'Comcast Labs' menu.
In fact, the AirPods have solved every annoyance I've had with previous Bluetooth earbuds (clunky charging cables, manual power cycling, pairing speed, battery duration, portability, etc.). They're the first wireless earbuds that I use every day, easily slipping into my pocket. By contrast, the Jaybird and Bose equivalents require you to carefully wrap up the earbuds and cables, squeezing them into a small case.
When Bluetooth is truly universal, and it's more resistant to interference, and pairing is less of a pain than it is now, then it will be time to get rid of the jack. Until then, this trend is an annoyance. Maybe it's small in the grand scheme of life, but it's enough that any such vendors are automatically on my boycott list.
(Also doubles as a 3.5mm-to-Bluetooth transmitter but I've not used that yet. I think it also has a microphone for hands-free calling.)
I'll probably stick with wireless headphones in future.
Personally I've loathed wired for almost 8years now. I was happy when they removed the jack, and kept, in my mind, still an alternative if you really want to stay wired sometimes.
I already went through the adapter shit with my Sony Ericsson Walkman dumbphones 10 years ago. We have moved on. I refuse to technologically regress to that point because Apple wants to milk people with a new fashion accessory and the other manufacturers want to "look cool" imitating that idiocy.
They sound worse than the £300 noise cancelling cabled headphones I've also got - in absolute terms I think they are pretty decent.
I wasn't expecting to be a convert - but now that I've used the wireless headphones for a few months with my iPhone 7 I'm a convert!
So I get headphones that don't need to be charged most of the time and the vast, vast selection of headphones for 3.5mm form factor, and if I do need bluetooth I can get it.
[1] However, in the interests of transparency, I should point out that the TT firmware has a disgracefully stupid bug whereby if you have two things connected and then move away from one of them, it'll start doing a "lost a device" beep - even if it wasn't active. It's astonishingly braindead as UX.
Here's the thing: I don't want to listen to music from my phone most of the time (except in my car, which already has Bluetooth). When I do, though, I want a high quality experience, so I use the same (relatively nice) headphones I use with my desktop most of the time. I cannot not justify buying a pair of expensive Bluetooth headphones just for the less-common case of wanting music from my phones; Bluetooth monitors are generally worse than non-Bluetooth counterparts in the same price range.
Now, I could certainly get one of the adapters others have mentioned here - but I don't want to do that, because I don't want to send the message that I'm OK with paying for more redundant dongles so that phones can be 4% thinner. I won't buy any phone that has lacks a jack.
I do wonder if Apple will stick to the Lightning standard while the rest of the industry (and even Apple's laptops) move to USB-C.
Or, most likely, until Apple decides they don't need to include it and start charging for it.
Why should I pay more, or even the same, for something less convenient?
The point is not that I can't pay for it. It's that there's no good reason I should have to except some marketing goon thinking people want thin phones, and some execs wanting to sell expensive headphones.
If I'm paying $700 for a phone, it had better damn well be the phone I want to have. A phone without a headphone jack is not a phone I want to have.
How is losing the adapter any different than losing or breaking the lightning cable? How is buying extra adapters any different than buying extra lightning cables.
I remember when the iMac came out and people were complaining that Apple got rid of the floppy drive and the big uproar when Apple got rid of the optical drive years later.
Apple also owns Beats, a major headphones manufacturer. I think the connection is obvious; people want an Apple-branded thing to go with their Apple-branded phone, they're gonna pay for it.
> Do you really think that people are going to run out and buy $150 AirPods just because of the lack of a headset?
Have, will, and are, yes.
> How is losing the adapter any different than losing or breaking the lightning cable? How is buying extra adapters any different than buying extra lightning cables.
You're really not engaging with the core of my argument. There's no good reason for me to have to worry about it at ALL except that Apple has decided they don't want headphone jacks. CDs are a clear upgrade over floppies in every way; Bluetooth is not an upgrade over an analog jack for me. It might be for some people, but I'm not one of them.
I'm not sure what it is you think I should do - cop to whatever Apple wants 'cause they're Apple and they must know better? I don't like a change they made. I'm going to complain about it because I want them to undo it, and I'm not going to buy their products if they don't have what I want. No, it's not the end of the world. Yes, other companies are doing it too - I won't buy their phones either. But this is how, as a consumer, one makes a corporation listen to them.
5 years from now, I doubt high end phones will have an analog headphone jack.
On that note, wtf is up with inductive charging? It's been around since the 90s at least, with the first phone maybe the Palm Pre around 2009. It's super convenient and you'd think Apple would have leaped on that feature, to drop a connector.
Did I miss something? What DRM are they planning in relation to headphones?
See https://boingboing.net/2016/08/12/how-a-digital-only-smartph...
I've upgraded from the Apple 1 through 3 and then switched to the Fire stick.
Airport Express? Got a number of those AND an old XP machine to configure them since Apple abandoned support on macOS.
Their routers don't do WDS with other routers.
When the 7 came out without a headphone jack, it was the last straw. I don't know what I'll buy when my 5s dies, but it's not going to be an iPhone.