I feel like I'll be stuck never being able to buy a new phone. Everyone is removing basic features like headphone jacks and sd card slots.
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.
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
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