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> Apple invented the modern slab-of-glass smartphone industry, and always shipped a high-quality charger and headphones with the iPhone

Rechargeable portable electronics always came with chargers, long before iPod or iPhone came around

"High-quality" is the focus of that sentence.

Apple didn't invent high quality

Nobody claimed they did.

Yeah yeah, I also wanted to say... So far I repaired 1 charger, bought 3 or 4 new and eventually even found out that an iPhone charger I have is likely to have an electrical problem. That said, with the USB-C craze I think things got a little better

Every single Apple charger/cable I've ever had has frayed or gotten close to it, FWIW.

I'm not mistreating them. My ancient Thinkpad chargers are doing fine and they see lots of use. They're thick and ugly, with the cables themselves almost as big as the old barrel jack connectors, but they still feel safe and reliable.

Heck, my old Nintendo DS chargers are still fine too.

I deliberately didn't mention the cables, and I'm happy to slag on their quality with you.

Glad they finally did the right thing and separate the chargers, which are excellent, from the cables, which are.. white. They're also spec-compliant, which matters more and more with Thunderbolt and the like, but I find that any other reputable cable is also spec-compliant, and is going to last me about three times as long.

I do mistreat them, to be clear, but at that price I should get away with it.

Are the Apple chargers high quality, though? They are compact, true.

Apple’s chargers have long been known as over-engineered in safety and reliability, e.g. not catching fire, dealing with “dirty” power better than most, etc. Look up Big Clive’s videos on them.

> always shipped a high-quality charger and headphones with the iPhone, something which started with its ancestor the iPod.

Phones with proprietary connectors always shipped with chargers. Probably most micro USB phones as well. Apple was not special in this regard.

Likewise with earbuds, many phones, smart and dumb, also shipped with earbuds or a headset. Apple was leveraging the iPod name to sell the iPhone so omitting earbuds would have been conspicuous.

iPhone still ships with the cord, all you need is a brick or other power source with the increasingly-common USB-C connector.

"increasingly-common", my macbook and now my PS5 have USB-C female ports for charging stuff. That's the grand total of places I can use these cords (and I doubt the PS5 will charge my phone). It's a slow rollout best.

At least the PS4 USB ports worked perfectly fine for charging arbitrary devices, though I wouldn't expect fast charge voltages out of them even if USB-C is more standardised on that stuff than older fast charge implementations.

I know that I can't charge the PS5 controller off the switch dock, at least. I never have to charge the Pro Controller while the PS5 controller only lasts a few hours, so that would have been handy.

>iPhone still ships with the cord

Yeah, the cord that's not compatible with their previous gen chargers, which they claimed everyone had enough of at home, and had dropped to "save the environment". Dick move.

Yeah, I remember a Sony Ericsson phone I had in the early 00s that definitely came with headphones and charger (for it's proprietary connector) long before any of the current major players were even in the phone industry.

> As a result, everyone else had to sell... some kind of earbuds and charger. These didn't have to be good, but they did have to be in the box.

Are you implying that before the iPhone nobody sold chargers or earbuds with the phone? If so, you are massively wrong. Source: tech journalist, pre-iPhone, reviewed hundreds of phones.

At that point in time most chargers were proprietary though. These days, you’ll be hard-pressed to find an AC adapter for a phone that doesn’t just have either a USB-A or USB-C port, and the cable you’ll need is almost certainly the same one that you used for your last phone. Neither were typically the case pre-smartphone.

And the reason for that was not Apple's will, it was EU legislation.

I think mini and micro USB were pretty common when the iPhone debuted but maybe I only higher end phones. You probably got a lot of trash chargers though, like an AC wart hardwired to a uUSB plug or some mini USB to DC barrel jack adapter abomination.

On higher-end phones yes; I had a BlackBerry at the time which I believe had mini-USB. Most of my friends had feature phones at that point in time though, and those were notoriously nonstandard.

Many children today do not know what a headphone jack is, and by the time they mature into adults, they may still have never seen one in their lives, much less used one.

My nephews (all under 16) have only experienced "always on" internet. The idea you had to co-ordinate with family on using the phone line via weird screeching noises, only to browse at a slow speed was lost on them.

I like to razz my extended family who are all internet addicts now. They told me shit like, "go outside more" but now they are effectively crippled without their devices. Gotta love boomers.

Not really that unusual - I'm 27 and missed out on dial up

That's nonsense, they all use headphones on their chromebooks at school.

excellent points.

I'm still upset about the 3.5mm headphone jack to be honest.

I'm still upset about the 3.5mm headphone jack to be honest.

I'm still upset† about the 30-pin connector. I can no longer stick my iPhone into the slot on the top of my clock radio just so trillion-dollar Apple can lock me into its 30% walled accessories garden that prevents me from doing what I want with my own hardware that I paid for and have no other options. (Did I miss any HN clichés?)

(I'm actually slightly upset† about the iPhone not coming with a cleaning cloth anymore. I've been using my original one for 15 years, and it's starting to get worn out.)

† For varying definitions of "upset."

This comes across as mocking, did you mean it that way? I wasn’t a fan of proprietary connectors either.

3.5mm jack is as standard as it gets. Plug your phone into any audio equipment, like a guitar amp with a 3.5mm -> 1/4” adapter.

Bluetooth = tons of exotic e-waste, thank you very much.

For years, I rolled with a BT adapter that produced the signal on a standard 3.5mm audio jack, and a typical "aux" cable. Never failed -- if I ended up at an unplanned gathering, it took 3 of us to make music happen, and it wouldn't have been possible without my adapter.

I like to have the 3.5mm jack too, but the reality is that the vast majority of users don't miss it. That's because they either don't use headphones at all, or because they prefer wireless ones anyway. So as much as I personally don't like it, it makes sense from Apple's POV.

The arguably bigger annoyance and source of e-waste is that iPhones still use a proprietary charging port instead of USB-C.

The amazing thing to me is: They removed the headphone jack 6 years ago and people are still complaining about it. I have a feeling, 20 years from now, some of these people will be sitting in their old-folks homes, not remembering who their kids are, but will still be complaining about Apple getting rid of their headphone jacks. I've never seen such attachment to a feature.

Detachment from the replacement. I only upgraded in the last few months. Not one of the people that budgets $1G/year to own a phone.

Am I complaining loudly? No. Do I want to ditch my wired things and get deeper into bluetooth insecurity, battery life issues and e-waste of bluetooth devices? Definitely no.

Since I drive a stick better than my CVT shifts, and I can get much better gas mileage, I also prefer that older technology.

Not going to look for ways to mock on people here, seems to be a thing today!

the look on my wife's face when I told her she couldn't listen to music and charge her phone at the same time...

I've bought a lot of Android devices and all which were of a well known brands like Samsung, Lenovo, HTC, Motorola had good chargers as well as good headphones in the box. Only cheap non-brand devices did not include headphones but the chargers were average amazon-type cheap but ok chargers.

Also there's often the case where you buy stuff like led flashlights which don't come with a charger they do have an USB charging cable in the box.

>Apple had the margin to make these quality: you can get better earphones but not better chargers.

Are Apple chargers really better than those shipped with Android devices?

Apple chargers, as well as the earphones were notoriously low quality, especially the cables. They would almost always break or degrade around the connections.

The cables often have lacked strain relief, so I agree with you there. But I've had great experiences with Apple chargers. I've definitely not had great experiences with various 3rd party chargers.

Bring back the headphone jack!

The worst part is I've only been able to get Apple's 3.5mm to lightning cable to let you listen to a phone call. It's never worked when I bought a 3rd party cable.

The Apple adapter is thin trash that wears out after a few weeks.

Get the UGREEN Lightning to 3.5mm cable. I've been using them daily for years now with my Sennheiser Game One headset and the only problem I have encountered is a bit of curling from the braiding.

Good news, there's a fix for this! The Samsung phone I purchased this week has a lovely headphone jack which works perfectly, as well as several other advantages which I won't go into.

See, I thought that til I resurrected my ipod. That cable snags on EVERYTHING. Apparently I had a bunch of muscle memory things to keep that from happening. (I remember feeding it down my shirt and into the ipod in my pocket.

I do NOT miss headphone cables.

Sennheiser CX300-II worked fine for me and I had somewhere around 5 pairs of them. CX3.00 with soft-touch coating on the wires snagged on my own clothing. Latest CX300S (with soft-touch wires too, but different from CX3.00) are fine again. And I greatly appreciate what I don't need to care to charge another device and can just leave them in the pocket for next time I need them, be it tommorow or in two weeks.

yeah but what if you don't have a charger or headphones. why should you pay the same or (more!) for less. at least take it out of the cost to retail.

> Apple invented the modern slab-of-glass smartphone industry

They did, huh? All by themselves?

Yes. They did. All by themselves.

Yes. Before the iPhone, the only smartphones anyone really had were Blackberrys. And those weren't "slabs of glass".

Really? How about palm or pocketpc? There were mobile phone versions before iPhone iirc

Which ones were slabs of glass?

Most of them? The face buttons were usually minimal, with 2-4 buttons plus maybe a d-pad

>"The name was introduced by Microsoft in 2000 as a rebranding of the Palm-size PC category. Some of these devices also had integrated phone and data capabilities, which were called Pocket PC Phone Edition or simply "Smartphone"." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_PC

>"The first-generation iPhone was announced by then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007. " https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone

but... that's not true. The HTC HD2, arguably the best Windows Mobile phone, wasn't a slab of glass - it was plastic, just like most (if not all) of the flagships.

Are you seriously making the distinction based on a plastic body vs glass body

That's just drawing an arbitrary line in the sand not based on technological innovation so you can day "apple wuz first"

These devices are defined by the amount of screen and the touch interaction combined with mobile connectivity, not by plastic vs glass body

Also, the iPhone 1 had an aluminum back, not glass so your point doesn't even make sense:

>"The iPhone's back cover is made out of brushed aluminum, a soft metal"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_(1st_generation)

The original comment was:

> Apple invented the modern slab-of-glass smartphone industry

Not sure what you're going on about.

From my understanding "slab of glass" refers to the all-screen design. Not the material of the back cover

The original iPhone still had a front-surface, physical button

Didn't numerous iPhones have front home buttons until recently?

But I think this helps my point, in that the iPhone was only a marginal improvement on already existing tech instead of the "first" to do whatever

Meanwhile, outside of the US...

> Before the iPhone, the only smartphones anyone really had were Blackberrys

Because the US sucked for mobile phones until Apple beat the providers into submission. The rest of the world used Nokia or Sony Ericsson smartphones that had multitasking, apps, web browsers and any other definition of a smartphone.

That's not counting Palm, Windows Mobile and others.

Moving to an on screen keyboard in exchange for more screen real estate when not typing was a big market risk. Not everyone was convinced that consumers would prefer that to a physical keyboard.

Palm had it's stylus and simplified hand writing recognition, which was also a very different approach.

How many of them had a keyless multitouch interface before 2007?

Quite a few, LG even won design awards for their multitouch keyless phones with app store before the iPhone was released.

If there were "quite a few", could you name one?

If you're alluding to the LG Prada, it didn't have multitouch — no pinch zooming, no flick scrolling, etc.

The LG Prada and the other phones which later led to the KP500/501 and similar phones (I had them as teen) had semi-multitouch.

It could handle two fingers, as long as one of them stayed in place and only the other one moved. That’s how it implemented something kinda like pinch zooming and scrolling. Android in fact copied the same method for its early touchscreen devices and supported it until relatively recently.

I love how conversations conveniently slide off just to argue about stuff.

The comment said "invented the modern slab-of-glass smartphone industry".

That's it, that's true, there was no "slab-of-glass" smartphone industry. The comment did not say "invented the smartphone industry" — all comments after it are just unrelated.

Yes there was there were smartphones 10 years prior. No they were not slabs of glass.

Indeed. Particularly the bit about how pre-iPhone products met "any other definition of a smartphone". To me, multitouch is the sine qua non of a smartphone.

Hey, thanks for parsing my sentence correctly. That's been an issue in some of the replies.

people have amazingly poor reading comprehension lol

You are still missing a huge point with Blackberry, which was the part I responded to.

Not related at all to what I quoted and responded to. Also not a prerequisite for being a smartphone. It's what's inside, not outside.

I think if you grabbed someone off the street and handed them a phone that didn't scroll when they dragged their finger across the screen, and then asked if they considered it a smartphone, the overwhelming majority of such people would say no. But you and I can disagree on that prediction.

You may be right about that, but a smartphone had a definition back in the day. There were touchscreens on non-smartphones and there were smartphones without a touchscreen, it's the software that makes it smart, not the hardware, whatever the man on the street says.

The US didn't get the penetration the rest of the world had by Nokia and others so you folks had a raw deal and shitty carrier-neutered phones until Apple came along.

(also I think you once helped me recover my reddit account over IRC like 10 years ago so thanks if that was you)

It was both gradual and quick.

Gradual because we had the Palm Pilot 10 years before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PalmPilot

Quick because I think the iPhone had the first capacitive touchscreen in that class of devices. Being able to touch with a finger tip instead of with a stylus or a finger nail is a big improvement for the UX. BTW it made it to the iPod only in 2010.

The phone was subpar in Europe (2G and we have had 3G since 2003) but it sold really well because of the innovative interface and the look of it.