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Comment by zeveb | Hacker News Reader

> Many people find headphone cables a big pain in the ass.

But they don't also find having to charge headphones, and eventually to throw them out and purchase new ones, to be 'a big pain in the ass'?

> At least part of that is that wireless headphones tend to be expensive and many of them aren't the best at pairing and staying connected. Those things aren't inherent to wireless technology and will change over time.

I'm pretty sure that expense and complexity are inherent to wireless. No wireless connexion is going to be as cheap and reliable as an equivalent wired connexion, if only because the wireless connexion terminates in … a wire.

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The complexity in wireless such as Bluetooth is strictly because it's a digital, packed-switched network driven by a fairly complicated software stack.

Basically, chaos originates from the involvement of computer science.

Cordless home phones and "900 Mhz" wireless headphones to use around the house are dead friggin' simple and reliable.

(Not to mention insecure: another story).

> But they don't also find having to charge headphones, and eventually to throw them out and purchase new ones, to be 'a big pain in the ass'?

you have to buy at least one pair of wireless headphones (and eventually they'll be bundled with phones), but you wouldn't need to replace them any more frequently than other headphones. This is the way with all changes. When wifi first became available we had to buy new modems.

As for charging them, that doesn't seem like a big pain to me. I charge my phone and laptop each day, this is just one other thing. For me the benefits -- no cables to get tangled (and have to untangle) or get caught on things -- outweigh the costs.

> I'm pretty sure that expense and complexity are inherent to wireless. No wireless connexion is going to be as cheap and reliable as an equivalent wired connexion, if only because the wireless connexion terminates in … a wire.

I hear the air pods are very reliable.

Regarding expense, if economies of scale get going, which I believe will happen, and manufacturers get more experience making them, then this will make the prices come down.

> but you wouldn't need to replace them any more frequently than other headphones

Except that the batteries will eventually stop holding a charge. This is not a problem with wired headphones. I can plug a 40 year old pair of headphones my Dad got in college into my phone and they work the same now as they did then. You can't do that with wireless headphones.

> Except that the batteries will eventually stop holding a charge.

You're wrongly assuming that this always means the headphones will no longer work. There are wireless headphones with replaceable batteries -- e.g. https://www.beoplay.com/products/beoplayh8#techtalk

And, it's not like most wired headphones last forever. I must have gone through 5 - 10 pairs in the last few years. Admittedly most of these were towards the lower-end, but still, they just stopped working.

This is an argument against non-removable batteries more than against wireless headphones in general. There's no reason headphones can't have both onboard charging and removable batteries in standardized sizes. It's fairly common in higher-end flashlights, for example.

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