Bringing back the iPhone headphone jack, in China
strangeparts.com
strangeparts.com
Crikey! How many iphones did he drill holes in?
> I also ended up having to buy lots, and lots, and lots of spare parts. I went through 3 complete iPhone 7s, a handful of screens, and countless internal components (mostly bottom cable assemblies and taptic engines).
3. Ok, that's dedication.
> I feel like I got extremely lucky about finding space inside the phone. There was inexplicably a lot of extra room in the lower left hand corner, right where I wanted to put the headphone jack.
Suspicious... almost like their engineers left room to change their minds about the jack at the last second if they wanted to :)
What was the party line for removing it again?
/pedant
And I'm not sure it's being pedantic.
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/6ygqxk/guy_who_made...
I'm pretty sure that "Dremel" didn't cost him much over $10.
You can buy the cases without phone internals easily in the markets in Shenzhen. I don't think the guy drilled in a "live" iPhone 7, from what I can tell in the video, but he did go through a lot of parts trying to get his headphone jack and later the headphone-lightning connector to fit into the phone.
Alternatively, the space was set apart as a hedge against the AirPods not being ready at he time of the launch of the iPhone 7 (yes, they were late, but not _that_ late. Presumably (again) they knew they could make them when they made the decision to remove the headphone from the iPhone 7)
[0] https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/12/apple-w1-chip-how-it-works/
However, chances are they are the Bluetooth headphones Apple makes the most money on, and that early adopters of the new iPhone are the most likely to buy them.
Inducing (extra) demand for Bluetooth headphones and then leaving the market for such headphones to others in a period where your most 'able and willing to spend' customers enter your shop isn't the best of ideas.
(1) (nitpicking) it wouldn't completely surprise me if they were, though, because Apple has exactly one product, whereas its competition tends to create zillions of 'different' products.
I personally got conductive wireless headphones and really like them. Not Apple, of course.
Conductive is the future I think, I'm never sticking anything in my ear again.
Whether there is technically room for a headphone jack means nothing to a consumer who would like to have one on their iPhone. As far as I can see there is no difference from the consumer's point of view which year the change happens in.
The iPhone 8 will be the 100% screen phone. It also won't have a headphone jack.
Big difference for how people think about that and how it gets talked about.
Perception. People focus on something more when it changes, and there's only so much focus to go around. Remove the headphone jack a year earlier, and it's not a "change" that it's still missing from the next model. So focus/attention can be more concentrated on new features that Apple brings to the newer "10th anniversary" iPhone.
"Yeah, but it still doesn't have a headphone jack" is a rational reaction, but not the one that most people will have. It's irrelevant background noise, compared to the shouts of "Look at all the new shiny!", which is the reaction that Apple's going for.
Because they did this before on the iPhone 7, Apple execs are hoping that the key consumer takeaway for iPhone 8 will be 100% screen
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/6yhbuu/guy_adds_func...
The irony of owning the only iPhone 7 that has a headphone jack from a company that has a slogan that says "think different" is just too rich to not be pointed out. This is the embodiment of the hacker mentality, not satisfied with the status quo and constantly pushing the evenlope.
I eagerly await the day when we can "compile" physical objects and electronics like we can with software. Who will care if the next iPhone have a headphone jack when you can make your own?
That said, Don't you think even now we've got wireless streaming with bluetooth or wifi which Headphones can make use of to move forward with headphone jack missing?
I would not call Essential phone a modular phone. The idea is to sell addons to the phone. The phone itself is the antithesis of modular. It cannot even be opened without destroying it. It got 1/10 repairability score from iFixit: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Essential+Phone+Teardown/967... .
Man the handspring is an excellent PalmOS unit.
They were few and far between but I've got a few of the "cool" modules, a huge GPS, an SD card reader, a memory bank, and the "good technology" MP3 player.
Good actually pivoted from hardware to making an exchange compatible mail client for PalmOS to compete with Blackberry.
The slick Vizor Edge unit had a removable springboard slot, which triples the sub-cm thickness.
Handspring then made the Treo, which was competitive for what it was until WebOS and iPhone came along to spoil the party.
Palm Pre anyone? :(
My older plug in headphones with the adapter? Works every time.
Seems like a trade-off in either case and I'm willing to try the wireless thing until it becomes a pain. So far, it's been a pleasure.
If BT didn't cut out/die and had decent quality I'd agree with you. I've tried multiple headphones, but my experience says it's just not there yet.
If you have to push users to using a new technology, instead of letting them pick it up on their own because it's obviously better, that tech might not be as ready as you think it is.
In any case, now without the jack, they now get a share of any accessory you connect. The adapter, and any 3rd party adapters and headphones, need to be certified as MFI, which includes buying and incorporating the Apple MFI chip (forgot the name) into the design.
Which is entirely in their right of course, but it is a consumer hostile move.
Bluetooth audio is an open standard isn't it? I use Bluetooth speakers not made by Apple and not certified for Apple.
And doesn't the iPhone include a headphone adapter? So they don't get any extra share that way either.
Sorry, but - lol :D
not if you care about quality, non crappy codecs require aptX with patent fees owed to Qualcomm.
They have less than 50% of market share, so no.
MS had almost 98% of desktop/work OS share (Linux was in its infancy then -- and is not used much for desktop even now--, and OS 8/9 had dropped to insignificant share).
They have the 2nd/3rd biggest share (and not like the first one has over 50% either). Sounds major to me.
Apple also doesn't have a monopoly share, I have many friends who actually prefer Android and don't care that iPhones no longer have a headphone jack.
I now just carry two pairs of headphones everywhere, one for my Apple laptop and one for my Apple iPhone.
Even tried the Beats X, W1 chip was all hype it's barely any different from regular bluetooth and juggling with then UI to turn headphones on and off is more tedious than just plugging something in and living with a cable, so those are collecting dust now.
Didn't want to buy another dongle because that would just prove to Apple that people are happy with the dongle.
If everyone who actually cared about it bought e.g. the S8 from Samsung instead, I'm sure Apple would get the message - and bring it back. Since people are still buying it in droves it must not be a real clincher to most people.
The S8+ has a great DAC (as tested on my range of Audio Technica headphones), still supports Bluetooth audio - latest spec, and is a fantastic phone overall, with a design far surpassing the headphone-less iPhone 7.
IMO, Apple engineers have gotten lazy. They removed the port without adding value.
Or you know, they have rather good reasons for it.
Like better waterproofing (Samsung always fails behind iPhone in waterproof tests, and doesn't support fully even the nominal waterproof levels they say they do), thinner feature phones in the roadmap, smarter headphones, etc.
In that video, both phones are subjected to ever-increasing water depths until the S7 dies (very respectably) after five minutes at 35 feet, while the iPhone 7 continues to operate.
That suggests to me that both phones probably should have been rated IP68.
That said, while you may be right they should be rated the same, that doesn't really help OPs point. Even if they should be rated the same, the S7 has a headphone jack and the iPhone 7 doesn't. If the headphone jack is really the problem then the iPhone 7 should be way better at handling water then the S7, and yet even in the video you linked the iPhone 7 was suffering damage from the same depths the S7 did. I would argue that even if the video is legitimate it's entirely possible he just got a "lucky" iPhone 7 that didn't end-up getting fried from the little water that got in, and the S7 wasn't quite as lucky. From one test you really just can't know.
They haven't added value for their customers but they will be reducing costs for the business going forward and are helping provide a platform for future revenue.
That's not a reasonable assumption.
If they had manufactured an alternative iPhone 7 (that was thicker than the regular one, or whatever was their rationalizing for removing it) then we could say that anyone buying the alternative one was communicating their want/need of the jack.
There is significant platform lock-in between iOS and Android, and while you can always switch, there are a lot more factors than the headphone jack, making it - without a gradient - impossible to draw any such conclusions from the data points available.
I've had an iPhone since the 4, at first because it was the best phone by a long way imo. Now? I imagine switching and would rather pay the premium not to go through that hassle.
I'm super sad that I'll have to use a shitty adapter to have semi decent ear buds (I use sennheiser cx-500 most of the time) - but again not enough to motivate switching. [I've not looked but assume Sennh don't make compatible headphones]
I own the 7S without the headphone jack and while most of the time I'm fine without it, there are a few instances (mostly on planes or long car) where it really pisses me off. But switching to an alternative device that has a headphone jack would piss me off even more due to other things.
I look at it the same way about the removal of the physical home button from the iPhone 7S - 'train' users/press prior about the potential negatives so you can control more of the conversation when the 'next big phone' comes out that you want make sure makes a good, big impact.
Seems reasonable, but if the next iPhone is the massive redesign everyone is expecting, wouldn't have been easier to remove the jack and play it off as a requirement of the new design? "This is the iPhone of the future," etc.
The "best hypothesis"? That's the classic "lock-in" conspiracy theory. And Apple makes pennies on the headphones compared to what they make from the iPhones (and what they could lose in iPhone sales if the removal of the port proved unpopular) for that to be any great motive.
How about: making the phones waterproof with one less difficult to tackle port, less width/height needed for the new port hence thinner phones, envisioning a wireless future (what with AirPods and co).
The fact that there are pushing AirPods (which don't care for the jack at all) and that Apple gives a free conversion to mini-jack with each new iPhone, means that the theory "it's all about selling headphones/licenses for lighting headphones" is moot.
Also, I'd buy into the whole "thinner is better" thing if they weren't actually making the screens bigger and the "wireless future" thing is a just a load of overdreamt baloney.
I moved back to Asia last year. And since then the combination of driving a scooter + rain season means my phone is soaked wet a couple times a year (sometimes it just rains and you really have no choice). If it is not waterproof, I have to always bring a backpack with me.
I leaned forward while typing an sms and dropped the phone in the bucket and saw the screen during the fraction of a second before I snagged it back. It showed a message along the lines of
"This accessory is not supported"
Then it died. Only to be revived through a bath in rice. Nokia, whaddayaknow.
1.5m for up to 30 minutes; enough time to retrieve from a toilet.
Turn off immediately, disassemble as much as possible, rinse in clear water (tap for us, but it is not clorinated/flour), then dry in a bag of uncooked rice for a week or so. Boom. Instant Frankenstein phone.
Feels good to save the world a little (through less waste).
Don't actually do this. It's a myth.
You can only get rice dust inside your phone that way. That's the only thing you can possibly accomplish.
I've read the original Gazelle article [1] too, and their methods are far from being clear or rigorous.
I'd need to see more replication before I'd consider this "myth" debunked.
[0] https://smartphones.gadgethacks.com/how-to/myth-debunked-unc...
[1] https://www.gazelle.com/thehorn/2014/05/06/gazelles-guide-wa...
EDIT: Watch this rant from a guy who works in the repair shop.
No need to watch the whole video, you can see the "results" of the rice "cleaning" in the first couple of minutes.
and it's not controversial if everybody agrees it works.
you are in the minority here and you must support your position with facts.
EDIT
In fairness, I think in the last year we've moved beyond accepting a ranting guy on youtube as evidence.
I've actually seen this guy and he's great on many topics. I can see, and appreciate where he's coming from but I don't think it disproves anything.
Possible conflict of interest that should be declared is this guys fixes devices for a living and charges for the service.
You can watch the video muted btw. PCB condition shows clearly the level of corrosion from just a little bit of moisture.
Source: http://www.kcomfg.com/_docs/pdfs/principles_of_rice_drying.p...
Well, people agree in all kinds of crap like homeopathy.
Many (most?) agreeing doesn't make something "scientific". Proof does. And it's those proposing a mechanism that must bring that proof.
Did this just happen. Did you just strawman me?
You're wrong. Stop trying to wash it away and just admit it.
To me, the science sounds plausible. Power it down, dry it up, introduce a desiccant to mop up what atmospheric moisture there is. Rice may not be the "best" desiccant available but it's commonly available and easily understood by most people.
I'd appreciate it if you and your friend could demonstrate that this is false rather than throwing around snarky rhetoric.
I revived a display on a camera that got wet during a rain on Hawai'i after two years when I read about the "rice method" - it was working the next day. Similarly I saved a phone that went off my pocket into toilet - immediately removed battery, washed in water and packed in a box of rice for a day. Works still like new.
Done the same thing, without removing the battery or using rice (and done similar things with all kinds of electronics that have gotten wet over the years, again, without a desiccant.) If it doesn't short anything out causing permanent damage, electronics that can get water in them can usually also dry out. Magic rice or anti-bear talismans are not required. A dessicant near the device may help trivially by reducing the surrounding humidity and accelerating evaporation from the device, but just arranging proper ventilation probably works better than using a closed container with a desiccant in most environments.
I guess there's a cohort of iPhone users that never use the jack but in the early days at least it was a compelling feature for many. (remember all those proprietary connectors we had back in 200x?)
Well, it's not like the world revolves around what some particular individual does. Other people might be more clumsy. Or might live in places with frequent rains (from London to the tropics and India), do all kinds of stuff outdoors, etc.
Many people approve of a waterproof phone. And in any case, it's a nice feature to have even when you don't need it. It gives piece of mind for using it to call in the rain for one -- and if you have ever been outside in London or tons of other places you'd have seen the utility.
Or why can't we just have both.
airpods cost $160 and beats headphones aren't cheap either. I doubt that's making pennies on headphones either way.
If you buy a third party set of headphones that use the lightning port, and require mfi status, yeah, they might make only a small amount compared to profit on iphone.
However, I think enough people will just default to another pair of airpods that any potential losses are offset. I have to imagine that was Apple's thinking. They may sometimes be wrong about stuff, but they're not stupid. If it helps move the market towards wireless, it may also push more wireless beats headphones, which are going to be relatively profitable too.
The quick way to look at this might be: How much was Apple making from headphone sales before this move? How much are they making from headphone sales after?
If some guy (he's obviously talented, but still a guy) can fit one inside an already manufactured iPhone 7, the company designing the phone obviously would have no problem fitting it in the dimensions it holds.
> The "best hypothesis"? That's the classic "lock-in" conspiracy theory. And Apple makes pennies on the headphones compared to what they make from the iPhones (and what they could lose in iPhone sales if the removal of the port proved unpopular) for that to be any great motive.
> The fact that there are pushing AirPods (which don't care for the jack at all) and that Apple gives a free conversion to mini-jack with each new iPhone, means that the theory "it's all about selling headphones/licenses for lighting headphones" is moot.
Doesn't the fact that Apple being the company selling the AirPods (for a mighty hefty fee I might add) at least suggest the opposite of "moot", since they're making a lot of money on new headphones by removing the jack?
You state and agree with all the factors needed to draw the conclusions of the "conspiracy theory" (or what I'd call market sense), yet you arrive at the opposite one, why is that?
Well, such a condition would rely on this being true and accurate. I'm not really confident there's any data that suggests how people are listening to music on their iPhone 7s at the moment, and really nothing to draw a conclusion from except "anecdata". The simpler explanation in my mind is that Apple wanted a thinner phone, and they did what they needed.
There was an article a few days ago from Xiaomi's Indian Product Manager who commented on the removal of the Headphone Jack on one of the Mi Phone releases. His insight was that despite what people say ("I don't care about thickness"), their surveys and testing overwhelmingly showed that consumers have a preference towards thinner phones.
With this in mind, to me it seems more reasonable that Apple just decided to ditch the jack less they be caught making the fat phone. Your personal preferences may differ, but I think the more reasonable and sustainable conclusion is simply that Apple is chasing the thin phone.
Not really, there was a little bit of space near the old jack, and he removed a critical part of the barometer to make the rest of the space. If you're removing parts you can't exactly claim that it was empty space.
Whether at a sum that decision was lucrative or not is inconsequential, as that comes down to how the market responds to their decision, but what you can argue is whether they make more off headsets now than before.
Before they bundled regular corded buds, and you purchased new ones when your old ones broke. Now they sell $180 USD AirPods, and Beats, and bundle (IMO) clunky adapters. While I don't have data on this, I'm fairly confident in assuming their decision was made on this basis. The question is if this turned out as they hoped in sales.
> The simpler explanation in my mind is that Apple wanted a thinner phone, and they did what they needed.
How so, when there was obviously space enough for an end-user to fit a jack inside the final product?
They still do. The iPhone 7 comes with Lightning headphones AND a Lightning-to-analog-jack adaptor.
They also sell the bundled headphones separately, so you can replace them.
Looking at the iFixIt teardowns[0], where is this space supposedly at? If you remove electronics, sure, maybe you could fit it, but there very definitely is components where he put the headphone jack.
The company is not forever planning on using the same dimensions of the current model -- but they can still plan ahead the removal.
Besides, the "some guy" doing a mod doesn't have to meet the same guarantees (re: waterproofness, air-circulation inside etc) for the device, as Apple has.
>Doesn't the fact that Apple being the company selling the AirPods (for a mighty hefty fee I might add) at least suggest the opposite of "moot", since they're making a lot of money on new headphones by removing the jack?
You can still use any old pair of wired headphones with the free provided adaptor. So the removal doesn't force anyone to buy AirPods -- or any other of the tons of bluetooth headphones.
While it may in a dry sense be true that the removal doesn't _force_ anyone to buy AirPods, I will strongly suggest that their customers aren't convinced that the adapter solution is sufficiently comparable [1].
[1] (Reviews) https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMX62AM/A/lightning-to-35...
And taking out the headphone jack doesn't do much for AirPods, the iPhone still has wired headphones either way.
So this point is not moot, much to the contrary, yours about waterproofing is: three years ago Samsung had a phone with: headphone jack, SD card, removable battery. Lots of other phones have headphone jacks and are waterproof. So that point is moot.
Lastly, I'm pretty sure the rationale for any company's decision is "to sell more stuff", not to "envision a future".
Maybe read their financial statements then?
(And I'm pretty sure they lost more money still for buying Beats that they've made from selling Beats products at the moment -- even though both was spare change for them).
Just to play devil's advocate, those $169 AirPods are by far the cheapest fully wireless earbuds on the market, and at launch were ~$100 less than the only other competitor available. Most estimates peg Apples margin on them in the low single digits...
I don't see Apple getting rid of them, especially considering the acquisition of Beats, but the AirPods really feel like the Airport base stations - setting a standard of quality to try and guide the industry along.
Any references for this. My gut feeling doesn't match up with this. I can't imagine the bill of materials being more than 1/3rd of the cost?
Unless those estimates are including the R&D cost, I imagine these are low volume, and that Apple spent a lot of money on developing them.
And these are really tiny computers and highly optimized batteries, so I'd be surprised if the BoM is that low, but determining that is definitely not my strong suit.
Wires are a definite downside to me and many others. I see this problematic description pop up a lot around here and other sites. What is problematic for you may not be problematic for others or even the majority. This is how we ended up here.
In my own use case, I love the AirPods, I don't think they "blow", and I only have to charge them occasionally since the case keeps them charged. I have yet to experience these downsides that you claim and yet I still have the benefit of not needing wires. You can continue to dislike wireless and say wires aren't a downside but you can't just state it as some kind of universal fact. People are different. Some people will like things that others don't.
My Bluetooth Sony MDX-1000X headphones are amazing, the best headphones I've ever owned. If they're the future of wireless audio, then bring it on.
How is increasing customer retention rates a "conspiracy theory" and not a common business strategy?
Why a "conspiracy theory"? Apple has a documented history of vendor lock-in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in
Noticed how all the link says is that Apple used to sell DRM music?
First, that was a demand from the record companies.
Second, Apple was actually the company whose's CEO took a public stand against DRM in music -- and eventually been able to remove it from their music store.
That's hardly a "documented history" of Apple being active on that front.
As another author writes (http://www.business-standard.com/article/management/apple-s-...):
> Apple has adopted the opposite stance creating proprietary hardware and platforms that firmly lock you into their ecosystem and this is one of the reasons why today, despite falling market share, it remains one of the world's most profitable companies.
Companies use vendor lock-in to maximize profits, it's something quite common among big players in the software industry - there is no need to pretend it doesn't exist or that Apple is avoiding it for some reason.
prices of their BT headsets are around $200. i think apple makes quite a few pennies on the headphones.
- smaller devices reduce shipping costs en masse
- marketting "thinner" devices (though screen is larger?)
- DRM
- No need to provide expensive native DAC
- Owning the headphones market, similar to how google ended up owning "search"
I'm sure there's a bunch more. It makes good business sense for them regardless of what customers (ahem, "consumers") want and with other manufacturers following suit they'll pretty much have no choice.
I'm looking forward to a portable DAC being among the collection of crap I have to put in my pocket in the morning.
The rest sounds about right, unfortunately.
(the cost to ship a medium size box is about $10. $10,000 of iPhones easily fit in a medium size box. Shaving some of 0.1% is pretty irrelevant.)
And if they did it in service of "owning the headphones market", that's a really dickish reason.
Indeed it is. I and many others would agree. But capturing a market and "lock-in" are common, and often-lauded business practices.
If this were their goal removing the headphone jack is the last thing I'd expect they'd look towards. For starters there's the packaging itself which is way larger than the couple millimeters they could maybe shave off the phone itself.
Now, is the iPhone "8" going to be like that? Clearly not. iPhone 9? Maybe not. iPhone 10? 11?
That's what Apple are pushing towards. Thank god somebody is, or we'd all be carrying around 7mm thick phones for the rest of eternity.
Edit: I'm not saying you have to like this, just that to say that Apple did it to make a few more bucks on a dongle is cynical to the point of absurdity.
Removing the jack was a good decision and now, a few months only later, I do appreciate it.
1) Lightning is a great connector for audio.
2) The headphone jack takes a lot of space and they want to use that space for other stuff.
3) Apple has a "vision of how audio should work" on phones and they want to "get there as soon as possible." That was a lead-in to talking about Airpods
Note that they underscored that #3 was the "most important" reason they made the move.
#2 always made sense to me and I gave Apple a bit of a pass on removing the jack for that reason, but this thread's article shows that it was bogus, at least for the iphone 7.
That leaves #1 and #3, both of which involve Apple taking a a bigger cut of headphone sales. While #1 is true, it's not where the rest of the audio market is. And #3 (remember their "most important" reason) basically can be translated to "We want to sell you Airpods."
So it seems it really could have been all about Apple making more money, not about their users. Possible exception being long-term benefits created by moving the market in a particular direction.
(disclaimer: Android user, who prefers using bluetooth headphones anyway, but at least that means I don't have a horse in this particular race... :) )
On top of this, the author had to remove the "barometric vent". I don't find a lot of use in having an altimeter or barometer in my smartphone, but I do know that some apps take advantage of it (Dark Sky). Apple probably wants it to push some activity tracking feature, like the number of steps you've taken.
Apple itself would have had a lot more latitude in design since they specify the layout, and because of that, I think it is also fair to say that the article still provides strong evidence that if Apple were doing it, they probably could have included a headphone jack without compromises.
That being said, the iPhone 6/6s are the same size as the 7 from what I can see. The only obvious changes are waterproofing, headphone jack, taptic engine, and lack of physical home button.
"What about my legacy media/peripherals?"
I'm not exactly mad at Apple, but I'm starting to think that maybe Android will be the way to go for my next upgrade cycle. It's been a while since I played around with a new OS!
Why??? Why on earth would Apple do that, and why should they need to? The iPhone 7 works just as well or better with regular BT headsets as any other phone does (iow it mostly works, most of the time, but sometimes BT is just kinda crappy).
What possible reason would Apple have to develop a clearly superior BT chipset and then just give it away?
I dunno, maybe for the benefit it would bring to their consumers?
Or do they really need to add a few more billions to their existing pile of money?
So in 2017, when they actually need to remove the headphone jack (probably because the phone is more thin than is actually useful), it won't be as big of a deal.
They're not going to say that in their keynote.
I don't ever intend to own a phone without a headphone jack. If enough people agreed with me their plan would backfire, but I suspect that's not the case.
Funny... I thought they removed it to save space. Apparently they needed space for that void?
I think we're going to look back to the dawn of smartphones as being particularly anti-consumer, anti-privacy, and typified by corporate dishonesty.
edit: I see the narrative is "but, but the iphone 8 will be too thin for it, trust me." Then there's no reason to do it now other than crass monetization at the cost of the consumer already invested in wired headphones and being forced to do a pricey upgrade. Not to mention, simply migrating to a thinner analog audio plug like the standard 2.5mm connector which is merely 2mm thick and can use a minijack to 2.5mm adapter can be gotten anywhere and cheaply. That would be a trivial change and allow Apple to make a very thing phone. Instead excepting a DAC on every headphone or having a DAC adapter is clearly a monetization scheme.
Apple has been a dishonest, anti-consumer, cargo cult designer since the beginning of personal computing and I can't wait until their time is over.
Just one example: The single button mouse. For the longest time the party line was "it's better for reasons", but everybody knew it wasn't which is why the first thing anybody purchased after buying a new Mac was a multi-button mouse. You didn't even have that choice with their laptops unfortunately. Internally, Apple's reasoning for keeping it was that it differentiated them from PCs and they didn't want to appear to be stealing from PC designs.
Seriously... he shows the pieces he had to remove in order to get this working and he compromised the water-proofing of the phone. How is that, in any way, an equivalence to "void" or "empty space"?
The "new phone" no longer has a working altimeter, is not waterproof, and has major structural issues now. Anyone saying that there was just extra space there is being ignorant of the facts shown or is being intentionally disingenuous for some reason.
As a developer I was always excited when someone found a better/different way to use my code in a way that is different than I originally intended to, hopefully manufacturers in the future will focus on making it easier to hack and modify their products.
I'd been playing music on my car stereo (Kenwood, nothing amazing) across bluetooth. I finally got around to picking up a lightning cable to connect directly for charging but thought I'd try playing music across it.
I was instantly struck by how much better the sound quality was.
I don't think the sound output in this case is digital am I right? Lightning still supports analogue output equivalent to the headphones jack for these usecases?
So we're being sold on this idea that digital/bluetooth is "better" but as somebody else points out here that's purely down to the DACs that are in use, but from my personal experience the DACs native to the iPhone are actually pretty good.
I wonder, apart from other motives proposed here, is eventually eliminating expensive analogue circuitry from the iPhone BOM a part of what's going on here?
Clearly not so if I've got a jack ...
I've had a hard time finding out technical details of Apple's new w1 chips - what increased bandwidth they support, if any. This one case where Apple hiding the tech specs from consumers is pretty irritating.
I'm no audiophile pushing for nonsense like 24/192 downloads, but I do care about music enough to actively avoid overly-compressed audio via bluetooth or Sirius/XM as the sound is grating.
I'm thinking Bluetooth 5.0 will solve this quality issue, but I'm certain there is somebody with actual domain knowledge in this thread to enlighten.
Edit: link to some reference on bluetooth quality http://www.sereneaudio.com/blog/how-good-is-bluetooth-audio-...
In terms of your car stereo, I'd say that'd be an internal DAC, and the quality difference was simply down to a physical connection compared to Bluetooth(probably a previous standard too, the jump from Bluetooth 4.0 to Bluetooth 5.0/W1(as in AirPods) is pretty similar in magnitude to the jump from USB 2 to USB 3/Lighting(Lightning was again Apple adding support for modern features before the standard was finalised)). In the same way that nobody would've seriously dropped a dedicated display port before USB 3, the new Bluetooth standards are opening up audio to replace physical connections.
As I understand it, Apple ultimately ended up dropping the headphone jack due to interference(the DAC was being interfered with) from some internal components in the new design, as well as making waterproofing easier. I'm fairly certain there's no DAC already at this point.
Since my 5s still has a headphones jack there is certainly still a DAC there.
It could well be down to the fact that my car stereo has a better DAC on the USB line than it does on the bluetooth line. Or simply an older bluetooth audio standard as you suggest. Actually this is probably the most likely suspect!
Which I think all serves to underline how digital output is not "open and shut" when it comes to sound quality.
Thanks for the additional technical context on why they might be eliminating analogue signal altogether. I'd felt a similar rationale informed their refusal to include a FM receiver from the beginning.
It does make sense from many different perspectives for apple to make this "not their problem". I kind of feel it's a pity from a customer/functional perspective though.
[0] https://www.innerfidelity.com/content/apples-lightning-headp...
The iPhone still has a physical speaker, doesn't it? Therefore there must be one.
I'm guessing that they thought the headphone was interfering with their design for iPhone 8, and that they wanted to take the PR-hit with the 7. They were in the loop about the Bluetooth 5 spec, so for them it made sense, even if it's too early for consumers.
> Your Kenwood may not support the higher quality codecs, meaning it would sound worse than a comparable headphone jack aux cable.
That implies there's BT audio codecs that sound the same (or I guess better, but I think he/she probably meant "same") as an aux cable. I was saying I don't think that's true, that even the best BT audio codecs are (noticeably) inferior to in-phone-DAC-to-analog connections.
I can't say I know how the different bluetooth audio codecs work of course.
The huge audio difference described above is atypical from my experience, so I'd blame the stereo's bluetooth support before bluetooth audio itself.
More directly to your point, though, I've never experienced problems like one speaker cutting out because the wire is too old with digital connections. I really like digital better because it's mostly either working or not.
My big gripe with digital vs analogue is it's all or nothing. When digital degrades its unbearable to listen to. Analogue handles age more gracefully.
It also allows charging while listening to audio, which has also been a hassle to not be able to do, so I gritted my teeth and made the purchase.
The whole situation is comical. Apple getting rid of the headphone jack was a ridiculous move that leaves me with a really bad taste in my mouth about a company who I otherwise have a very positive impression of.
The transition is irritating, but eventually you buy a new compatible peripheral (or you leave the dongle permanently attached) and life is good again.
The unforgivable thing about what Apple has done is insist on keeping that proprietary "Lightning" port around. It was a better design than anything else when it debuted (I've thrown away more broken micro USB cables than I can remember), but now it's just a sad shadow of USB C and it needs to go.
When they killed the headphone jack, they had an opportunity to divert everyone's attention away from that loss by sticking a USB C port on the bottom. Instead of people bemoaning the loss of the perfectly good 3.5mm audio jack, they could have been talking about the exciting possibility of a fully-functional USB C / thunderbolt port, and with a "USB C everywhere" approach across all their devices, they might have actually deserved to call themselves brave(ish).
But they launched the 7 without a jack and the latest MacBooks without USB A so their latest phone couldn't connect to the latest MacBook without a single.
I know - lightning to USB A makes sense for legacy laptops but still. It was a bizarre decision, one that I doubt Jobs would have made.
Android is fine. At least the sausage recipe is available, iOS is a black box that's probably just about as gross inside. You can choose to use technologies that don't disrespect you as a user and a consumer.
Getting a decent frame rate on shitty Android hardware (even the so-called high-end devices) is quite a challenge. iPhones are so much faster it's not even funny.
In that case I do share your pain, only in my case it is related to their GPUs.
4 ports is just not enough.
Millions of people found alternatives.
Millions of people do iOS development on a non-Apple laptop that doesn't suck ?
With respect to the headphone jack, a purchase of the phone could be anywhere from "I enthusiastically agree" to "I disagree strongly enough that it almost prevented my purchase" or even "I thought it would be OK, but realized after purchase that I will not buy another phone without a headphone jack."
What I'm saying is - voting with your wallet works for products where it's easy for a random entrepreneur to design a release a new, unique model focusing on unmet market needs. But smartphones are not such a product. Customers always choose out of available options, the difference is in how easy is for the market to iterate on different variants for different market subsegments.
And, I'm not about to stall at a particular model, since I know quite well that the headphone jack isn't likely to come back.
[1] Battery life of new iPhones is not enough for me now and iOS can't function in low-tech, no internet environment where you need to share files and do other "geek" stuff suddenly and without PCs of any kind.
in other words, innovation = having to dump old "features".
---
In case you are not aware of https://ramtin-amin.fr/#tristar, I’ll just leave this here. No affiliation, I discovered it via Hacker News a while back (by the way, your post is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15190199).
One of this person’s other projects (the iPhone NVMe exploit) required a custom FPGA board for PCIe sniffing. This guy clearly likes digging into protocols. Would be very very interesting to see what you could collaborate on together.
PS. You might want to adjust the theme so the textbox font color is black / #000. It’s very hard to type with the very light shade of grey it is right now.
Ah but this means you can't listen through the jack and charge your phone at the same time. That's my most missed feature since Apple did away with the headphone jack (I think technically you can still do this with a dongle?). Cool project overall though, kudos to the author.
Shenzhen seem to be a hacker's wonderland.
[1] http://bgr.com/2016/09/20/iphone-7-headphones-jack-sound-tes...
[2] http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/no-stereo-jack-no-problem-iphon...
I've used many BT headsets, and I'm not sold on any of them, because it's yet another thing to charge. I've got my nice Shure earbuds that I've been using for 8 years, and I've no desire to get rid of them. Nor do I want to buy an external DAC, which is also another thing to have to keep charged.
Bye google.
The price of a pair of Beats headphones in no way corresponds with the quality of the drivers inside or the build quality of the unit itself, since they tend to blow most of the profits on fancy marketing and packaging I can't be sure they're not going to cheap out on the DAC too.
I would recommend this option over old school headphone jacks or new "digital" headphones.
Again from a customer point of view very frustrating.
No need to foresee...plenty of external amp/DACs already on the market.
The other article, which you use to support the fact that the external audio is lower quality states "the bottom line is that the difference is going to be completely imperceptible to most people.". And of course, other options than Apple's included headphone adapter are available, which maybe higher quality.
There are many valid reasons why you might not like the iPhone, or might want a headphone jack. However the reasons you've provided don't seem valid to me, unless I've misunderstood something.
>By taking out the 3.5mm jack, Apple is removing the need for these two components. The lightning port and lightning input are both digital, so the phone does not need a DAC any more. The iPhone 7 can thus be more battery efficient, and have room for other components (like a bigger battery) in its slim case.
These arguments are deluded. The phone might not need a DAC anymore (hang on, I guess it does for the built in speakers), but the user does. It doesn't help with battery efficiency unless the DAC is powered separately, in which case you have two things to charge. Room for other components? Well if you want a bigger battery why don't you just have an extra one attached to a dongle to charge the phone up with? Why not remove the screen, another digital to analog device, to save space and battery, and just have an HDMI out? I know these are silly examples, but a phone brings convenience - it's convenient if a phone can last all day on one charge, and also convenient if it can interface with headphones.
Stepping back a bit, these articles seem to crop up periodically - I remember similar about the lack of GPS in the first model, the problems with the 4's antennae etc. Getting a bit philosophical here, but I wonder if the same people who refuse to accept valid criticisms of an Apple product also believe in 'good' and 'bad' people who can either do no bad or do no good.
Google translation of the original German page is fairly clear:
> With the saving of the jack socket, Apple deteriorates the output quality of the music on the iPhone. While the output sockets of the iPhone 6S and iPad Air itself perform well in comparison with professional audio interfaces, the output on the new Lightning adapter of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus reaches only the note satisfactorily.
>The differences should be noticeable in comparison with similar connected headphones in the price class from 100 euros, especially with uncompressed music files with 24 bit. In the case of lossy compressed music pieces (MP3, AAC), however, most users hardly notice a difference. Bluetooth headphones and digital audio interfaces are not affected by the deterioration.
A 4.5dB loss is actually pretty big.
.item-content { color: #000000; }
The contrast ratio between that gray (#8e8e8e) and the white background is 3.3. At this text size (16px) it fails WCAG AA and WCAG AAA. This means that people with sight issues (and even regular people) will have issues reading the body of the website. You usually want at least 4.5.
This kind of low contrast should only be seen at a minimum of 18px and ideally on bold text.
Apple MacBooks are kind of underpowered and not too attractive relative to what’s becoming available in windows land - perhaps it’s time to start switching back from all this Apple stuff I’ve bought into over the years.
They are available - there's lots on the market.
Ummm... Perhaps you mean once wireless headphones are included?
Maybe there was room because they removed the headphone jack?
Allegedly, one of the big reasons why Apple decided to remove the headphone jack in the iPhone was to save space for other components, so its pretty funny that it actually just resulted in a bunch of extra, unused space right where the headphone jack used to be.
http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~mellis/cellphone/index.html
make our own damn free software/hardware phones! Those port stealing bastards!
Why I don't miss it? The old headphone jack is not good. First, it has more risk of either breaking (itself) or putting another force on the entry of the device. Second, the audio transmission sucks. The old jack, for some reason, has lots of interference. I'm having this problem with the iPad and Macbook.
My only issue: I want the iPhone jack to be USB-C compatible, or the iPhone/Macbook Pro standard to be compatible.
Good riddance old jack.
It is pretty save to assume it's no longer water-resistance as it was coming from the factory after the drilling?
Also, it's not a real trade-off, as currently, everyone except Apple somehow manages to make a waterproof smartphone with a headphone jack.
Also plenty of people have have water damaged phones, from using them in bath, dropping then in the toilet or simply forgot to take them out of their pockets before plunging into the ocean. That you don't know these people or don't do it yourself, doesn't mean there are few water damaged phones.
Also please read: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prEMEA42146116
While trying to read this it kept opening some gutter menu. Really annoying.
Edit: For those curious I looked through https://github.com/strangeparts/niubi-headphones and I think this is the what the design of the final board is supposed to look like, assuming I got the right file: http://i.imgur.com/fWPQNZf.png.
The main point of my comment was bemusement at how the title makes it seem different than what it is, which is a nice application of electrical engineering. It's like me saying that "wow, these snacks for children are actually really healthy vegetables, how clever!" My tone was mainly of being impressed rather than dismissive.