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Comment by Multicomp | Hacker News Reader

Well TFA ignored that few to none of the phones on this list that are better than the Pixel 6a include a 3.5mm headphone jack.

That's what's wrong with the US phone market.

No headphone jack. WHY? Over 100 years and dropped for what? No reason, just handwaves about design and 'waterproofing' that are easily debunked by the Samsung Galaxy S5 Active from 2014.

Pardon me while I go throw away my custom in-ear headphones I've had for over a decade, or my Ear Hero receiver-in-canal headphones that leave my ears open without pinching my glasses against my head like bone conduction headphones do. Where was I? oh yeah, phones getting designed to death.

No removable batteries. So glad Europe did that rule, soon we shall have something again, I am very pleased with that development, I'm happy to say.

I will grant the rant about the carriers - it's true.

What physical keyboard? What pogo pins? What microSD card? What IR blaster? Nonono we don't need all that, we just need a SLIMMER DEVICE (that you can stick in a huge case)....we just need a new instagram tiktok eating device!

Arg.

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About five years ago, I left a job which had been providing me a phone. I was replacing them every two years since that was the regime at the time, usually for an "exotic" flagship-- I had an early LTE Galaxy S2 which had zero long-term support, a Lumia 1020, and a LG V10, for example.

When it stopped being funny money, I ended up buying only low-midrange devices (Motorola E4, Umidigi F1, and most recently, a Nokia G20). Once you get to like $150, you've left the absolute bottom corner-cutting segment of the market and can get a competent device. It seems like at every price increment much above there, they start doing the "hand you something while taking away something else" game. At about $300, you start losing MicroSD and 3.5mm. At about $500, once you get past Pixel territory, you lose the option for vanilla Android and have to deal with big ugly vendor packin BS. At the very top, half the phones are now less usable devices and more science-fair projects to demonstrate how hinge technology is advancing.

I suspect it's really "device as jewelry/status symbol" at this point so you need the gimmicks to close the sale.

Meanwhile, weird bottomfeeder brands like Oukitel can sell a $200-300 phone with a 10000mAh battery, but the combined engineering might of the Samsung organization seems unable to spin that particular magic even on a $1300 device.

Sony Phones are still great BTW (if they sell them in your country that is).

They have microSD but not sure if that alone justifies price tag

I got a new phone recently, a Samsung S22. I wasn't worried about the lack of headphone jack because my previous phone came with a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter.

I plugged in my headphones through the adapter and my new phone told me it wasn't compatible with that adapter.

Smartphones are a mess right now, they're used as platforms to get consumers to buy into other products and services. You don't need a headphone jack because you can buy wireless earbuds, and you don't need an SD card slot because you can back up your photos to the cloud, and you don't need a radio because you can subscribe to a streaming music service, and you don't need a charging brick because you can buy a wireless charging mat. They're very aggressively pushing people towards all this new and expensive tech.

I remember how a set of people back in the day would praise that decision from a certain company and all copycats later as "courageous", "innovative" and so on. "It'll give space for a better battery" may be the most deluded one if you looked at the competition and their offerings at the time, followed by "slimmer phones" (as if a good thing regardless after a certain threshold not limited by the 3.5 jack) and so on. Plenty waterproofed phones before 2015 too. In reality it's more about enforcing a vision and making bucks selling wireless sets, Airpods being annunced back to back with the removal of it. (and a lot of OEMs trying to do the same identical thing, such as Samsung and Google)

Apple's 10 bucks USB-C DAC may be great for the price, but dongleism is one of the worst and most disgusting trends hardware has had in the past decades, "just use and carry around an adapter (two if you want to charge at the same time too) at all times with you lmao". I wouldn't even care, if it wasn't forced for the rest of us. Feels like such a weird thing to have to complain about like this, too, it's very divisive.

Apple's reasoning was more "why give people a 3.5mm jack when we can separate it from the phone and make them pay for it?"

And also make the default, non-dongle, headphones they buy from us over a hundred dollars more expensive now that we don’t provide headphones in the box anymore.

The "no headphone jack" group is like the "smaller phone" group - very loud but evidently small in actual numbers.

I'm typing this on my small phone with a headphone jack and, equally importantly, an SD card slot.

There are dozens of us. Dozens!

Jelly 2 for the win!

You say that as if the power and sway of a trillion dollar company has no effect on that.

The thing is, Apple lied about why they got rid of the headphone jack, and the market lapped it up and subsequently coughed up the dough for their overpriced earbuds.

My LG V35 was thinner, lighter, and faster than the equivalent iPhone, but it still had an IP68 rating while keeping both a headphone jack and an SD card slot.

Give people an iPhone with no headphone jack and another iPhone similar but with a headphone jack and guess which one they’ll pick?

Who knows? Because when have those choices simultaneously existed?

Is that a trick question? The answer is "The newer one", because having the latest iPhone has become a social signifier. I bet you if Apple brings back the 3.5mm jack,airpods will be seen as tacky in record time.

Without, personally, as I think I'd have to be completely detached from reality and good taste to opt into wired earbuds.

...but I /do/ think the rest of y'all maniacs deserve a choice, too, even if it's utterly unhinged, so ceteris paribus I'd rather you be able to have a 3.5 than not :P

The Apple excuse group on the other hand is both large and loud. You don't get to be a 1T$ company by giving your users what they want and especially not what they need. You do that by persuading them that your expensive thing is what they want and then selling them more expensive things they need to actually use the thing they bought.

Nah. You get to be a $1T company by making excellent products that have no competition and adding excellent support on top of that. I recommend you to try it. I also used to hate on Apple, but now I think I used to be silly or even dumb; it was a huge lesson in trying what I hate first for a few weeks before I go on the internet spouting uninformed speculation.

The iPad I gave my grandmother is the best specced, fastest (other tablets with similar specs are not even nearly that smooth) and cheapest thing at the same time I could get her. She can use it perfectly well (but had big problems with inconsistencies on Android). I don't have to worry about her doing something to it (whereas the Android phone, which I locked down, still had to have factory resets every year or so - and support non-existent, updates gone).

The MacBook Air M1 I got for myself is running laps performance-wise around my other computer with i9 - and it doesn't even need a fan, and I can work 2 full days (16 hours) on a single charge - doing Node.js and React Native development so nothing lightweight. The display has no competition, period - and that alone would be a reason to prefer Apple. The keyboard is the best from modern laptops too (yeah they used to have problems there, not anymore), and the sound is godlike. This computer also has much better price-performance ratio than any other option on the market, and there's not a single comparable product for that price ($1200).

The iPhone is the same story, don't want to repeat myself.

They are excellent products, (I’m typing this from my iPhone 12 Pro Max), but Apple does many things which are anti-consumer.

For sure. For example, I am not happy about their push to (i)cloud, fortunately it's entirely possible to avoid all that - unlike Android, where getting Google cloud functionalities disabled is impossible without losing the warranty and flashing the ROM.

Just don't sign up for Google account and you don't get Google apps. Your phone is not as usable as it is with Google but it does work as a phone. Can you use iPhone without App Store and Apple account? I know Google collects data on their users but so does Apple, probably more so now that they are pivoting to services as the main focus. Apple just gets the free pass from their users because they haven't used the collected info so far. But it IS just a matter of time before they start and then all their users will experience the power of that fully operational battle station.

This is pretty much it. I still use an iPhone 7 because the size is perfect. Good luck finding many options in the <6" smart phone market.

That said, Apple sells tens of millions (hundreds of millions) of phones, and the amount of data they get on customer preference must be amazing.

They clearly don't feel like the "mini" market is worth spending that much time on. I'm glad to see they offer it, but it's clearly not their key product.

The iPhone SE is the modern version of your device.

Except afaik the market for phones with headphone jacks is larger than actual small phones.

Got the numbers?

iPhone 13 mini vs every phone on the market with a headphone jack?

Where do you get these actual numbers from ?

Most people I see making this argument assume that people not buying Apple’s mini offering in crazy numbers was a sign that there was no attraction to small phones. But there’s too many other variables to make that kind of assumption.

If we allow this kind of logical shortcut, smaller Google Pixels all vastly out-sold their bigger version, so smaller sizes have more attraction, right ?

The note was for me the pinnacle of phones. Large display, textured back so it wasn't slippery, and no back to get cracked, metal frame around the screen, sd card, exceptionally easily replaced battery (the back popped off easily) , great battery life for the day, headphone jack. The only thing it lacked that is nice is waterproof. Everyphone I've had since has had a subset of what it had. A SW update bricked mine, and if it was not for that I can't see myself replacing it.

> A SW update bricked mine, and if it was not for that I can't see myself replacing it.

And that's why they don't make them like that anymore.

> just handwaves about design and 'waterproofing' that are easily debunked by the Samsung Galaxy S5 Active from 2014.

Not to mention continue to be debunked. I'm typing this comment on a Unihertz Titan. Ostensibly waterproof (and in my testing it seems to care very little about whether or not it‘s wet). Still has a 3.5mm jack.

The lack of headphone jack is explained solely by the fact that the consumer now how to buy a pair of wireless headphones. That is the only reason.

I used the wired default iPhone lighting headphones for years. Worked just fine? And came with the phone and was covered by it’s AppleCare for years. I broke so many I must have gotten dozens of free replacements! I only switched to wireless when I got some AirPod pros for 50$ CAD and actually just liked them a lot more.

Well, that was just a stop-gap to ease the criticism... Also, the included headphones has always been pure garbage. Anything is better, which is of course was the point of the 3.5mm jack - not that it enabled the use of the bundled garbage.

Not sure exactly what your point is. I've used bluetooth for well over a decade and they are awesome. But that doesn't mean they somehow could replace the 3.5mm jack.

Parent comment was basically “removed to force people to wireless” - I disagreed.

That’s all said I do still wish the iPhone had a 3.5mm Jack, or heck even 2.5mm would be fine as the dac on the iPhone is better then most you’ll find in a usb-c dongle.

1. Buy headphone company

2. Remove headphone jack

3. $$$

And that there's one less component to install, less work to do on the chassis, less lines to draw.

It's cheaper. That's what it is.

No, that is completely irrelevant compared to the margins on the Bluetooth headset.

If you want to use continue using old tech with new tech, you'll have to get used to using an adapter.

That's how technology has worked since forever.

When they replace older, functional tech with newer, less functional tech; it's fair to complain about it. I was unable to find a reasonable phone (that had the other features I wanted) with a headphone jack when I bought a new phone recently, and I'm constantly annoyed at the lack of it. Bluetooth is nice to have, but it's not a replacement for a physical jack.

Is there not USB-C headphones and adapters? I can see why it isn't exactly preferable but if they started making phones with 2 USB-C jacks I probably wouldn't mind all that much, but I would prefer a magnetic type of adapter that is low profile so that there is less risk of damaging the port.

USB-C headphones are either free and desperately shit or a very expensive mic+headset arrangement, not simply "headphones".

And adaptors are universally unreliable. The one my samsung phone came with works with literally NOTHING else, and the 4 or 5 I've bought have connection issues.

Also if you care about audio it's another slap in the face as the DACs in those adaptors are pretty high-noise.

USB C can transfer analog audio.

Yes. However most of the adaptors aren't analogue, or are universally so shoddily made that they are useless, to the point where your walking motion or road vibration inside a car will dislodge the connection.

When I was using my pixel 2, I tried the adapters. They were so bad that I changed 5 adapters in 2 months. Finally, I just gave up. The adapter just stops working.

To go a step further, I ordered Google's pixel earphones which are USB-C. They got to shit in a month and when I asked Google, they just sent another one and asked me to keep the older one.

Long story short, I tried very hard to use wired headphones and because I couldn't, I just lost the habit of using a headphone with mobile.

I got some USB buds for my Pixel 6 for about twice the price of a pair of 3.5mm buds.

I grumble about not being able to use the buds and charge the phone at the same time, but it's a minor concern overall. The USB buds have equivalent quality and latency to 3.5mm buds, so you're not forced to take a step down like you would be with Bluetooth.

Yes it is. For majority of people convenience of wireless far outweighs ehh… what exactly it outweighs again? I’m not an audiophile, so whatever 3.5 provides.

Doesn't take an audiophile to appreciate better reliability and lower latency.

People are just clamoring to pay over a $100 for something they could do with much higher quality for $9.99 earbuds they could buy at a convenience store.

Choice. And not having to charge another device.

You can choose to use an adapter.

I just had an idea! They should embed the adaptor inside the body of the phone so it won't get lost and then the people complaining about adaptors can shut up about them getting lost!

I don't understand this though; 3.5mm audio jacks are not old tech, new headphones are still being made with them as the sole way of connecting them to your devices.

They are old tech, doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with that. They also still make horseshoes and saddles only suitable for horses because there’s still a niche market and that’s what wired audio has become.

Most people are very happy with Bluetooth headphones and don’t care about the benefits of the 3.5mm jack.

This happens all the time with tech, streaming is lower quality than physical media and has ownership concerns but for the majority that’s not an issue.

DVDs are still being made too.

In the case of DVDs there are alternative formats with higher resolution and better encoding.

That’s a clear improvement.

In the case of 3.5mm audio jacks can you really say Bluetooth really provides better audio quality?

Convince? Ok, but audio quality? No so much.

It doesn’t have to provide better audio quality, just enough not to notice difference. And it provides MASSIVE improvements in convenience.

You’re right. Wired headphones provide massive amounts of convenience.

You don’t need instructions and a glitchy pairing process to make them work. You stick them in.

You don’t keep getting asked which specific iPhone in the busy airport terminal you want to connect to. You just stick them in.

You don’t need to fumble around if you want to quickly kill the sound for whatever reason. You just unplug it.

You don’t have to turn on an insecure wireless emitting technology to make it work. You just plug it in.

No, only with your doctored definition.

Having cables dangling is not great, but you know what's truly terrible? Having headphones with empty batteries. Having to charge them is a massive inconvenience to me.

I don't get how bluetooth can be used for anything but music listening. Latency in movies and games are unbearable.

Old tech: wired, always work, can be fixed

New tech: internal irreplaceable battery, more drain on the phone, massive e waste. barely works

I'm using the same wired earbuds for 6 or 7 years while my friends already did 3 airpod exchanges in like 4 years because the battery keep on dying

Bluetooth Stockholm syndrome in fullforce, but hey, it's "progress" and "progress" is always good

Sure, maybe, but usually the new stuff the old is being abandoned for is at least better....

Except not providing a headphone jack has been a clear regression. Other than saving the manufacturer a few pennies, what benefits do I get from not having one?

obligatory GOML citation

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/C/connector-conspiracy.html

connector conspiracy: n.

[probably came into prominence with the appearance of the KL-10 (one model of the PDP-10), none of whose connectors matched anything else] The tendency of manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors of anything) to come up with new products that don't fit together with the old stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive interface devices.

> Well TFA ignored that few to none of the phones on this list that are better than the Pixel 6a include a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Current 4a owner, always had Google phones, and this is precisely the reason why the next one is going to be a 1+ for me. I don't want to sacrifice all the 3.5mm devices I have for a fad like this ,and Bluetooth audio is horrible anyway.

for me just like agile broke my software enjoyment, annual iterative hardware release broke hardware enjoyment.

they intentionally don't build things to last, because the focus always how to sell you next product for you to consoom.

one company especially bad, talk about environment while release same product every year with minor changes. changing the appearance of the OS's every year because marketing needs to give superficial illusion of newness

> Pardon me while I go throw away my custom in-ear headphones I've had for over a decade, or my Ear Hero receiver-in-canal headphones that leave my ears open without pinching my glasses against my head like bone conduction headphones do. Where was I? oh yeah, phones getting designed to death.

Come on. USB-C to headphone jack adapters are $10, and apparently Apple's (which is universal) contains an excellent DAC.

Perfect, Apple can sell additional device for both user groups.

ive tried several of these and they havent been reliable for me. Lots of cutting out, crackling, etc

Try the Apple one.

I know the EU mandated UDB-C for all devices, but Removable batteries ? This is new.

See article 11 of https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52...

It doesn’t necessarily mean a return to the classic Nokia pop off the back model. As long as it’s user replaceable a couple of screws wouldn’t be a problem. But e.g. soldering the battery to the motherboard, or gluing the case together with no reassembly prospect would be issues.

It's funny -- and I do sympathize, it's always frustrating when you have some preference and the market moves so you can't get what you want, it happens to all of us -- but when people particularly bemoan newer technology as being unable to be maintained or upgraded or having built-in obsolescence... I have to wonder, why aren't they still using their 12 year old battery-swappable phone, upgrading their pin-compatible 486 motherboard, or driving their all-mechanical car from 1963.

Some people who would rather use their old phones don't because they can no longer receive software updates, either to the apps they use, or the OS. There are other reasons also like replacement parts are no longer easily available.

But anyway, you're missing the forest for the trees. Most folks who bemoan what you speak of simply want the option to repair their items easily in the case that something does go wrong.

> Some people who would rather use their old phones don't because they can no longer receive software updates, either to the apps they use, or the OS.

You can though. Many old phones are hackable.

> There are other reasons also like replacement parts are no longer easily available.

Also doesn't seem to be true. You can still buy second hand parts and whole phones for old models for almost nothing.

> But anyway, you're missing the forest for the trees. Most folks who bemoan what you speak of simply want the option to repair their items easily in the case that something does go wrong.

You can likewise buy all parts for your 1963 Cadillac, you can buy manuals, you can repair it in a modestly equipped home-garage. Very few who complained about the computerization of cars do though, because new cars are so much more reliable and performant and relatively cheaper (in large part due to said computerization). It wasn't just a conspiracy to prevent people repairing their cars (the few who actually could repair their own cars back in the 60s even).

I accept there are real valid concerns about repairability, planned obsolescence, etc. But like I said, a lot of complaints about this stuff is wide of the mark IMO.

Having a phone with IR and headphone jack and SD cards and micro USB and replaceable screen and replaceable battery and upgradable RAM and pogo pins and physical keyboards and never-ending software updates sounds great. The reality is it will make it a much worse / more expensive product for the 99.999% of people who don't care for those features.

> You can though. Many old phones are hackable.

Many != All. For example, up-to-date custom ROMs of LineageOS do not exist for all phones.

> Also doesn't seem to be true. You can still buy second hand parts and whole phones for old models for almost nothing.

Chances are more likely that you'll find damaged used phones with drained batteries, or low quality Chinese replacement parts. Sorry, but it does seem to be true unless you're willing gamble money on questionable eBay listings.

Personally, I've attempted to keep old phones from 2012 usable for my parents and older relatives, but it seems less and less viable as time goes by for the reasons I've already listed. Unfortunately, it's simply not as easy as you make it out to be.

I use a newer phone (Pixel 5) that lacks a 3.5mm audio jack and removable battery. I accept that I may be on the fringe for wanting that audio jack (although I'm not sure what survey to look at to prove this), but I disagree that we as consumers are better off without it, or that it makes the phone more reliable/performant/worse.

> You can though. Many old phones are hackable.

Lineage doesn't help you update the NDA protected binary blob drivers

We can't use our old battery-swappable (physical keyboard, headphone jacks, etc) phones because the networks they run on, which also run just fine (UMTS, CDMA2000, CDMAone, GSM, etc) have been shut down.

Not many people did before those networks shut down, as far as I saw. You can get 3G phones with swappable battery and headphone jacks and physical keyboards too though, can't you?

3G is being shut down in the US.

Just buy a Bluetooth headphone amp and you can use your favourite headphones again. The ones from FiiO are small and pretty good

But with all the cons of Bluetooth (need for charging, high latency, lack of high quality bidirectional audio).

Charging is a fact of life for a lot of things, latency is not an issue for the better Bluetooth devices, the brand I mentioned has a good rep in this respect, bidirectional audio quality has been an issue IMHO so I use different headsets for calls and audio and tbh it works out v well. Give it a go at least, the Bluetooth adaptors are not that expensive and may improve your experience.

Just use an external DAC. Problem solved. DA is better than anything that's ever been on a phone.

> DA is better than anything that's ever been on a phone.

Do you have links to actual tests?

DACs are essentially a solved problem, the only crap DAC and headphone amp I have found on a device that actually sounds different than any other DAC was on a raspberry pi. Which to be fair they tell you straight up that the audio jack on the raspberry pi sucks. They probably found the one factory in china still bothering to manufacture subpar DACs and amps.

Otherwise every other single device with a headphone amp has sounded the same, especially when you factor in normal use of an eq to get your sound system/headphones to sound good. People that say you can tell the difference between audio DACs are letting the placebo effect convince them to support a crap, cottage industry that robs people of their money lol.

Now, there are DACs and headphone amps that can put out a LOT more power than other DACs and headphone amps. Yes if you buy headphones that take a lot of power to drive a normal DAC/amp might not be able to drive them but that is an entirely different question than "my DAC just sounds better than yours" snakeoil. Also... hard to drive headphones and speakers are relatively niche and rare. There are PLENTY of """""""audiophile"""""""""" headphones and speakers that are easy to drive.

I know that DAC is solved problem. But parent claims external "DA is better than anything that's ever been on a phone".

You can use a usb-3.5mm adapter, not that big deal.

Have you tried the Ear Hero Bluetooth adapter?

Honestly, you can get great USB-C to headphone jack converters for $10. Just accept the market has moved on and live with it.

Also the headphone jack isn't 100 years old.

I've a macbook pro at work and have to use 3 dongles, to get hdmi, display port, full sized USB, etc. I still don't have a wired ethernet, or headphone jacks, probbaly need another 2 adapters. It looks like an octopus, and is not mobile with that junk plugged in. Adapters suck. Basic connectivity should be maintained on all devices.

And you really think your use case is ordinary? That majority is using like you do? Because the alternative is majority walking with Swiss cheese of a MacBook without using even half the ports.

Don't Macbook Pros have Thunderbolt ports? If so, then you don't need all that crap; just get a Thunderbolt docking station. It'll have all the ports you want in a single box, which plugs in with a single cable (which also carries power). My Dell laptop has this, and it works fantastically.

Of course, it still sucks not to have HDMI or full-sized USB on the laptop itself for when you're not at your desk, and that's a great reason not to buy a Mac in the first place, but I'm assuming you were stuck with that POS by your employer. My Dell has HDMI, 2xUSB3.0, and a headphone jack all on the computer, and still manages to be quite thin and light. (No, there's no wired ethernet or DisplayPort, but you don't really need those on a laptop outside the docking station.)

All MBPs have headphone ports too. And recent ones have HDMI and a SD card slot.

It's good to see a a return to more varied ports on board!

If I'm in the office and go to a meeting room I have to bring at least one adapter to be a able to project on a screen. It's awkward in practice.

All Macbook Pros have headphone jacks[1].

> full sized USB

What do you mean by this?

[1] https://www.apple.com/au/macbook-pro-13/specs/ (search for audio. Older ones have them too)

I’m guessing USB-A port

Just buy a dock. I have this one, it's boring and simple and it works great: https://plugable.com/products/ud-cam

It's not portable then. If I have a Dock, then it's a desktop. When I move to a meeting room I loose all my ports.

In this case I’d expect the office to have a dock present in all meeting rooms.

The meeting rooms don't have docks, they have hdmi only, one for videoconf TV, another one for the projector. Should the room have 2 docks, one for each? Why cant a 2 to 3k laptop just offer the ports they used to.

Don't think of the USBC/TRS adapter as a dongle for your phone. Think of it as an extension for your headphone wires. Why would you ever remove it from the headphones?

Because I plug my headphones into multiple devices?

While the 3.5mm headphone jack is only ~70 years old [1], the quarter inch jack has it's roots in the late 1870's [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_connector_(audio)#Miniat...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35253398

I went from "they had it in the 30s?" to "omg 1950 was 70 years ago!"

It is funny how long the approximation "subtract from 2000" to keep math simple sticks.

When you find a phone with a quarter inch jack I'll concede the point :)

Doesn't work on all phones, like my Pixel 4. That was a big surprise. There is no way to connect anything else but BT.

Are you using the OEM provided adapter? The reason is probably due to the usb-c standard being a clusterfuck and essentially having two different types of "usb-c to 3.5mm dongle":

1. active dongle that gets digital audio signals from the phone, and converts that to analog using an onboard DAC

2. passive dongle that receives analog audio signals from the phone, and simply converts the pinout from usb-c to 3.5mm[1]

If you try to use the latter dongle on a phone that doesn't support that use case (ie. it doesn't contain onboard DAC), it will fail to work.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C#Audio_Adapter_Accessory_...

Passive dongles are the only ones that actually have something to do with USB-C standard, as those allow to simply route the analog connection through the USB-C port. Active dongles are just regular USB sound cards that you can plug into a PC too and which could use a USB-A plug just as well.

This is an active USB-C to headphone dongle designed for phones: https://www.amazon.com.au/Stereo-Adapter-Hi-res-Headphone-Co...

It specifically mentioned Pixel 4 compatibility.

Yes, I think it might work on a PC too, but I've never tried that.

Add a passive USB-C to A dongle and you can use stuff like this: https://www.amazon.com.au/EZONEDEAL-microphone-external-Exte...

Technically, this is more or less the same thing as what you linked to, just in a different form factor.

Or even this: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/5-1-Channel-USB-2-0_6...

Also same thing, but likely to have a crappier DAC.

This isn't true. I had a Pixel 4 and it worked fine.

You do need to make sure you get one with a built in D/A converter (some are just pass-through).

Move on, wireless is better. They have usb-c adapters as well.

Yeah OK, let me know when Bluetooth latency is the same as a physical wire connection. Or when a good Bluetooth pair costs the same as a good wired pair.

Anecdotal: I'm not a power-user, but I never really had bluetooth problems (latency, connectivity etc) between my phone and bluetooth devices.

I do however have the rare bluetooth connectivity problems with laptops, even the newer ones, but that could be a problem with Linux.

Also, I've accidentally damaged my wired headphones before by walking around and the wires getting hooked onto something.

Besides, I find it convenient to keep my phone in one place and walk around while making phone calls, or listening to stuff. Like, cleaning my house while listening to stuff.

I agree that it would be better to have both BT and a headphone jack.

Every time I run with Bluetooth headphones, the connection will drop out for a few seconds whenever a certain type of car/bus/ambulance goes by. Certain traffic lights seem to set it off too. Really irritating.

I'll take wired over wireless any day of the week.

This. I constantly struggle with connectivity. It's ridiculous how amateur the connectivity area is. I'm sure things will.be different if they get better at it.

This may be "adaptive audio" in action. You may experience similar with babies crying.

A few higher-end commercial headphones now support Bluetooth AptX LL (low latency).

Probably won't sway you, but it exists.

- Still sounds like garbage when side-by-side compared to by ATH-AD700X's, or ATH-MSR7NC's though.

- Still more irritating to have to keep charged rather than just plug in. Still more irritating to switch back and forth between my phone and my laptop and my desktop though.

- Still more irritating (or even impossible) to share my single audio source with someone else's headphones though.

- Still more irritating to pipe into the mixer and play back over big speakers though.

I had a phone with only USB-C for a while. Sure, dongle's exist. They also get buggy and drop out occasionally, since they've got firmware. They also make it challenging to charge and listen simultaneously. They also get lost easily.

There's a lot to recommend a simple 3-wire electrical connection with a standard plug. I don't begrudge people who want to use bluetooth at all, we can all coexist, just keep the headphone jack available so we can. :-)

BlueTooth is basically a necessity in a modern phone for many reasons, not just headphones: fitness trackers, automotive system integration, etc. all use BT. And BT doesn't need any physical space on the edge of the device.

But yeah, the venerable 3.5mm headphone jack is simple and effective and doesn't have many of the problems that plague wireless headphones.

Any good phone should have both.

Bluetooth latency has never been low enough for music production in my use case

But then you can't charge with the USB-C port and listen to headphones at the same time.

Use a wireless charging setup.

It has been standard on most flagship phones for a few years now.

I rarely (if ever) use the port to charge my devices anymore. They just look messy, wear out and take more time to plug in and un plug.

You probably don’t carry a wireless charger with you on the go, which is incidentally when you’re most likely to need this. You’re not going to wirelessly charge your phone while you watch a movie on a flight or a train, but you sure do want to charge it so you have power left at your destination.

If that's something that's important to you, you can:

https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Wireless-PowerCore-Portable-Com...

And you then need to make sure that it doesn’t get jostled around enough to disconnect from the phone on your flight or train.

I’d rather just plug a cable in.

Wireless charging is nice but has a few problems. A cable charges my phone ~3x faster, generates less heat, and wastes less electricity. On the go, a USB-C cable is also more useful than a wireless charger.

>A cable charges my phone ~3x faster

You need a faster wireless charger. The high-power ones aren't as slow as this.

But still, you're right: wires are more efficient and faster. And the big factor is that no one brings a wireless charger traveling with them. A cable is much smaller and lighter, and the wireless charger still needs the cable and power adapter anyway.

Or use a USB-C headphone adapter that allows charging too. There are lots available.

When I first got a phone without a headphone jack, I bought one such dongle. It didn't work. My two subsequent phones have had headphone jacks, so I'm not going to worry about this problem again for a while, but at the time at least it was certainly not as simple as buying a dongle and knowing it would work.

Every answer here is "buy this other thing, no wait, that may not work for your use case, buy this other thing to lug around or that makes your laptop effectively a desktop".

This is strictly worse than the previous status quo.

This is such a weird complaint.

Firstly, yes, you can can get USB-C to headphone adaptors that allow charging[1]

Secondly, the scenarios where this is an issue are combinations of edge cases. You have to choose not to use wireless headphones, not have a wireless charger AND for some reason be unable to spare the 30 minutes to do a rapid boost charge.

If that's really a problem then by all means get the charger that allows both.

[1] eg, first result: https://www.amazon.com.au/UGREEN-Headphone-Adapter-Charging-...

These are a bunch of solutions with their own pluses, minuses, and degree of knowledge that you have to have to even be aware of, in addition to seperate products that you have to purchase - in order to fix a problem that didn't exist before. It's very weird to not understand that people don't want this in their lives in return for little or no benefit.

But there is a big benefit! Less connectors save costs and reduce wiring in the phone allowing manufactures to make it smaller.

For most people who prefer wireless (I don't think anyone actually likes wires) this is a pretty reasonable compromise.

I prefer wires to wireless in pretty much every situation except for chargers.

- ethernet vs wifi? ethernet wins hands down

- headphones? corded wins hands down

Honestly, even for chargers, I still use a wired one anywhere except my home office, because it would be annoying to carry a wireless charge around.

I'd say you prefer the experience you get with wires, not the wires themselves.

That's a reasonable position to take.

>You have to choose not to use wireless headphones, not have a wireless charger AND for some reason be unable to spare the 30 minutes to do a rapid boost charge.

Yeah, this sounds like me when I've traveling anywhere, whether it's across the world or just into town. I'm not going to haul around a wireless charger in my backpack, and I don't have 30 minutes to sit around waiting for a charge. And that's exactly the time I want to have headphones available, not when I'm sitting at home where I might have a wireless charger handy. At home, I just use speakers connected to my computer or my home-theater setup. Why would I use headphones at home?

So, pretty much every time I get in someone else's car for a trip longer than "tot he store" and want to listen to something on my phone.

Either their car has a 3.5mm input jack, in which case they probably already have a 3.5mm male to male cable (unless you carry that too?) with an adapter or 3.5mm to adapter cable or they don't have the jack and you just pair with their car bluetooth.

I have the male to male cable; though I keep one in my wife's car, too. As for pairing with the bluetooth

1. In the cases I'm talking about, I want to use headphones + a USB-C charger.

2. I don't like bluetooth for sound; it's inferior in every single case I've tried.

3. I have yet to be able to configure things so bluetooth is used for media/music, but not for phone calls. And I don't want to use the car/speakerphone for phone calls when I'm in someone else's car.

Look, I get it.. with _enough_ adapters and random other things, I can jump through a dozen different hoops in order to get music out of phone. But life would be a lot simpler and easier if I just had a headphone jack. Only they removed it, and now I'm stuck with an objectively [1] worse experience.

[1] Yes, objectively; because prior to that I had both bluetooth AND a headphone jack. So there's no positive aspect of removing the jack. It is objectively worse to not have it.

So you are prepared to carry a male-to-male cable around for this one particular case but not prepared to carry a much smaller USB-C to headphone adapter which literally solves every single problem you have listed in this entire thread?

I just don't understand the reasoning.

> So there's no positive aspect of removing the jack. It is objectively worse to not have it

The benefits of removing the jack form the phone are clear: less connectors mean simpler and cheaper manufacture (so cheaper devices) and larger batteries/smaller phones.

Any cost saving from reducing connectors haven’t reached consumers at all it seems, but that’s a different conversation I suppose.

For who don't satisfied with Bluetooth audio quality, I wonder is it fine to use internal DAC on a Phone rather than good quality external DAC via USB-C.

It's kind of amazing that you're clever enough to generate a complete decision tree for all the problems and solutions, and yet still have a blind spot for what the problem is, despite six people trying to explain it.

My point is that these "no I need a headphone jack" issues all take a complex decision tree to get to.

They are all things like "oh I have to ride in my friends car who has a 3.5mm input jack but doesn't have bluetooth input and also only has the cable without an adapter".

There's another comment about how the latency on bluetooth is bad, and this is a problem because they are a music producer who presumably produces on their mobile phone. Again, it's such a small subset and the fact it is solved perfectly with a $10 adapter makes me think the complaints are way overblown.

Wireless is worse in every way imaginable. Worse power use, worse quality, worse latency, much worse convenience (now you have to charge the headphones, too).

And I assume you type this on device connected to Ethernet, right? And no, Bluetooth headphones are convenient, how often do you think you need to charge them?

Of course I am connected to Ethernet, what kind of question is that?

Having headphones that turn out to be uncharged, or undercharged, when I try to use them even once is completely unacceptable. For what benefit, saving myself the 2 seconds of plugging a cable in?

Fuck everything about Bluetooth headphones.

My wireless headphones were working great until about two weeks ago. Now when I try to connect to them via Bluetooth, the connection fails, every time, due to an "unknown problem" and I should "try again later". Fortunately the detachable 3.5mm jack still works.

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