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Comment by wwweston | Hacker News Reader

This is one reason why I'm still down on Apple's decision to remove 1/8" audio jacks from iPhones: they took away a decades old "just works" standard that wasn't subject to interference or battery or latency issues and replaced it with something that fundamentally is. Their efforts at filing down the sharp edges here with the airpods (and they have done as well as anyone could expect and more) don't change the fundamentals.

"Get a dongle" -- maybe I will when I finally give up my original iPhone SE, but I'm not going to be cheerful about paying an extra $30 for the privilege along with the overhead of keeping track of an additional thing.

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Yeah, for me it's the "additional thing". I have a few different pairs of headphones depending on location and purpose. They're cheap, effective, and easily replaced if they fail. Having another doodad is just not appealing, whether I try to keep one on the phone at all times or buy a bunch that I add and remove from the headphones depending on what I'm using them for.

I've stuck with the Pixel A series precisely because of the headphone jack. I'm sad to see that once again Google is trying to remove it: https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/11/23067702/google-pixel-6a-...

My solution was to just leave the lighting-to-3.5mm adapter attached to my headphones, rather than my phone. But I was lucky enough that I had two dongles spare and only two sets of wired headphones I cared about. Works well though.

If they at least had USB-C, then you could use it on your laptop (or at least try, never sure if any USB-C adaptors ever work)

They do. At least mine on a MacBook Pro as well as a Lenovo Yoga and a Dell XPS 13.

I bought a totally cheap no name one when I got a company phone without audio jack. Since then I have used it on many different machines as well as (Android) phones. The adapter stays with the headphones as I just would loose it otherwise.

Edit: Typo

The "dongle" is apparently a pretty good for the price audio DAC. I'm generalising with my lack of knowledge, but a semi-decent DAC can improve audio quality and boost volume.

I usually just go wireless, although it has its problems especially with Spotify.

But if I decided to go wired, I would have no qualms about going wired with the Apple USB-C audio jack dongle.

Yes and it’s under $10, much less than $30. (I think Apple subsidizes it)

Honestly if you're paying $600 for a phone, they ought to just throw that into the package when you get it.

How would you connect a usb-c dongle to an iPhone?

The equivalent Ligtning model.

Do you have a reference? I've always assumed the Apple 1/8" USB-C dongle was passive.

It's active. I use them for my android devices. They'll also work as a soundcard on any laptop/desktop with usb-c ports. Durability sucks but if it lasts 6 months I'm ok with picking up a new one from Walmart for $7. Both my phones and my IEM's cost around 100x more. When measured against that, it's a good value.

There's a quirk that requires a script to uncap the volume on Android but it's the best IEM DAC I've heard under $200. I don't think they subsidize it. It's just economies of scale at work. Here's a Head-Fi review and analysis of it: https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/apple-usb-c-to-3-5-mm-headp...

Edit: More context on 'fixing' the Android volume capping issue for it (quirks are common for devs to add at usb-audio driver level in kernel, but this is something different with Android's defaults): https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/guide-magisk-apple-usb-c-...

I have an anecdotal possible reason they were motivated: I broke four screens due to my wired headphones pulling the phone out of my hand/off a surface.

I now use AirPods, and it's, mentally, very different, since my head is no longer part of my phone.

I've had wired headphones save my phone from a drop

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I also use air pods now and am fairly certain this water fountain i walk past daily has a short causing some sort of arc that interferes with bluetooth as they always cut out walking past it.

> I've had wired headphones save my phone from a drop

Same, an embarrassingly large number of times actually.

It is so annoying.

I got the dang dongle. Now, I want to listen to a podcast while doing to bed. Of course, because cellphone batteries only last like 24 hours, I have to charge overnight.

So now I've got some big fancy inductive charger, so I can leave my charging port open, to attach a dongle. But hey at least Apple saved $1 and got to remove the only non-proprietary port on the thing.

For me I think it has just reduced my podcast consumption. Too much hassle now.

No no, friend, you just need to buy this additional $35 accessory. Problem solved!

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HLJV2ZM/B/belkin-35-mm-au...

That might have been an option.

I had some adapters with the plug built in like that, they were notably lower quality than the one without the plug, but it could be that the ones I got were just some no-name junk brand.

Based off my experiences with my iPad, I'd really like an iPhone, but whether its for reasons of practicality or just principle at this point I refuse to cave to "just use a dongle" or any of that. The few times I've used wireless audio its presented me with a load of problems (having to charge something Im not used to having to charge, connectivity issues, poor audio quality, you know the drill) with the only upside being I can move further away from the thing that fits in my pocket.

I'm willing to use the equivalent of a dongle with my PC (audio interface), but obviously thats a very different use case. I'm just glad laptops haven't decided to take the "brave" action yet.

The only reason they did that is to sell more AirPods. And it worked. They’re making billions by selling high margin wireless earphones.

there was an obvious trend with other phone manufacturers as well. as soon as they made their own brand of wireless headphones/earbuds, the headphone jack was removed from their phone.

If you need to move around, wired headphones suck. IME, interference and latency are non issues with BT. Otherwise, the lighting to 3.5mm dongle works perfectly.

At my desk, i do have wired headphones, but they are plugged into my TB dock.

> IME, interference and latency are non issues with BT.

Depends on your usecase. Music and Zoom is fine, but for competitive gaming I'd always go wired.

Music might be fine for listening, but it is emphatically not fine for playing. It's completely unusable. It's like trying to talk while listening yourself 100ms delayed. Probably fine for competitive gaming if you're just spectating too.

While off-topic, somehow Apple has screwed this up in the M1 MacBook Air built-in audio hardware too. I wanted some monitoring while playing acoustic the other day so I opened logic and rather than connect my expensive audio interface, I just wanted to use the built-in mic and headphone output to monitor myself playing and singing in real time. For some reason there was still an audible delay even though I wasn’t using plugins and had the buffer set very low. I’m pretty sure it was in low latency mode… you shouldn’t have to use an external audio interface just to do real time monitoring like that such a simple use case.

I've been under the impression this whole time that you need a specialty audio interface if you ever want to do near-real-time (<10ms) monitoring or recording. I'd been lead to believe years ago that default consumer audio hardware just cannot do it.

So did that work prior to M1?

AptX low latency apparently makes it better (35ms is the "guarantee"), but I've honestly not tried it. I'm not going to make my 400FPS on a 240hz monitor low latency gaming in Valorant worse by going wireless for audio.

Though I do use a wireless mouse (G Pro X Superlight) and it's brilliant, though it's wireless adapter is attached to a cord that lets me plug it in to keep going if I forgot to charge it, so its the best of both worlds.

Really, its only my mouse that I move around enough for wireless to be worth it in competitive gaming.

I played competitive FPS games for years at high ranks with a Bluetooth headset before learning of the delay. I did not notice. However, for a while I switched to a Bluetooth keyboard and until I realized the input delay was severely impacting my performance. Wireless mice (non-Bluetooth) on the other hand have low enough latency that most pros are fine using them.

Some advice for Bluetooth headset gamers - Bluetooth completely breaks the audio for some games like Battlefield 1. The only solution is to go into device manager and disabling Handsfree Telephony on your device.

Yeah, at my desk I use a decent pair of cans (HD6XX or K550 depending on situation) hooked up to a nice DAC/amp since there, cords aren't much of an annoyance. Especially the type on larger headphones which is thicker and far less prone to tangling.

Away from the desk though? Bluetooth all the way. Even if I'm just lounging on my bed bluetooth is better because there's no wires for the cat that will most assuredly be in my lap to chew.

Just out of curiosity, what bluetooth do you use? There is no bluetooth options on the market that don't actively physically hurt my ears in a way that wired headphones never ever have.

Prior to the pandemic it was mostly AirPods Pro, but now that I spend most of my time at home it's a pair of AirPods Max. In the past I've also used a pair of Sony WH-1000MX3 which were pretty comfortable.

Yup. That's why my spare phone is a 6S+ and I am considering fitting its 3rd battery and getting it refurbed.

I have some fancy Sony Bluetooth noise-cancelling phones I bought just before my kid was born. They are _amazing_ but they should be for over £300. The noise cancelling is superb... so I use them when flying. Otherwise, too much faff.

My £20 Sony wired bass-boost earbuds sound nearly as good and live in my pocket and I use them far more, because of the convenience factor. They never need charging, pair 100% instantly the second I plug them in, latency is a couple of nanoseconds (a metrr of copper at the speed of light?) and quality is superb.

They also are excellent for voice calls, while the fancy Bluetooth cans are rubbish at picking up my voice.

I'm not going to be cheerful about paying an extra $30

$9. Not $30. If you're going to grind a three-year-old axe, at least get your figures right.

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMX62AM/A/lightning-to-35...

I wish I had only bought three of those tiny things... finally ended up sugruing one of them to the lav mic.

:-) I don't know what a lav mic is. Upon trying to figure out what lav meant my mind went to "lavatory".

Google clarifies: Lavalier(aka Lapel) Mics. I know my mental model should drop my first jumped to conclusion but I find it childishly amusing.

So now I assume you have a lapel microphone specifically set up in your toilet for zoom calls that happen to catch you out.

It's a mic that clips on to your shirt like the ones news reporters use.

Thank you, I will now discount the economic fraction of my not-cheerfulness about dongles by about 70%.

The axe grinding, however, was brought up by Mr Kuhn. This is simply one instance of it, and the economic fraction isn't even the biggest part.

If I'm not mistaken, removing the 1/8" audio jacks was significant in enabling the IP67+ water resistance ratings iPhones have these days.

That rating comes in handy for those who have butter fingers like me and drop their phones in water once in a while.

Couldn't a rubber gasket on the 1/8" jack help with water resistance?

> Couldn't a rubber gasket on the 1/8" jack help with water resistance?

Couldn't the jack itself be made to be water resistant? Seal it up and use relatively inert metals for the contacts.

Yes, there are plenty of phones that have IP68 & 3.5mm without any rubber flaps etc., not to start a flamewar but it's strange to me that a lot of people seem to think they would be a necessary tradeoff... Apple had other reasons to get rid of it.

https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_1_iii-10712.php https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s10-9536.php

I have a phone from 3 years ago with both an IP68 rating and a headphone jack. There's zero reason that Apple couldn't do the same, they just wanted to convince a lot of people to buy $150 headphones.

My Galaxy S5 is IP67, has headphone jack and user replaceable battery. 8 years old.

If it was possible then it's possible now.

IP67 is "up to" 1m. IP68, on the iPhone12, is 6m. That's a very significant difference.

S10 had a jack and an IP68 rating.

Sure, but not a battery cover.

So why did you reply to that specific post, and not its parent?

The first comment was comparable in performance (IP68), but the one I replied to, with the battery cover, was not (IP67). The point of my comment was to point out that they are not comparable. The purpose of my comment was to hint that the features from the IP67 may contribute to them being IP67 (battery cover in this case).

Still felt quite a bit like weaseling out from answering the stronger claim.

I think the problem is that you included feelings in something that was clearly technical. The comparison they were making was 1/6th the spec. It was a technically inappropriate comparison. It could only support the claim that these features were removed to increase water resistance.

The comment I made doesn't require that I push, or be for against, some higher narrative that you seem to see me as having in my head. It's perfectly valid to criticize the technical merits of an individual comment. If you see that as weaselly, then tribalism has infected your mind.

I'm still using a number of Motorola Defy phones from 2010-2011 which are IP67+ rated (30 minutes at 1.5m water depth). Needless to say they have 3.5mm headphone as well as micro-USB connectors. The solution to this problem lies in a simple rubber plug which closes the hole when the connector is not in use.

Does it work? Well, one of the phones used to be my daughter's. She forgot to take it out of her pocket when she put her trousers in the washing machine so it ended up going through a full wash and spin cycle. It still worked, there was no water ingress in the phone itself. The earpiece did seem to have gotten damaged so I replaced it (5 new earpieces for $2.50 incl. shipping, I still have 4 left...). This phone is now used as a media player, running mpd which can be remotely controlled from other phones in the network. It connects to my jobsite radio (an oversized and overweight boombox I made around an old car MP3/CD/Radio with 2x40W speakers with bass reflex and a SLA starting helper/power pack) using that 3.5mm jack.

My Sony Z3 Compact back in 2014 had IP68 and a headphone jack.

no sony had waterproof headphone jacks a really long time ago.

a lot of their phones still have headphone jacks as far as i know. seems like they are the only decent company left in that regard

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