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Comment by jakef | Hacker News Reader

Who would buy this thing? The phone doesn't look to be anything special, the name makes it sound low-end, there's zero brand recognition. The magnetic wireless accessory thing is irrelevant to vast majority of consumers, especially since Bluetooth has already solved that problem and works with any device.

I can't imagine a scenario where someone is looking to buy a phone in the ~$700 range and chooses this.

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I'm not sure we are talking about the same bluetooth here. I have yet to see a bluetooth device that just works (I am a non apple user, so I can't speak for IOS devices).

The worst example are my wireless headphones. When I get into the car the car radio tries to connect to my phone, so it stops the wireless headphone output. I then have to scroll through the menu and disconnect the car radio, which tries to reconnect after a while.

But that is not even the worst. If I have an audiobook playing while I connect the headphones the audio switches immediately to the headphones as soon as they are connected (which is the expected behavior). But if I start the audiobook after the headphones are connected it takes several minutes until I can actually hear something and I have not figured out a way to speed this up apart from disconnecting and reconnecting after I hit play.

I for one love my wired headsets, they just work. But I have to buy some new ones every other month because I regulary rip them when they get caught up in something.

> I have yet to see a bluetooth device that just works (I am a non apple user, so I can't speak for IOS devices).

Indeed, if you go all-in on Apple they really do "just work", and come pretty close when you use a non-Apple BT headset with Apple gear. I can't say if this is because the standards are inadequate and Apple does some extra work, or if the BT implementations on cheap hardware are simply terrible. I kinda lean to the latter, but really either could be true.

> When I get into the car the car radio tries to connect to my phone, so it stops the wireless headphone output.

BTW if you are in California it's a crime to have an earbud in both ears or cup headset covering both ears. You're unlikely to be stopped for that specifically, but if you get stopped for erratic driving, speeding, or have an accident the cops are quite willing to load that one on too, and in the case of an accident your insurance company may not cover you. So your car may have a crappy implementation (see my comment above) or it might be attempting to do the right thing.

Apple's Bluetooth products "just work" because they don't use Bluetooth for the pairing part.

Sounds like a data point in favor of the "the standards are inadequate and Apple does some extra work" hypothesis.

Let's hope Apple can feed some of this back into the standards organization.

Apple's efforts with standards committees has historically been so-so -- neither bad nor good, seemingly mostly reflecting the interests of technical managers unless there was a specific strategic need (e.g. USB committee, Qi), and never with a coherent commitment.

Do you have a citation for this?

https://appletoolbox.com/2016/12/airpods-not-auto-pairing-sy...

This page mentions it in the "Setting your Airpods up" section.

"earbud in both ears"

One of my co-worker got a ticket just for that alone.

I seems to remember it was $400 ticket.

> I'm not sure we are talking about the same bluetooth here. I have yet to see a bluetooth device that just works (I am a non apple user, so I can't speak for IOS devices).

I have a 2008 Toyota Tundra pickup with no bluetooth. I bought a $20 bluetooth adapter [1]. It has worked flawlessly with my iPhone 5S/6/7 phones; I step into the vehicle, and as soon as the cigarette power adapters are powered up, it pairs without any intervention on my part (after the initial pairing). I consume vast quantities of Spotify while driving around Central Florida with this setup.

I still rely on the Apple corded headphones, as I prefer their UX to wireless headphones.

It is regretful if it does not work for your specific use case, but it does seem to work in certain scenarios without issue.

[1] https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GJFGE3W/

I'm just so baffled by this. I've been using bluetooth happily for over a decade. With some minor hiccups, I'd say it works near flawlessly every time. However, everyone seems to hate bt, it never works for anyone, manufacturers put it in everything, people continually switch to bt devices. Nothing adds up.

Yes, you are lucky. My experience with BT is similar to described above - it's unreliable, flaky and prone to random failure. For example, in my car, most of the phones connect most of the time, but at random times they just refuse until the phone is rebooted. Or connect but refuse to dial. Or, alternatively, randomly switch to in-car audio when you stand outside the car and are in mid-call. One of my phones topped it all - connecting it by BT to my car crashes the whole system (thankfully nothing related to actual driving uses the same system, it just makes all audio/radio/maps/etc. unavailable).

For a car, there's not a lot of choice there. For headphones, after trying to find a good BT headset for years and failing, I gave up and got RF wireless set. Seems to work fine so far, but of course requires special gadget and only useable with that gadget.

I hear horrible things about wired headphones too. I think everyone has their own sets of pet peeves that drastically change how they perceive the relative costs and benefits of the available technologies.

You shouldn't be driving and wearing wireless headphones

Point taken :)

In the car they are used as a hands free kit. My car radio can be used to do calls as well but the headphones, only in one ear while driving, do have much better call quality

How is that less safe then playing the car's stereo? I have one in my ear at a reasonable volume when driving with others so they don't have to listen to my Geeky podcast or music.

Many of them also act as partial earplugs, and block out more external sound.

My bluetooth is pretty flawless with my $18 in ear bluetooth Gonovate G10. Best $18 I ever spent on a device that lets me get away with listening to podcast and people don't notice. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MAWZ5XE/ref=twister_B072Q9K4YZ?...

They are paired with my linux laptop, phone, and desktop computer. Only issue is my car will still try to takeover media on my phone and my car is for phone calls only with bluetooth.

I have UE Boom 2 speakers that I use with a wide range of devices (the speaker supports up to 8 registered devices simultaneously). My main mobile devices are not Apples and everything works perfectly.

You had some terribly bad luck. I had minor BT problems on some Android phones, but everything else works flawlessly.

If you don't want it to connect to your car, why did you pair them?

If I am playing streaming music and have other people in the car who want to listen as well.

I could unpair them and then pair it again when needed, but I hope that is not how it should be done.

Plus as a modular phone it is incredibly difficult to repair so it fails its main purpose as far as I can tell.

Even Google bought HTC instead.

> there's zero brand recognition

Really? I was going to take the opposite perspective and say celebrity and name recognition goes a long way, irrespective of actual success...

I always hear the "Essential" brand name brought up now whenever Apple, Samsung, etc are mentioned. Even in the non-tech news sites. Which is funny to consider given their sales count.

As someone who frequents many tech sites I can't remember hearing the name "Essential" in relation to phones before today. I don't know what sites you frequent, but they're apparently different than Hacker News, Ars, or even Slashdot.

Ars has definitely been covering it. Here's one article wondering what had happened to the Essential and why it wasn't out yet:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/08/andy-rubin-promises-...

I recently saw it in NYTimes and two major Canadian papers (Toronto Star and National Post). Each was about the new iPhones and mentioned "Essential" in the context of new pressure from competition (among other brands such as Samsung).

It was mentioned in passing as if it was a known competitor.

Note: I never complain about downvotes, but I'm confused why it's -4, do people think I'm lying? Although my comment is not yet grey, which means they were all newbie members.

I didn't say see it in any particular Tech blogs such as Ars, maybe I should have made that clear...

I only really frequent HN these days, and I've been hearing about that phone for a few months at this point.

Not to mention a lot of TV commercials for it.

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