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Comment by xorcist | Hacker News Reader

No 3.5mm plug? Not for me then.

I never want to charge an extra device again. I also never want to find a pair of plugs that fit me, again. It is a mystery to me why this use case is apparently so unique that there is no market for me.

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Because you can use a USB c adapter if you still want to use wired headphones

Which is an abjectly terrible solution. Dongles can be lost or forgotten, and you can't charge your phone while using one (a very big deal if your use case is to hook the phone to your car for a long drive).

Why would you even disconnect your 2-in-1 dongle, that allows you to charge your phone while using the 3.5 mm jack, from your headphones wire to begin with? Or disconnect your second 2-in-1 dongle, which you got because they're extremely cheap, from your car adapter? I think it's a reasonably good solution for the relatively few people that still use a 3.5 mm jack.

The audio jacks are normally on the top of the phone, the USB is normally on the bottom. Where my wife normally rests her phone doesn't allow USBC to be plugged in at the same time.

I assume GP is referring to 2-in-1 dongles that allow charging and audio out at the same time. You just leave the dongle in the car... and only plug in the USB-C. It handles audio out and charging at the same time, and is one less cable to plug in. It's better than plugging in USB-C and 3.5mm into your phone every time.

Right, so with the USBC on the bottom of the phone, it's blocked where she prefers to rest her phone.

If you need the charge the phone, you need to plug it in. No way around that. Might as well get audio output at the same time from the same cable.

She doesn't need to charge her phone in the car generally; she charges it at night. She simply wants audio out that just works even if I used the car last.

So she can adapt and change her preferences.

Or she can not, and keep her phone that works for her rather than something worse for her workflow.

For the moment. Failure to adapt is a weakness though.

Forcing adaptation purely for the sake of newness without benefit is also a weakness.

lol, no. And it's not purely for the sake of newness, there is benefit. But if someone can't adapt and is too weak minded, they will never see it.

I was not aware that such a thing existed. I've only ever seen dongles which don't let you charge. So thanks for the info, that's good to know at least.

As to why you'd disconnect - shit happens. Maybe you have an iPhone and the other person using your car has an Android phone, so you each need different dongles. Maybe someone accidentally removed it, who knows? The point is that dongles can, and will, get lost or misplaced so they aren't a good solution.

Honest question, why are you still using a 3.5mm jack for connecting to car audio? Outside of very old cars that have not been retrofitted with more modern head units, every car that I can think of in the last 10+ years has had Bluetooth as a standard feature. It's just far more convenient.

Because pairing/connecting to crappy headunits is a task apparently defined by Satan to cause as much human suffering as possible.

My experience does not mirror your anecdote, quite frankly. Sometimes pairing is a pain the first time, but any car I've driven in recent memory has very workable bluetooth that connects successfully every time.

I even installed a SUPER cheap head unit in a car like 8 years ago (I literally sorted by cheapest head unit that had radio and bluetooth... it was like $35) and that was essentially bulletproof.

The only case where this tends to be a pain in the ass is if you have multiple people attempting to use the bluetooth that are frequently in the car at the same time (e.g., a couple who both use the car, and you alternate who uses the bluetooth). In that case, a dongle that is connected to USB-C power and a 3.5mm aux jack directly seems superior, since you just need to connect a single cable to both charge and run audio.

> The only case where this tends to be a pain in the ass is if you have multiple people attempting to use the bluetooth that are frequently in the car at the same time (e.g., a couple who both use the car, and you alternate who uses the bluetooth).

One of many scenarios that I have hit where Bluetooth breaks down.

> that case, a dongle that is connected to USB-C power and a 3.5mm aux jack directly seems superior, since you just need to connect a single cable to both charge and run audio.

USB is on the bottom generally, headphone jacks are normally on the top. There're a lot of places to rest a phone in a car where the headphone jack is available, but the USB is not.

Not sure what the issue is with just placing the phone upside down in whatever 'resting place' is needed. Unless you're actively using it, in which can presumably you would be holding the phone... so it doesn't matter too much if the cable is above or below your phone.

Yes, she likes to glance at the screen when she's stopped at a red light and can do so safely.

My dude, my car doesn't even have aux input, let alone Bluetooth. I have to use a cassette adapter (or an FM transmitter) to get audio into my car. Not everyone, or even close to everyone, has a car made in the last 10 years.

The nice thing about a headphone jack is it's basically universal. It's been around for some 40 years now! Anything you want to pipe into most likely can accept it. I have nothing against Bluetooth, but killing off a universal standard for one which is merely common is very short sighted. It's a perfect example of why people accuse the tech industry of being out of touch with reality.

So... buy an FM transmitter that has Bluetooth as an input? Or replace your head unit with one that has Bluetooth? There are plenty of solutions that exist to solve this problem for very little money. I did this myself for less than $50 in parts on an older car I owned. Choosing a phone purely based on the outdated technology of your car is much more shortsighted in my view. At some point (which, has already happened with 3.5mm jacks largely) the world moves on.

Also, Bluetooth IS the universal standard. It's in every single car that has been sold recently, and has been for years and years. Hell, I'd argue Bluetooth has been more universal in phones for longer than 3.5mm jacks. Early phones often had fully functional Bluetooth but had weird proprietary aux jacks (2.5mm, that weird Nokia plug, proprietary USB extensions, etc).

Or, hear me out... I could buy phones which use the universal standard we have had for audio connections for 40 years. I have neither the skills nor the inclination to replace my car stereo, and I can only guess you've never used an FM transmitter if you are seriously suggesting that as an option. They suck, full stop. Meanwhile, I stick to phones which aren't designed by people so short-sighted as to think that everyone has Bluetooth available.

I genuinely have no idea how you can call Bluetooth a universal standard with a straight face. It's not even close. A 3.5mm isn't truly universal (little or nothing is), but it's as close as you can get. Ditching the latter in favor of the former is absolutely asinine.

Seriously man, 10 years ago is not that long in real world terms. It's a long time in the tech industry, but the rest of the world simply does not move on at that pace. As an industry, we need to pull our heads from our asses and realize that most people aren't techies living in a major city for whom anything invented more than 5 years ago is old, and anything invented more than 10 years ago is positively ancient. That simply is not how the world works.

We must be shopping at different stores. My experience with cassette adapters (and I tried quite a few different ones, back in the day) was always muddy, bad audio quality. FM transmitters (good ones anyways) never had that problem.

As for Bluetooth as a standard: what, exactly, is not a standard about the audio portion of it? You can take any device that supports Bluetooth audio output and connect it to an audio playback device (speaker, head unit, whatever) and it will just... work. Super old speaker to brand new phone? Plays audio fine. Super old phone to brand new head unit? Same thing.

This isn't some 'big techy is out of touch with reality' thing. We just have alternatives that are perfectly practical for edge cases where you absolutely need that aux jack, and the vast majority of consumers have moved on years ago.

And AFAICT, just like in the Lightning days, you still cannot charge the phone through the port and use the wired headphone adapter at the same time, at least without a third-party dongle.

Correct. Power delivery and analog audio are mutually exclusive. The way the dongles that do charge work is by putting a USB DAC chip in the connector.

I can only imagine the extra strain having a dongle plugged into your phone puts on the port with the phone being in your pocket. Say what you will about 3.5mm, but it is robust in that scenario. I've never had a 3.5mm port break before the cable that is plugged in.

USB-C ports wear out within a couple of years from just slight strain on a charging cable.

This is not the solution you claim it to be.

I also am a big fan of the dedicated 3.5mm! That being said, it is definitely true that I am running out of situations where I can actually use that port on my device... sigh

i tend to use it every time i don't want to fiddle with bluetooth

There is a market for you, but it's not a very big one. Sony in particular plays to this market, but you can see from their dwindling sales, that it's rather niche.

Sony would probably have better luck if their phones weren't so incredibly expensive. As a fellow headphone jack requirer, I would love to buy a Sony phone. But I can't afford one.

If you can afford a Fairphone 5, it seems a Sony is within your budget. Sure, they make a $1600 phone, but they also make multiple phones that are much cheaper or similarly priced.

Xperia 5 III (what a horrible name): $600

Xperia 10 V (again, terrible name): $400

Xperia 1 IV: $755 (same price as Fairphone)

All 3 have headphone jacks.

I honestly have never seen a Sony phone which was less than $1000. Perhaps I just looked in the wrong places, but that's what my comment was based on. I agree that a phone costing $400-700 is not an unreasonably high price, but I just wasn't aware of the existence of the models you mentioned.

The other audio problem with the Fairphone 4 is that it ranks quite low on audio tests [1]. It has playback/recording scores of about ~90, while mainstream manufacturers have cheaper phones with scores of 130+.

[1] https://www.dxomark.com/fairphone-4-audio-test/

It is a mystery why people hate tangled cords that also get caught on things? More than leaving your pods on a charging puck when you get home? Which takes zero additional effort since you have to put them down somewhere?

Nobody's arguing with your preferences but it's a mystery to me how the convenience of wireless headphones is a mystery to you.

I have no idea what people see in wireless headphones. I have never once gotten the wire tangled, caught on something, anything like that. From my perspective, wireless headphones are "solving" a non-existent problem, at the cost of additional headache (charging) and at a higher price. They are strictly worse than wired headphones for my usage.

Well good for you on being tangle-free!

Not all of us are so lucky, sadly. I guess there must be a lot of us that companies are catering to our genuine needs. :)

Headphone wires have caused me issue son packed subways before, with peoples accessories getting caught in them. Wireless is without a doubt more convenient.

I get that bit. It can be irritating. But so is having an extra item to charge.

And the battery life gets constantly shorter. Lithium cells have limited life spans, they last maybe a couple of years and what do you do then?

I can accept having to change phone every few years. Modern phones are somewhat disposable. But having to change headphones would be a real drag. They are something I put in my body! It took many years to finally settle on a pair I could be comfortable with which wouldn't fall out.

And I'm not picky about sound quality. People who care about that must have it even worse. Sound signature is very personal.

For better or worse, I buy headphones for life. I would love to buy more things for life, but phones are obviously impossible. But imagine having to change your wallet or something. You probably bought jackets or trousers based upon that shape. Maybe the comparison is a stretch, the point remains that I really don't want to buy new headphones. Ever.

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