After roasting Apple about headphone jacks, Google dumps it from Pixel 6A
theverge.com
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And let me be clear - the 3.5mm jack is far from being the perfect way of transmitting and sending audio. It's a vestige from an analog world where you have to take impedence and resistance of the load into account, and I don't use it much myself.
But the use-case where you have to stream music from your phone and you have just a humble set of speakers, an amplifier or some old headphones isn't that uncommon - especially for musicians like me: what happens when you're in a studio with your band, you want to play an mp3 on your phone, but you have no way of plugging your phone to the mixer or the amp?
Pretending that such use-cases don't exist, and force all the users to figure out an alternative, is an act of sheer arrogance on the producers' side. And such arrogance isn't even justified by the claim of water resistance: it's technically possible today to have an audio jack port AND be waterproof.
That's a small inconvenience, of course, but we're talking about a device that's with me all the time, and small annoyances add up.
Is this common? what percent of the population would you estimate has this issue?
You build devices for the masses, not the very rare "use cases".
Pixel 3A: widely praised for having a headphone jack
Pixel 4A: widely praised for still having a headphone jack
Pixel 5A: widely praised for still having a headphone jack
Pixel 6A: no headphone jack
Personally, I am not ready to give up the headphone jack. I wish I could go fully wireless, but bluetooth audio is too frustrating to use in many cases.
For example, my family has a bluetooth speaker. Managing and switching whose phone was paired via bluetooth was so annoying. There was frequently a mismatch between the device we wanted to be connected, and the device that was actually connected. We eventually reverted to just plugging our phones into the audio-in port of the speaker. Unplugging and plugging is quick, simple, and doesn't require fiddling with device menus. Guests don't have to endure the tedious "pairing" ritual. Of course, we have to have dongles anyway...
Another example is in rental cars. For one, pairing and switching devices with car media systems is dreadful. I've also had frequent problems, with multiple different phones and multiple different cars, where audio media and satnav announcements would not switch properly over bluetooth, such that the satnav announcements would get cut off. On the other hand, the "aux" port works flawlessly 100% of the time with no fiddling. Never travel without at 3.5mm audio cable.
If the wireless audio implementations were more user friendly, I think many current headphone jack holdouts would happily cut the cord.
Whereas users, and Google absolutely has the data for this, are probably mostly using bluetooh ear pods or headphones and so Google knows real users don't care.
However if I didn't have that option at those times I wouldn't have had anything else to hand (eg no Bluetooth headset nearby or battery dead) so those few times are really important to me.
This is something you don't really get from just looking at data.
Well... what it really means is most users don't care but that also means they probably don't care (at least not directly) if there is a headphone jack. Those who are using headphone jacks regularly absolutely do care though.
I'm not suggesting they haven't done a lot of market research here, I am sure they have. What I will say is that they should be careful of frog boiling themselves out of a market. Having a headphone jack is one of those things that differentiated the Pixel from an iPhone. Sure most users who prefer a Pixel to an iPhone probably won't jump over this one specific thing.... but the less differentiated they become over time the less sticky customers looking for something different to iPhones will be for them, and this won't easily show up in market research because they are asking things like "If we remove feature X would you buy a different phone? What if we remove Y?" but may not be asking "What if we remove X and we remove Y?"
Why do the dominant manufacturers (Apple, Samsung) insist we not have a headphone jack and expandable storage? It's starting to feel rather stupid and like a huge ripoff.
Wireless headsets are expensive, and after a year or two the batteries wear out and the entire thing is junk. What a ridiculously high tax on customer wallets over time, not to mention the e-waste.
USB-C buds have been 100% crap on my experience. If you have recommendations in this department, please do share.
They also finally realized that you can buy a 512GB sd card for like $100 bucks so no one was paying an extra $350 to get 128gb more space, so again, just eliminate the option because they literally can and no one can stop them.
It's fucking bullshit.
Not to mention that the 9 dollar lightning or usb c adapters that Apple and google sell sound as good or better than the DACs they were including in their phones.
I don't think they "finally realised" Apple has always had internal storage. Samsung Android devices have been on both sides of the coin and have backflipped before.
The problem with SD cards, IMO from having worked at a Telco, is that the OS and SD card for the devices doesn't integrate seamlessly for the average end user. What people want is to be able to add an SD card to their device and have a uplift in storage across the entire device. I can't count the amount of times a customer would come in asking why their devices storage didn't increase when they added an SD card, not knowing that they needed to configure the device to take advantage of it or copy their photos across too it. I'm sure times might have changed but that's how it was 5 years ago.
The average and I would say the majority, don't want to deal with buying more storage, they just want the right amount of storage from the get go and smartphone companies know this. I would prefer to buy a 128GB phone than a 32GB phone and have to add an additional 128GB SD card anyway. Also, if you have 512GB of storage filled on a mobile device, surely you have that backed up no? So why not just stream it from the cloud.
Because I don't always have a signal and it consumes more battery.
I can understand a Telco pressuring phone makers to do things to reduce their support burden (which is probably also reducing their own support burdens) because of the dumb way SD cards interact with the phone OS, but it's an annoying situation where the people who know what they are doing and have valid use cases are held hostage at the mercy of those who do not. All I hear from people is that they run out of space on their phone, especially on Android which creeps worse than windows did for sucking up space.
If you know how much SD cards cost, then it's very hard to think, hmm yeah, I'd rather spend $300 for an extra 128gb then get 500gb or 1tb for like $100 and I can remove it and add files to it 1000x faster on my computer.
If a feature has always been there and provided value, then removing it to save $0.05 in design costs seems ridiculous unless there are ulterior motives like, we need to sell more expensive phones and/or get these nubs off of our call lines (if you can even get phone support with phone manufacturers).
I know that obviously they don't give a shit about people who know what they are doing, because it's a minuscule part of their market share. It's all about the bundling and upsells. Fuck the entire headphone market if we can get another $100 by selling our buds. Fuck the entire storage market if we can get another $250 with our internal only upgrades. Fuck the consumer, they'll just buy a new phone in 2 years and lose our buds and buy new ones, we can only win here because no one can stop our oligopoly where everyone just copies each other to have "modern", "best-in-class" design choices and features. Teens don't know what good features or quality are, they'll just get their parents to buy them new stuff over and over forever and the parents don't fall for the constant upgrade trap as hard and stick with their S9's with headphone jacks that you just plug in and they work.
And regardless of the numbers, I also wonder at what rate people are actively switching to Bluetooth because they want to vs. because that's what their preferred phone line is forcing them into.
The average user does not care at all. HN has a tendency to attribute everything to some global conspiracy from the elite’s to make you use technology their way. It’s inconceivable that most people just don’t care about flac quality audio or having to charge their AirPods once a week.
3.5mm has one purpose, but you have no control over what is using that audio device. Less control = Less $$$ to be made. NOBODY bought Apple earphones after-market before AirPods were a thing, and even though the iPad has a USB C, most people are buying apple peripherals due to locks.
No difference between having an internal 3.5mm jack and one connected via USB.
Makes the argument that the headphone jack was removed for lock-in reasons pretty weak when the replacement will probably start coming with your produce in a couple of years. There is certainly no lack of Bluetooth headphones you can buy, even if they have all of the flaws above. The lock-in is not the problem.
One of the biggest usecases for the 2.5mm jack was the square cc readers. Guess what has to be MFi certified now?
And then Apple removed Bluetooth Explorer from Xcode 12, meaning I have no real way to even diagnose that on the newest macOS releases.
The only thing you can do is use apps like IINA which have delay features to allow you to account for the latency (I needed to use sound delay recently when watching a movie that fell off the back of a truck, even with Airpods).
The future might be brighter, with Apple seemingly designing its own bespoke wireless sound standard to support uncompressed and latency-free headphones.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/what-is-apple-w1-bluetooth-...
Lossless 96khz/24bit one? It can't do that without microphone either.
It came with a USB-C->headphone dongle and then I discovered that USB->headphone dongles were cheap, so I bought one for each of the headphones I used regularly, and it was really not a big deal.
But now I've switched almost fully to bluetooth headphones, except for my old expensive Etymotics that I use on airplanes since they are small and easy to pack, and the in-ear style is great at blocking noise.
I'll never get another phone without a headphone jack after that
I have noticed that the main reason my phone screen breaks is due to headphone wires though. It'd be great to have a magnetic equivalent to the wired headphone
Considering you can use a lightning or usb c to 3.5mm with a built in DAC that sounds as good or better than the ones they were putting in the phones, the 3.5mm jack was pretty redundant.
Strip the phone down to the bare minimum. Obviously they just want me to buy a separate pocket PC instead, and only use the phone for emergency calls and businesses that don't have websites.
Back to the dumb-phone days.
They're both next level when compared the the capabilities of a smartphone. The camera has Zeiss lenses, has amazing optical zoom, all kinds of manual and automatic modes, and takes far better night shots than any phone. The media player's battery lasts weeks, plays every file type, and has actual hardware playback buttons and a volume knob. Oh, and it drives all kinds of nice headphones perfectly well.
And neither of these devices interrupts me with notifications or demands any amount of my attention.
I don't think I'll get another smartphone until I absolutely have no choice. It's better for my mental health anyway to not have some magic device that I rely on for everything and I can't stop pulling out of my pocket whenever my brain needs stimulation.
Not to take away from your valid experience but my phone doesn't interrupt me with notifications because I turned off everything I am not 100% bothered about (which leaves just a couple of messengers, phone calls, and bank transaction notifications) and all those are silenced 2000-0800 (or during workouts.)
Dumb phones had headphone jacks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utfbE3_uAMA
So I call BS on space constrains, I call BS on waterproofing (waterproofed phones with 3.5mm jack exist). Conveniently, when Apple released iPhone 7, they also released 1st gen AirPods :-)
Then stop trying to make paper thin personal devices.
I think the industry is hostage of some "visionaries" thinking hey will eventually make movie-like holo devices with no need for electronics, while the reality of engineering is much more complex and laden with trade-offs.
The vast majority of wired earbuds are so awful they are almost a crime. Passive ones have no cancellation and very few have passive isolation. Even moderate background noise makes them unusable without dangerous sound levels.
Phone earbuds are mostly used on the go. Having a cable is way too much of an inconvenience in the age where Bluetooth exists.
Especially if it reduces the waterproofing or increases cost to add the jack.
Xiaomi phones have had good water resistance for ages. Hell I don't even turn it off. But then again I wash lots of electronics. It's generally fine as long as stuffs not got any active or residual power.
If in 5/10/50/∞ years, phones never get smaller than 3.5mm thick, how does this community respond? It's classic 'where's my jetpack?', right? I'd like to think that we all want phones that don't exist other than as a chip in our arm, or as a component of a ring, or as a wafer on our sleeve, or as our glasses, or [whatever other techno nonsense you fancy].
Those of you who want the jack are saying that this is it. For all of time. Three-point-five-mils is as thin as any of our devices can be. It's weird! :-)
And obviously, I wouldn't be advocating for a 3.5 mm jack in an implantable device. That would be silly. There can be multiple classes of devices, each with different features. For the class of phones that are rectangular objects that live in my pocket, I want a 3.5 mm jack.
That companies have responded to increasing narrowness by making foldable phones suggests there really isn’t much demand or even usefulness in a razor thin phone.
Definitely, I begrudge every single moment I am forced to use my phone and intentionally don't bring it with me as often as possible.
> ... other than as a chip in our arm ...
Oh. Count me out.
First of all, Apple's own adapter is a brilliant DAC. It's output is really nice, and when I need wired audio, I can get very good sound with it and a couple of nice monitors (RHA MA750i) or high-ish end buds (Sennheiser MM70i).
However, wired headphones are not limitless in life either. My MM70i set is almost unusable because the jack has worn down from so much use, and one channel is not making contact on 8/10 systems I plug it in.
Secondarily, entry level wireless headphones came a very very long way in terms of sound quality and battery life (both per charge and total lifetime terms).
I have two wireless headsets. A Philips SHB 3075 (Made by Gibson Electronics IIRC) and a Sony WH-CH510. Both are entry level systems. Philips should be lasting 8 hours or so per charge, but it lasts at least twice long. I use it every day at office and plug while leaving, and it never told me I need to charge it.
Sony is a completely different beast. I could only use half of its charge if I really try to. They forgot to tell that it needs to use the charge in the battery.
In terms of sound quality, both are excellent for their price points. Philips is not the most detailed, but it's very nicely balanced and non fatiguing. Sony really hits above its price point. It's enjoyable even in focused listening if the source material is mastered with some minimal effort.
I say time to time, but as a person who played in orchestras and an owner of an old school component Hi-Fi system, modern wireless headsets are miracles in sound quality terms.
Apparently matching the amplifier and the driver at the design time has a really big effect than we have thought. Bang Olufsen was right to add ICEPower amplifiers to their speakers and sell them as tuned units. It changes a lot.
I also want to add that Apple's sound dosimeter is a very nice technology which presumably works by getting some metadata from the headphone to calculate noise levels for protecting the hearing, which is extremely underrated.
That's why you buy wired headphones with replaceable cables.
Headphones with replaceable cables don't make sense from a price or size point of view for the most people on the move, incl me.
Getting 10+ years of life from any equipment is generally acceptable esp. when both RHA and Sennheiser systems' size and the abuse they go through is considered.
Using such sets for desktop and studio settings changes the requirements drastically, and both price and size are justifiable in that case.
I'm handy with soldering otherwise.
It is usable but not a very pleasant experience compared to even the cheapest android devices.
There's all kinds of things they could add to phones - bigger battery, headphone jack, sd card slot, heart rate sensor, infrared remote, and loads more, and then all the hundreds of components they do include.
They have to pack it all into this tiny tiny amount of space and they have to make decisions about what to include. That used to include headphone jack, now it doesn't. You're upset about that, while I'd really love if phones included heart rate sensors. But we're both in a minority it seems.
It's important to remember that when you see lots of people on the internet complain about something, that doesn't mean that the majority care.
The majority don't care even a tiny bit so they don't speak about it at all. Only the minority who do care speak up. And if the majority of headphone jacks go unused maybe it's not reasonable for the remaining few who care to demand they stay - they are another potential point of failure and ingress in a phone, after all.
The rest of your argument seems sound enough.
I assume this is a reference to being able to use a usbc-to-aux dongle? The aux port is literally removed from the 6a...
> You can appreciate why, right? The engineering problem for building a phone is literally physically packing technology into the form factor. A headphone jack does not pass this test.
Aux ports have fit in phones for years. Still do in lots of other phones. Volumetrically, it takes up maybe 6mm diameter by 16mm long - 450mm3, out of the pixel 6a's total dimension of 97,258mm3
I had actually been hoping to pick up the 6a, as I need a new phone soon, but I'll be getting something from a different brand (one that has an aux port and a microSD slot). edit: moto g52 is looking pretty tempting for what's available now.
No, other way around. 3.5mm female to USB-C male, not 3.5mm male to USB-C female.
It's not like phones can't fit it in, it's just not as profitable as selling separate dongles or Bluetooth headphones. It's a loss to consumer friendliness and competitiveness, in favour of vendor lock in profits
Now I'm the sucker they'd always envisioned, owning a Airpod Pros and a Bluetooth Bose headset. At this point though, whether it's Stockholm Syndrome or not, I still do generally prefer the wireless life.
I never carry a dongle or a wired headset. I use an aux wire in my car, and a pair of over-ear wired headphones at my desk. When I travel to visit family, I can plug my phone into their old stereo receiver (which works as great now as it did 30 years ago). When a friend wants to play music in my car, they can plug into the aux wire I have. A usb-c dongle is one more thing I won't have with me and I'll be stuck using the speaker in the phone, and it will be garbage. So I will once again hunt for a phone that has an aux port.
People always seem willing to die on the hill of this incredibly minor inconvenience. Literally solvable with like 10 dollars.
I do this by using a phone that has the port built in.
> They sell things to attach it to your keys. You can buy a few adapters to leave at your desk in your car, they are cheap.
My "keys" are a single key with nothing attached.
> People always seem willing to die on the hill of this incredibly minor inconvenience. Literally solvable with like 10 dollars.
Yes, I am willing to buy a different brand of phone over a port that I use daily. The aux port is worth more to me than getting a slightly-more-stock android, or a probably-better camera. Is that hard to understand?
But you could attach something to it. My point was mostly that you (presumably) already carry something around with you all or most of the time, something that a dongle can be attached to for basically no cost.
> Is that hard to understand?
It really is hard for me to understand. It's not like they took away to play music over a wire, that I would understand being a problem.
Cables and dongles and adapters are just part of life.
No, they added an additional inconvenience to something I use every day. So I'll get a phone from someone who hasn't. Easy peasy, no workaround or buying and carrying dongle to worry about.
> Cables and dongles and adapters are just part of life.
Not for me so far, and I'll continue to make consumer choices to keep it that way.
Many people stand up for their principles by putting their money where their mouth is.
I'm not as extremely opinionated, but I also continue to buy phones with aux ports to support the headphones I already have, and mostly to not worry about misplacing those dongles.
I can live with a phone that doesn't play music, but I can't with one that doesn't charge
Dude. You posting that message to FB took more power than your idling bluetooth will spend all week :D
Also USB can do analog audio supposedly...
That's how the USB-C to 3.5mm adapters work for if you need to use headpones which don't have a USB-C cable.
A lot of USB-C cables have little ICs built into them. It's required as part of the PD spec. A port isn't supposed to provide a laptop with 60W or whatever unless the cable itself communicates that it's rated for it.
My current phone is a pixel 6. I got a USB-C adapter with a DAC built into it, and it actually sounds pretty good. The volume levels are reasonable, and there's no noticable noise other than perhaps an unnoticeable hiss.
Years ago, I had a desktop case front IO panel with a really bad ground loop. I ended up cutting the molded over plastic open and cutting the PCB traces between the audio ports and the USB ports, and the problem went away.
The AirPods are the only product in the same class that can sort of link to more than 2 devices... but all of them need to be apple.
Now I use it exclusively on my phone for music and I have another headset for voice calls on my computer. Which is a shame given how much money I had to throw to buy this thing.
Still, I have to acknowledge, sound is awesome, so that’s why I keep it anyway.
Also does dual connectivity even work with LDAC? I feel like the best way is to use software to connect manually. You do have to specify the address and such, and execute the action, and you have to disable Bluetooth when you don't use it. Advantages are less tracking and interference.
As for XM5 it is expensive compared to XM3 and XM4. If you want to spend that extra money there are better targets (victims of current war for example).
I take my Soundcore buds out of the case. They connect in seconds. I put them back, and put the case on a wireless charging pad. There is no interruption to any of my other Bluetooth items.
I wouldn't even look at anything non-wireless. It would have been nice to have pro audio grade latency, but it's fine for music and not particularly noticable in calls.
Let me respectfully disagree. Most of the times it's a pain, from my personal experience.
As soon as you enable the microphone on a headset, the codec switches to "American cell phone circa 1990" -mode and everything sounds like shit.
Airpods Max seem to circumvent this with the W1 chip though and it's a complete game changer. I can actually use noise cancelling while having the mic enabled.
This is not and has never been a problem for consumer based devices. All headphones are made +/- with the same impedance.
> Need to make sure that the DAC and amplifier don’t consume too much power yet have a good dynamic range for arbitrary cable length
If cable length is an issue for you then you're using a really bad cable. I mean, really bad. Or have a severely underpowered output amplifier.
Analog is simpler than digital. And if you think your cheap headphone will do sound better than the phone manufacturers I have a bridge to sell to you
A quick search for "high-impedance headphones" might be enlightening on this topic.
For example, Beyerdynamic offers 32, 80, and 250 ohm versions of several of their models.
> If cable length is an issue for you then you're using a really bad cable. I mean, really bad. Or have a severely underpowered output amplifier.
A cable has both resistance and capacitance, which means every cable is also a low pass filter.
If you are tuning the DAC/amplifier with power consumption as one of the criteria, then actually, yes, you will want the output power as low as possible -- which means cable length is a factor in the optimization.
Yes and you know what happens when you plug a higher impedance phone in a low impedance output right? (and the point is moot because we're talking about consumer devices)
> Headphones with impedance greater than 100 ohms are typically older or professional studio specific design
(or valve outputs - because of course it's "audiophile stuff") https://www.headphonesty.com/2019/04/headphone-impedance-dem...
> A cable has both resistance and capacitance, which means every cable is also a low pass filter.
A cable is a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_line and while it is technically a low-pass filter you have to show me actual numbers to convince me that it will significantly affect, let's say > 10kHZ at usual headphone cable lengths.
> amplifier might need to adjust compensation
You're pushing audio, not a cable TV signal...
> For resistance you will need to limit the output voltage to ensure you’re not going over the over current limit, or you can get hurt on dynamic range for high resistance loads.
What crappy device are you plugging into a headphone jack that's even an issue? Short protection is common in most ICs.
Or, you know, use a regular headphone with an impedance between 32 an 100 ohms and that should be fine.
> crazy 3.5mm jacks there are it is inefficient to make a product that fits all
What's so crazy about it? Yes, stereo and mic inputs might be unpredictable, but for usual stereo audio it's pretty predictable
People are saying that like if most USB headphone vendor is not going to plug the cheapest DAC they could find and push whatever to the headphone.
Embedding an IC into a cable that talks USB 2.0 doesn't seem like a simplification to me. I'm a staff level embedded engineer, and I wish an 8 year old could explain to me how that all works.
Any DAC still ideally does all the things you listed optimally, so you're just externalizing the same complexity by leveraging the marvels of modern technology. It's a pain to have to carry another dongle. They feel like they're going to damage my USB-C port when plugged in inside my pocket. Do buttons even work at all with those adapters?
I'd rather the smartphone engineers build an awesome DAC and charge me an extra $15 for the phone, rather than have to buy a $15 dongle of questionable quality on Amazon, or a $50 dongle of even worse quality from Best Buy or something.
And fully agreed on USB-C ports being even more fragile in the pocket than 3.5mm.
Why would you? That's part of the headphone's characteristics. People who buy high impedance headphones should know when to use an amplifier. That's not the DAC's job.
There's a middle ground working for everybody without going into audiophile territory.
In conclusion the noise cancelling is awesome, but the wireless for me is at best a very situational improvement and I wouldn't be less happy without it. I certainly will continue to use wired earphones and avoid products without an aux port.
As for other brands the cutting out is inherent to bluetooth and so is the pairing process. Even with longer lasting batteries they'd still run out eventually. It sometimes not connecting automatically is likely related to my phone, so I doubt an alternative would change that. I'm extremely happy with my Sony XM4's, but to me them having bluetooth makes little difference.
It only took 10 years: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/36908622
https://store.google.com/us/magazine/pixel_buds_compare
I’m an iPhone user so I can’t comment on the Android audio stack in day to day use. Apple’s magic Bluetooth chips in the AirPods seem to work really well for me. I imagine the Google equivalent would work well with Google phones
They don't seem worse on the Pixel 4a, but they definitely don't seem better.
https://gizbuyerguide.com/are-the-airpods-pro-good-for-gamin...
“AirPods Pro and Powerbeats Pro that are wirelessly connected to an iOS device, such as an iPhone 11 or iPad Pro, should have very little, if any, latency in audio with respect to the visuals on the screen.”
My wife and I pair both our AirPods pro at the same time to the Apple TV to watch shows (daughter sleeps in the same room) and never have any latency issues.
As a person who just won't get into the walled garden, I have to hold back tears while poking at Android apps that are trying to make decent sounds each on their own. In fact, there's Audioroute for Android, which sounds quite analogous to Audiobus, but supported basically by n-Track and four apps from one other dev: https://audioroute.ntrack.com
They work fine with my iPad, Huawei Android tablet and S22 phone. I'd guess they'll work well with Pixels too? You're not forced to use bluetooth/wireless headphones.
First problem: the USB-C to jack adapter from fairphone is out-of-stock. Okay, I guess I will buy from a third party (22$). It was written for iPad, Samsung, I guessed that it could work for my fairphone. Well, it didn't. I give the cable back, shop for another, doesn't work either.
Second problem: there is no way I will buy for more than >100$ headphones. So I cave in, buy the fairphone wireless headphones (82$). They arrive, and the experience is terrible: sound quality is worse than my 17$ headphones (everything is muffled except bass), the touch interface is terrible, the ANC really bothers me and the latency is horrendous. If I use the piano app on my iPad (for rehearsing vocal music), I feel the latency and it is really unusable. Switching between devices (windows laptop, smartphone and tablet) is terrible.
Yes, I could go out of my way to find a quality USB-C to jack adapter that works, or look at all the reviews of wireless headphones, but the fact is that if you are not an Apple user and use the Airpods (which are quite expensive), the whole experience is just terrible.
- you can’t charge your phone and listen to music at the same time.
- it’s really easy to loose the adapter, especially if you use your headphones on other devices that still have the jack.
Something in this vein: https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/bed1a88d-6cce-4687-acd9-c52...
Though, as others mentioned, putting the analog audio signal next to the power line is questionable, especially in cheap adapters.
Even a $30-50 DAC with good IEM will sound so much better and if you have Bluetooth issues, it’s not a huge replacement cost.
With my Pixel 3, I replaced the fancy headphones several times, at a cost of about $30. I really did like the Google-brand headphones (they stay in very well while running), and I didn't find it inconvenient to be unable to charge while listening.
But I really like being able to use very cheap earbuds. They break or get lost, I buy more. And they're available anywhere, while the USB-C ones are a specialty item.
I also use the USB-C port a lot, when I'm driving, and that works really well. I never did find a set of bluetooth earbuds that worked well enough when I was running.
And I hate the lack of headphone jacks on things.
The discussion on HN when headphone jacks come up is always quite amusing. The market has demonstrated now for years that removing headphone jacks from phones is a perfectly reasonable decision for a manufacturer to make. I wonder how much longer HN commenters will keep insisting that it's a terrible mistake.
No shit most users don't care about this. If they did phones would still have sdcard slots. There is _A_ market for devices with sdcard slots however. It's not the biggest one but it's sizable for sure.
In these respects, to me, it feels similar to PS/2 ports, floppy drives, optical disk drives, USB-A ports, or any other number of previously-useful things that many computers no longer have. A bunch of people get upset when you remove any feature, no matter what, while the majority don't care very much, and after a short while it's completely normal to not have the legacy feature.
I have joined the bluetooth headset world though, shokz openrun finally had a compelling feature set that I couldn't find with wired headphones.
They love to get rid of ports, but years after going all-in on USB C/Thunderbolt for 2016 MacBook Pro models they actually backtracked and added some of the missing ports back (though I wish they'd kept 4 - or more! - USB C/Thunderbolt ports!)
Headphone jack: https://9to5mac.com/2019/08/08/samsung-ads-mocking-iphones/
Charging brick: https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/23/22197394/samsung-deletes...
https://www.tomsguide.com/face-off/google-pixel-6a-vs-pixel-...
First smartphone, produced by IBM. First portable media player, produced by Archos. First tablet computer, produced by Cambridge Media.
Apple are infamous for taking someone else's idea, giving it a bit more polish, than marketing it as though they came up with it in the first place.
VisiCalc wasn't the first spreadsheet program. It was, however, the leading spreadsheet program for a while.
Lotus 1-2-3 wasn't the first spreadsheet program for the PC. It was, however, the leading one for a while.
Me: May I tap to pay?
Cashier: Yes.
Me: Great. :pulls out Pixel:
Cashier: Oh, is that Android? We just take Apple Pay.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Pay
Maybe because it’s the same company that announced three messaging apps the same year and has the attention span of Dory.
They seemed to respond to Apple Pay by changing the name (of course) to Android Pay. And there were also specific payment methods for some manufacturers like Samsung Pay also coming out about a year after Apple.
Google had Google Wallet. Yes, it came out first, but then there was android pay. Then there was google pay send. Then there was Google Pay - which was a mishmash of chrome autofill and an actual app. Internationally its even more confusing, especially in india. Google pay picked up messaging (!!) explore for personalized ads (ugh). There was also peer to peer features.
Then they did a NEW google pay (2020?) that got rid of google accounts (!!!) and uses just your phone number, and you can't import folks you paid from previous app (!!!!). They have a combination of barcodes - 1d and 2d etc etc.
I'm not sure what the latest is. Android Pay taking over? Google Pay taking over? Going back to google wallet?
Keep on going on about the apple "cargo cult". I pay attention to this space a bit, and even I'm confused.
Isnt the NFC payment technology the same? I dont think Ive ever come across a payment terminal that accepted NFC payments that didn't work with my Android phone.
The naming thing, well that's Google for you. As a user it hasnt really been a problem though, I've just set up whatever the default app is on the phone when I buy a new one and never dont think about it again for another few years.
Can't make this shit up.
Europeans and Canadians actually prefer to use bank-issued cards with NFC chips instead of phones, because it arrived first and is far more convenient.
Google Pay came out in 2018. Apple Pay came out in 2014.
Perhaps you meant Android Pay? Or Google Wallet? Probably not Google Pay Send.
The tendency to release products half-heartedly and haphazardly, then replace or rename them periodically, is likely why a company with a quarter trillion in annual revenue can't seem to establish any new brands.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IBM%27s_SweetSpot_sm...
And for the young folks.
https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...
This made me laugh. I bought the first iphone - full cash price - no contract, no crap.
When I read this stuff you just realize how underestimated apple is and was.
Apple makes high quality luxury hardware and that's it.
Google tries to save the world (android, maps, secure by default, 24x7 renewable...). Of course overstating a little bit as google is still just a company who earns money
Apple incentives are somewhat better aligned with consumers, as they make MOST of their money selling consumers actual stuff, including incredibly hardware!
Google gave us Google maps, android and plenty of other things before anyone else.
These days, I buy phones based on whether or not they're suppored by Lineage, and if they have a headphone jack or not. That's it; that's the criteria.
Apple did a tremendous job pushing the industry towards wireless earbuds. I'm sure they did it partly (or if you ask some, wholly) to sell you more expensive stuff, but I'm happy paying more because not only has it eliminated the safety issues with the wired buds, but it's created completely different ways of using ear phones. I have one set of speakers in my ears, which I barely feel they're there, and I listen to content from my watch, my phone, my computer and my TV in what I can only describe as "magically". They take up less space and are much easier to take out and put away compared to their wired counterpart. I can walk around my home while on a phone call, meeting or just doing house chores. Oh and wait for it, I can share playback with my partner in a noisy environment or on a plane.
Most of my use cases mentioned above is either impossible or quite cumbersome with a wired set. I am one of those who's happy as a hippo because of Airpods. And I used to own Senheisser over the ears, Shure in-ear monitors with stacks of DACs and amps, so there. Convenience and freedom for me outweighed the 2% extra detail I could hear with those setups.
I wouldn't say that wired headphones are stuck in the past. VHS to DVD was a huge jump: you didn't need to rewind anymore, quality didn't suck so much, you could have multiple languages. Going from wired to wireless isn't so much an improvement in technology. There are still lots of advantages of wired technology: it is cheaper, you don't need to recharge, latency is better, no findling with Bluetooth problems.
I find it very likely that people who are into audio production want to use their cabled headphones on their phone. I do. And the people who are into hi-fi too. It’s just that it’s too small of a part of the market.
That's a great comparison. Streaming and wireless headphones are both really convenient but initially a step back in quality. Streaming is frustrating on a good quality large tv and Bluetooth audio on good quality headphones.
In a few more years the quality issues will hopefully be solved. In the meanwhile the majority of consumers don't care and will drive adoption.
A rare VHS format from 2002 called D-VHS could do 1080p on VHS tapes.
Whoever thought that was a good idea?
glances at the USB-C port
...
.......
..................
Its just a removable battery,
Its just expandable storage,
Its just removable sim tray,
Its just .....
I remember when the first iMac came out and had the audacity not to have a floppy disk. I was appalled. Everyone was.
Just sayin'.
Expandable storage is definitely a nice longevity / future proofing feature, though.
When you can add 128GB via a card slot for $30 but Apple charge you many multiples of that to get the same as embedded storage it just looks stupid.
It is also to get you to pay for iCloud when you run out of space on the cheaper iPhones.
All my other electronic devices have a audio jack and it works perfectly fine, so why not a phone? Analog headphones are also cheaper and guaranteed to work so avoid the vendor lock-in and licensing scams Apple and others try to set up.
I can also (shock) charge my phone AND have headphones connected without a stupid dongle.
Floppy disks were worse in every way than a USB stick or CD.
The headphone jack and SDcard slot are always a benefit (to the consumer at least, not to Apple/Google trying to sell you Cloud storage and overpriced accessories).
And those cloud data charges, yikes. I mean the lowest priced tier on both google and apple are $0.99/mth which is not gonna break the bank for most people but like, apple for example the free tier is only 5GB, that is absolutely nothing.
SDCards: it's similar here, the first few generations that did this did it too early even in places like UK, Canada and USA while the internet was mostly ubiquitous enough to replace sdcard for quick sharing of files it wasn't until sometime later that we really started getting 64GB and 128GB storage on phones. Nowadays ofc, 128GB and more is super common so there's less need for expandable storage. However, SDCard isn't just about expandable storage, it's also about data transfer. It's ok if you're like me, I live in a city with 5g data and >1Gbps wifi and internet everywhere, jsut upload everything to google drive or whatever. But this is much more of an issue when i was in india for example and needed to switch phones. Transferring all those photos, videos, pdfs etc via a usb cable was really slow and annoying, back in the sdcard days i'd just pop out the card and pop it in into my new phone. This is crucial - in general we need to keep in mind as many use cases as is reasonable (forget india, there are plenty of places in USA that have bad data connections and poor internet what do you do if you live somewhere with poor wifi and data and need to switch phones?). That being said, it wasn't bad, especially these days, fast internet and "everywhere fast data" is becoming more and more common and the sizes of the built in storage is large enough.
(Note: I could go on about Apple/Google etc shift to force people into using cloud services more and how INCREDIBLY US-centric that is).
Headphone jack: As i said, the important thing is to keep in mind different use cases. Yea bluetooth is great and things like square payment has quickly replaced their headphone jack based connection with bluetooth but there are too many uses cases here from people who rent cars to people for whom bluetooth simply isn't reliable enough yet. Bluetooth is not a simple drop in replacement like CD was or even built in storage to a large extent - bluetooth devices need to be able to power themselves for example.
Honestly to me, removing the headphone jack so you can sell more bluetooth headphones (which is usually cited as a possible reason?) seems silly - but that's just me maybe. Bluetooth is ubiquitous and convenient enough that those who are up for it will already be using it, or looking to use it. But you're not going to convert too many people into using bluetooth just by removing the headphone jack - worst case you're gonna get a lot of people buying those little dongles. Do those little dongles really make that much money? Is it just about shaving whatever you can, i can't imagine a headphone jack adds to much to the BOM but maybe every little bit counts?
Ultimately with any of these things it's all about thinking about other people in other situations. Yea for me, i don't really take a lot of photos to begin with and was lucky that for the most part i lived in places with good data and internet so the switch away from sdcard was a no brainer. I've been using standalone music players since before ipods were a thing so, again, no headphone jack doesn't bother me. I didn't really rent cars or use any of the many myriad of devices that used the headphone jack to connect either so again, meh. The problem is, there are entirely too many people for whom these things are crucial. And as much as I hate to say it, this is a bit of a "check your privilege" moment as well (I am about as big a google fanboy as you can get, but YIKES, that company - i'm positive, has NO IDEA that other countries exist).