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Comment by wilsonnb3 | Hacker News Reader

but, why? I sincerely don't understand why the headphone jack is the hill that so many people choose to die on.

The $9 lightning to 3.5mm dongle has worked perfectly for me, as has my USB-c to 3.5mm dongle.

Because people don't want to fuck around with a stupid dongle to have a feature that the phone should have had in the first place. Dongles get lost, and you also can't charge the phone and use the dongle at the same time. Maybe you don't think it's a big deal, but when the asking price of the device is $1k, any little annoyance like that is a legitimate deal-breaker: for that much money, it should have everything, instead of stripping features out to save money.

I have pretty much never charged my phone and used it at the same time. The cord is too short, and cords that are long enough are unwieldy. Plus, the cord sticks out right where my hand wants to hold the phone.

Is this something people actually do in any situation except low-power emergencies?

Yes, many people do it all the time.

I do this all the time, especially while driving. I plug an aux cord into my phone to listen to podcasts or audiobooks and plug the usb connection into power supply in my car. I wouldn't be able to do a long road trip if I had to switch between these.

This is a decent amount of people but I think this is increasingly rare as more and more cars have Bluetooth. And it's not hard to update many older cars to newer headunits that have Bluetooth in them. (as I did for some of my cars) or just get a headunit that does power+transmission over USB too.

You can definitely tell the difference between bluetooth and an aux cord. There's no excuse for using a wireless connection between a phone and a car that are already plugged into each other anyway

Personally, I dislike having to plug in multiple cords. 3.5mm also doesn't transmit what you're listening to. I find that pretty useful to know. My phone screen is used for other things besides displaying song info.

Data point: I actively use my phone while plugged in 1+ hour per day, and often use it for 10+ hours of streaming music while plugged in. No 3.5mm jack is a dealbreaker for me.

It's pretty much mandatory for me when on long road trips or flying.

Wanting to listen to music on your phone that is plugged in at your desk seems like a pretty reasonable use case to me

Yep, I've done this many times.

I do all the time in my car.

One of my cars only has an AUX jack.

To be fair, you having a car with an Aux jack means that you are definitely not in Apple's target demographic, because you're obviously too poor or too cheap. (No offense, I'm explaining this from the point-of-view of Apple and its fans.) Anyone who's a true Apple fan and customer would happily trade in their older car for a new one with CarPlay just so their brand-new iPhone works with it, just like a true Apple customer would happily throw away their wired headphones and buy Apple AirPod wireless headphones.

Remember, if you're not into conspicuous consumption, then you just aren't suited to be an Apple customer.

Of course, the problem with all this is when other phone makers ape Apple by copying some of these features, somehow thinking they'll gain the cultish customer base that Apple enjoys by doing so.

The cost of a headphone jack at scale is a few cents. I'm pretty sure it's less about the cost and more about size/thickness, with moisture sealing as possibly a secondary concern.

If you say that the battery is a little bigger because the internals of the phone didn't need to accommodate a headphone jack, does that make you feel any better? How often do you use not-your-regular-headphones (which would just have dongle on them permanently) vs using the battery down to the final 10%?

We've had waterproof phones with headphone jacks for ages, so that's not an issue unless you're incompetent.

I've never seen a phone where the battery extended down to near the headphone jack.

If I put a dongle permanently on my headphones, how do I use them on another device that has a standard 3.5mm jack?

Thickness is only an issue for Apple fans. No one else actually cares if a device is 0.2mm thicker.

I mean, it's not like it's empty space in there. Looking at the insides of an iPhone X, it's clear that something would have to give to make room for a new and quite sizeable connector: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone+X+Teardown/98975#s182...

In any case, I fundamentally agree that it's not worth the tradeoff; I use an iPhone 5S and find it perfectly serviceable (and charmingly small and light). But some people do value those things, and/or only use wireless headphones or headphones with a single device.

Supposedly, previous iPhones had a lot of empty space near where the headphone jack would have been. Enough space for this guy[1] to drill a hole and install Apple's DAC in it.

[1]:https://strangeparts.com/bringing-back-the-iphone-headphone-...

Ha, I can only assume that on account of the obvious controversy, this was done by the engineers so they'd have an option to reverse course if the executives had a last-second change of heart. Once it was clear they really did have that space to work with, they filled it up with stuff.

Its infuriating to me that Sony led the way with high end waterproof phones. They had a relatively stock Android experience and pretty much perfected the water proof phone with an open headphone jack.

Then Apple came out with a phone without a headphone jack and they just dropped the head phone jack from all of their worthwhile phones. I was a regular Sony buyer for years because of them being waterproof, but reluctantly had to switch last year to Samsung when my Sony phone was stolen.

The Samsung Galaxy S5 was waterproof too, and had a headphone jack.

same. was mainly buying sony phones for the last few years but the xz1 compact was the last one. they just lost the plot after that. now I've moved to Samsung and the s10e which is too big for my liking but it's the only phone around today that ticks all the boxes I want

> for that much money, it should have everything

That’s how you end up with Homer cars. Get rid of the legacy junk and streamline on useful features I say.

The galaxy s10 is not a homercar. Its a good tool

The iPhone 7 and newer are just designed like Eva from wall-e because "fuck compatibility, buy proprietary wireless to solve everything"

Legacy junk is the stuttering, disconnects, game audio latency and shit that bluetooth still is to this day. Analog audio has no such problems! Using bluetooth only makes the wire longer by using radio frequency but you spend more energy maintaining and error correcting this much worse connection.

Yes you could use lightning headphones but how cucked is that? Buying headphones specially for the port that only exists on your phone?

This argument is circular because you're already assuming that "the phone should have had it in the first place." If you assume that, then you don't need to continue to argue for why the phone should have had the feature.

I still use an SE but I really don’t get this complaint against upgrading. Just keep the dongle permanently on the end of your headphone cable, and use one that splits out to a lightening charger as well. I’m seeing one for under 10 bucks on Amazon. Really a non-issue.

I have multiple pairs of headphones, I have some over the ear ones at work, I have a couple buds that don't cut out as much outside noise in my car for when I'm shopping, I have some in ears at home I use when mowing my lawn. I plug my phone into some speakers at home sometimes. I don't want to have to keep track of a dongle for each of these.

I consider a headphone jack mandatory for two main reasons. First, wireless earphones don't have adequate battery life (not to mention that the last thing I need is yet another thing that requires daily charging). Second, after trying out a variety of bluetooth earphones, I've yet to find one that doesn't give me periodic problems (dropped connections, etc.)

Since Bluetooth doesn't offer anything that I consider advantageous, those two faults mean that bluetooth earphones are seriously inferior to me.

Dongles are a nonstarter for me, for all of the obvious reasons.

Buy headphones with a Lightning or USB-C cable on them?

No dongles, no Bluetooth, no wireless. Everything you ask for.

Then I'd need an adapter to plug it into my other audio devices.

when you are able to share your bt audio with someone sitting next to you like you can with 3.5mm (ie sharing one of the buds or using a splitter) then Bluetooth will be ready. when batteries are good enough to last a few weeks or can change up instantly then I could see myself switching.

for the moment I'm going to try out using a bt receiver (just bought a fiio btr3 a few days ago) and when the battery goes i can just switch back to 3.5mm instead of having to wait half an hour for bt headphones to charge back up which is such a daft idea when you consider the price of them

Yeah, I don't get the headphone jack obsession either. Bluetooth has been perfect for me and frees me from the cord. I can't stand tangled up cords that tickle my neck as I'm trying to listen to music.

For most people bluetooth is not perfect. For some, it's tolerable. For me, it's a pain in the ass that requires frequent re-pairing, mucking around with configuration, recharging headphones, and generally thinking about how to set it up and why it's not working. The total set of failure modes for wired headphones is much easier to understand.

For most? Hardly. Regardless, it's better than lugging wires around like it's 1990.

> it's better than lugging wires around like it's 1990.

That's just like, your opinion, man. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but bluetooth kind of sucks. If I have two devices that just stay paired together forever, it seems to work fine. But if there's ever any change, I usually have to spend 30-60 seconds fucking around and turning BT on and off, or re-pairing, or selecting output devices or something. Wired headphones are simple, don't need recharging, and they work when I want them to. So much like non-smart-light-bulbs, I do think sometimes 1990-style things are better. And I don't think I'd use the word "lug" to describe carrying something that weighs an ounce or less.

Bluetooth is perfect for you if you like going back to pre 1985 audio quality. Some of us like CD quality, and it's kind of funny that in 2019 the only way to get close to that (without a headphone socket, anyway), is using aptx-hd supported phones/headphones.

There you go. In general Bluetooth provides lower-quality audio. In addition, in my experience Bluetooth is pretty much always laggy, which is a problem for conference calls. Finally, I feel far more confident about the security of wired communication, and rather dubious of Bluetooth security. There are already many well-known serious Bluetooth culnerabilities, and I expect that there will be more. I keep Bluetooth off as much as I can... it's hard to exploit when it's off.

Bluetooth works almost perfectly for me too, and I still use my phone's headphone jack from time to time. And the 3.5mm headphones I use work immediately with every other device I own. It's just a basic and useful enough feature that it doesn't make sense to remove it.

See "Analog: The Last Defense Against DRM" [0]

[0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/09/analog-last-defense-ag...

I don't see any difference between an internal DAC with a 3.5mm jack vs an external DAC with with 3.5mm jack.

Honestly this article is pretty weak and relies entirely on speculation of what Apple might do in the future.

The dongle is completely unacceptable to me. First of all, there is a 100% chance that I will at some point forget it at home or lose it altogether, and then be unable to use my headphones altogether. That's a dealbreaker.

Then there's the sheer inconvenience of carrying it around. I only have three things in my pockets: wallet, phone, keys. It takes less than a second to ensure that I have all three of those things on me. If I now have to dig past my wallet to the bottom of my pocket to make sure a little dongle is in there, that is dramatically worse.

How many headphones do you have? I’d be surprised if it was more than 2. Just keep the single permanently on the end of the headphone’s aux cord and that solves all your issues in this comment.

Until a phone has 2 USB-C ports it's absolutely a dealbreaker.

Why? iPhone 11 has wireless charging, and Lightning connector, doesn't that answer the biggest complaint "can't charge and listen at the same time"?

I grok the antipathy towards a dongle or ideals of a headphone jack. I mean, the latest MBP they sell doesn't have lightning for headphones, so even across Apple's highest end products, you need different connectors.

However, I gave up on that fight years ago - I use AirPods (and BT in general) for my audio. Other than CarPlay (which is also lightning connector).

For me, it's not really a "fight". It's more about preferring to buy things that meet my needs, which I'll continue to do.

I've played the no-headphone-socket 'game' with my G1. The g1 was a great phone, but not having a standard headphone socket sucked. The adapter was aweful UX. It was fiddly to use, uncomfortable in the pocket, fragile, and risked damaging the phone's USB port.

I don't want to repeat that experience

Because every single phone has all the other features I want. It's the one feature that is missing for them.

At the end of the day phones pretty much all do the exact same thing. There are little differences to form factor and different camera quality and all that.

But none of that will make any difference to your life for 90%+ of people. You don't need the best camera ever for your snapshots. And you don't need the fastest mobile processor to check your email.

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