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Comment by rostayob | Hacker News Reader

I've been using this phone as my full time phone for 1 year. It's a great compromise for people that ideally would not want a smartphone, but need to have one since many life situations require it.

I basically only use it for WhatsApp and music, but when some other need arises, it can do everything a normal smartphone can do.

The only problem is that the build quality is not good. The audio jack of the first one I bought (off the initial kickstarter) broke after 6 months or so. I bought another one, and the up volume button recently broke. But otherwise, no complaints.

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Interesting. The headphone jack would be my main reason for buying this thing.

Recently forgot my iPad on a trip, and couldn't listen to anything on the plane because my goddamned iPhone lacks a headphone jack. So offensively stupid.

Note that I was fairly careless with it, and I'm pretty clumsy. It probably fell 20+ times. But still, it feels very cheap (and I suppose it makes sense given the price).

I have a Jelly pro , and has similarly fallen a fair few times and is fine. Feeling cheap doesn't necessarily mean it's less rugged though - a plastic case is generally going to absorb more shock than a glass or metal case like 'premium' phones have. I remember my first android (Galaxy S) was panned for feeling 'cheap' but I dropped that so many times and it's still alive today.

> It probably fell 20+ times

That's more than normal phones could withstand.

why didn't you buy the Bluetooth adapter from the bestbuy kiosk in the airport to use your airpods with the plane's headphone jack?

Why not just get a 3.5mm to lightning adaptor? They have knock-off/generic versions at gas stations that cost like 5 dollars and it beats lugging around a whole extra device just to use your headphones

Not op, but for me, those things have been finicky and randomly disconnect, and when they do, it's more of a problem because you're removing the whole audio device instead of just the output plug (so like the audio might pause instead of just having some static).

Also, because I use my headphones on other devices with audio jacks, I lose those adapters all the time. Don't really like having a tail on my phone all the time. Vastly prefer having aux on my phones/tablets.

i end up using an adapter (because samsung also arm-twisted me into doing that), but they are typically terrible quality/break, catch on to things, i need to always remember to pack one, and still keep forgetting/losing them. Our overlords at Apple (Samsung promptly followed) decided that we must all switch to airpods, but instead just made it a huge pain for people. Also strange for Samsung whose phones are gigantic, it's not like they don't have enough room.

Last I checked iphones and galaxys were almost identical in size, which models are your talking about?

i was referring more to the topic starter phone - 95.1 × 49.6 × 18.7 mm vs Galaxy S23 146.3 x 70.9 x 7.6. It does seem quite thicker than Galaxy actually. Maybe that's Samsung's excuse. I don't have much experience with (or much interest in) Apple phones, they seem to inspire Samsung to follow the same trends.

Another alternative is a small 3.5 mm to Bluetooth device. It allows for any 3.5mm output to use Bluetooth and best of all: already paired and battery is on the module not the headphones themselves.

Nice option for (old) cars.

Depends on how "old." Just as pretty much every car finally had an auxiliary input (even the cheapest rental car), Apple deleted the headphone jack from its best-selling music player.

And now we've regressed to no aux inputs, no audio outputs, and nothing but shitty Bluetooth. But the '90s Pioneer head unit in my car has an input, as does my stock 2009 Ranger.

The knockoff lightning adapters might, in fact, be Bluetooth, per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40528410

Because

A. I didn't know I didn't have my iPad until I was on the plane. I carry it on all trips. And this shouldn't be an issue anyway.

B. They suck. My girlfriend has a Belkin one in her car that produces so much hiss that it is perceivable as, I'd say, 60% of the volume of the music we're listening to. And when the music fades out, it has some absurd AGC that pumps the hiss up to program level.

C. You can't power the device if the Lightning port is occupied by a dongle.

It's disgusting that consumers tolerate this BS and then make excuses for it.

There are other android alternatives that have a headphone jack - though getting fewer each year unfortunately. I want a phone that takes good pictures, has long feature updates, and has an aux jack - I haven't been able to find one in years, so I've been compromising with ones that only get one new android version (plus security updates for 2-3 years)

I can only imagine that the typing experience on such a tiny phone is sub optimal. When you say WhatsApp are you actually typing in messages ?

I am, but I only type the messages I need to type. Which aren't that many. If there's some long explanation to be had I call or I leave a voice message. And yes, I am aware of the fact that everybody hates voice messages, but it's only fair if somebody requires my immediate attention :).

Typing is painful, but not disastrous actually. It's perfectly serviceable.

I used one for about a year. I thought I'd be using voice-to-text a lot to get around this issue, but couldn't get used to the idea. A swipe-style keyboard does make typing much less onerous that you might imagine though.

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