What I don't get is: it's not an either/or proposition, it's not like you have to choose between having wired and wireless headphones.
I use my Airpods on my android phone, and they're pretty nice for when I'm doing housework and working around the shop. When I'm at work, I plug in my plantronics headset for conference calls, and my regular cans when I'm listening to music. Airpods don't have the stamina to keep up with a long day of work, nor the sound quality I want - they are a compromise device.
I don't really care about this debate too much anymore, since it seems that a few good manufacturers are still clued in that this is an actual need that a lot of people have (I've been using a Moto G5, and now I'm using an S9). But it is odd to still pushing the claim that "everyone got over it" with regards to headphone jacks - I never got over it, and I continue to vote with my wallet.
But your dichotomy isn't a hard and fast rule either. I use AirPods for everyday commuting and phone/video calls. I also do a lot of wilderness backpacking, and then I carry EarPods with a Lightning connector for when I want to listen to music before I sleep (because they're lighter, cheaper, simpler, probably more durable, and it's one less thing to charge).
If you find it such a hassle to use compatible headphones are carry an adapter, of course there's nothing wrong with you choosing for phone purchases accordingly. But I think it's pretty clear that most people either never run into the hassle at all, or aren't bothered by the fact that they need to choose compatible headphones or carry an adapter.
I'm not single-issue, but its definitely at the top of my requirements list. Just bought a pixel 3a to replace my galaxy s8 that broke. The headphone jack was probably the single biggest influence on what I bought. That along with price, camera and iFixit repair score made the 3a hard to pass up.
I'm triple-issue. If the phone doesn't have a headphone jack, doesn't have a user-replaceable battery, and doesn't have an SD card slot, then I'm not buying it.
My single-issue is replaceable battery, but no new candidates are being fielded. I still have an LG V20. They're now on V50 I believe but haven't had replaceable batteries since the V20.
Not OP, but for me it's a longevity thing. With a user-replacable battery, about 2 years after purchase I can simply order a compatible battery, pop it in the phone in a one-minute procedure, and carry on for another 2+ years. The battery will wear out, there's just no getting around that, but today's phones are so powerful that the rest of it isn't necessarily obsolete by that point. Especially not on Android, and especially if you aren't using your phone to do heavy tasks like gaming and media constantly.
It's not impossible to get by without one, but personally I don't have the soldering skills to replace a modern battery (parts are just a bit smaller than I trust myself with) so that's going to be a repair charge when my current phone's battery wears down in a year or so. No reason to replace the whole phone at that point, it still runs great and does everything I need it to do. Why waste the money?
I swap it out once a day, and charge the extra batteries in a charger. This way I can carry backup power that's relatively small compared to most general battery packs. Also I'm putting less strain on my USB-C port, which I've had fail on other phones. Lastly, some people advocate doing it this way because fast charging tends to create a lot of heat, and that heat might damage the phone.
Yep, me too, I have the same phone. I'm probably going to upgrade to a newer model in this range eventually because the cameras are fantastic, but I'm annoyed they axed the removable battery.
Because people don't want to fuck around with a stupid dongle to have a feature that the phone should have had in the first place. Dongles get lost, and you also can't charge the phone and use the dongle at the same time. Maybe you don't think it's a big deal, but when the asking price of the device is $1k, any little annoyance like that is a legitimate deal-breaker: for that much money, it should have everything, instead of stripping features out to save money.
This argument is circular because you're already assuming that "the phone should have had it in the first place." If you assume that, then you don't need to continue to argue for why the phone should have had the feature.
I have pretty much never charged my phone and used it at the same time. The cord is too short, and cords that are long enough are unwieldy. Plus, the cord sticks out right where my hand wants to hold the phone.
Is this something people actually do in any situation except low-power emergencies?
I do this all the time, especially while driving. I plug an aux cord into my phone to listen to podcasts or audiobooks and plug the usb connection into power supply in my car. I wouldn't be able to do a long road trip if I had to switch between these.
This is a decent amount of people but I think this is increasingly rare as more and more cars have Bluetooth. And it's not hard to update many older cars to newer headunits that have Bluetooth in them. (as I did for some of my cars) or just get a headunit that does power+transmission over USB too.
You can definitely tell the difference between bluetooth and an aux cord. There's no excuse for using a wireless connection between a phone and a car that are already plugged into each other anyway
Data point: I actively use my phone while plugged in 1+ hour per day, and often use it for 10+ hours of streaming music while plugged in. No 3.5mm jack is a dealbreaker for me.
To be fair, you having a car with an Aux jack means that you are definitely not in Apple's target demographic, because you're obviously too poor or too cheap. (No offense, I'm explaining this from the point-of-view of Apple and its fans.) Anyone who's a true Apple fan and customer would happily trade in their older car for a new one with CarPlay just so their brand-new iPhone works with it, just like a true Apple customer would happily throw away their wired headphones and buy Apple AirPod wireless headphones.
Remember, if you're not into conspicuous consumption, then you just aren't suited to be an Apple customer.
Of course, the problem with all this is when other phone makers ape Apple by copying some of these features, somehow thinking they'll gain the cultish customer base that Apple enjoys by doing so.
I still use an SE but I really don’t get this complaint against upgrading. Just keep the dongle permanently on the end of your headphone cable, and use one that splits out to a lightening charger as well. I’m seeing one for under 10 bucks on Amazon.
Really a non-issue.
I have multiple pairs of headphones, I have some over the ear ones at work, I have a couple buds that don't cut out as much outside noise in my car for when I'm shopping, I have some in ears at home I use when mowing my lawn. I plug my phone into some speakers at home sometimes. I don't want to have to keep track of a dongle for each of these.
The cost of a headphone jack at scale is a few cents. I'm pretty sure it's less about the cost and more about size/thickness, with moisture sealing as possibly a secondary concern.
If you say that the battery is a little bigger because the internals of the phone didn't need to accommodate a headphone jack, does that make you feel any better? How often do you use not-your-regular-headphones (which would just have dongle on them permanently) vs using the battery down to the final 10%?
In any case, I fundamentally agree that it's not worth the tradeoff; I use an iPhone 5S and find it perfectly serviceable (and charmingly small and light). But some people do value those things, and/or only use wireless headphones or headphones with a single device.
Supposedly, previous iPhones had a lot of empty space near where the headphone jack would have been. Enough space for this guy[1] to drill a hole and install Apple's DAC in it.
Its infuriating to me that Sony led the way with high end waterproof phones. They had a relatively stock Android experience and pretty much perfected the water proof phone with an open headphone jack.
Then Apple came out with a phone without a headphone jack and they just dropped the head phone jack from all of their worthwhile phones. I was a regular Sony buyer for years because of them being waterproof, but reluctantly had to switch last year to Samsung when my Sony phone was stolen.
same. was mainly buying sony phones for the last few years but the xz1 compact was the last one. they just lost the plot after that. now I've moved to Samsung and the s10e which is too big for my liking but it's the only phone around today that ticks all the boxes I want
The iPhone 7 and newer are just designed like Eva from wall-e because "fuck compatibility, buy proprietary wireless to solve everything"
Legacy junk is the stuttering, disconnects, game audio latency and shit that bluetooth still is to this day. Analog audio has no such problems! Using bluetooth only makes the wire longer by using radio frequency but you spend more energy maintaining and error correcting this much worse connection.
Yes you could use lightning headphones but how cucked is that? Buying headphones specially for the port that only exists on your phone?
I consider a headphone jack mandatory for two main reasons. First, wireless earphones don't have adequate battery life (not to mention that the last thing I need is yet another thing that requires daily charging). Second, after trying out a variety of bluetooth earphones, I've yet to find one that doesn't give me periodic problems (dropped connections, etc.)
Since Bluetooth doesn't offer anything that I consider advantageous, those two faults mean that bluetooth earphones are seriously inferior to me.
Dongles are a nonstarter for me, for all of the obvious reasons.
when you are able to share your bt audio with someone sitting next to you like you can with 3.5mm (ie sharing one of the buds or using a splitter) then Bluetooth will be ready. when batteries are good enough to last a few weeks or can change up instantly then I could see myself switching.
for the moment I'm going to try out using a bt receiver (just bought a fiio btr3 a few days ago) and when the battery goes i can just switch back to 3.5mm instead of having to wait half an hour for bt headphones to charge back up which is such a daft idea when you consider the price of them
Yeah, I don't get the headphone jack obsession either. Bluetooth has been perfect for me and frees me from the cord. I can't stand tangled up cords that tickle my neck as I'm trying to listen to music.
For most people bluetooth is not perfect. For some, it's tolerable. For me, it's a pain in the ass that requires frequent re-pairing, mucking around with configuration, recharging headphones, and generally thinking about how to set it up and why it's not working. The total set of failure modes for wired headphones is much easier to understand.
> it's better than lugging wires around like it's 1990.
That's just like, your opinion, man. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but bluetooth kind of sucks. If I have two devices that just stay paired together forever, it seems to work fine. But if there's ever any change, I usually have to spend 30-60 seconds fucking around and turning BT on and off, or re-pairing, or selecting output devices or something. Wired headphones are simple, don't need recharging, and they work when I want them to. So much like non-smart-light-bulbs, I do think sometimes 1990-style things are better. And I don't think I'd use the word "lug" to describe carrying something that weighs an ounce or less.
Bluetooth is perfect for you if you like going back to pre 1985 audio quality. Some of us like CD quality, and it's kind of funny that in 2019 the only way to get close to that (without a headphone socket, anyway), is using aptx-hd supported phones/headphones.
There you go. In general Bluetooth provides lower-quality audio. In addition, in my experience Bluetooth is pretty much always laggy, which is a problem for conference calls. Finally, I feel far more confident about the security of wired communication, and rather dubious of Bluetooth security. There are already many well-known serious Bluetooth culnerabilities, and I expect that there will be more. I keep Bluetooth off as much as I can... it's hard to exploit when it's off.
Bluetooth works almost perfectly for me too, and I still use my phone's headphone jack from time to time. And the 3.5mm headphones I use work immediately with every other device I own. It's just a basic and useful enough feature that it doesn't make sense to remove it.
The dongle is completely unacceptable to me. First of all, there is a 100% chance that I will at some point forget it at home or lose it altogether, and then be unable to use my headphones altogether. That's a dealbreaker.
Then there's the sheer inconvenience of carrying it around. I only have three things in my pockets: wallet, phone, keys. It takes less than a second to ensure that I have all three of those things on me. If I now have to dig past my wallet to the bottom of my pocket to make sure a little dongle is in there, that is dramatically worse.
How many headphones do you have? I’d be surprised if it was more than 2. Just keep the single permanently on the end of the headphone’s aux cord and that solves all your issues in this comment.
I grok the antipathy towards a dongle or ideals of a headphone jack. I mean, the latest MBP they sell doesn't have lightning for headphones, so even across Apple's highest end products, you need different connectors.
However, I gave up on that fight years ago - I use AirPods (and BT in general) for my audio. Other than CarPlay (which is also lightning connector).
I've played the no-headphone-socket 'game' with my G1.
The g1 was a great phone, but not having a standard headphone socket sucked.
The adapter was aweful UX. It was fiddly to use, uncomfortable in the pocket, fragile, and risked damaging the phone's USB port.
Because every single phone has all the other features I want. It's the one feature that is missing for them.
At the end of the day phones pretty much all do the exact same thing. There are little differences to form factor and different camera quality and all that.
But none of that will make any difference to your life for 90%+ of people. You don't need the best camera ever for your snapshots. And you don't need the fastest mobile processor to check your email.
I used to be one of those keyboard fanatics until i realised swipe typing was much faster, so it was an actual improvement overall.
with bluetooth it's not a great comparison since the only improvement is that you don't have to deal with annoying cables anymore but everything else is a step back:
they cost more.
you have to charge them.
the battery will degrade over time to a point where they will be unuseable while headphones from 20 years ago will work just fine.
even if the battery lasts you might run into compatability issues at some point in the future (different bt versions etc).
they drain more battery from your phone.
they have connection issues.
they are awkward to pair to new devices.
you cant share your music with someone sitting next to you.
I sometimes can’t believe that after 3 years people are still feeling hurt about this thing. I mean, go ahead and vote with your wallet but wow, what a hill to choose to die on!
I’ve been through the obsolescence of floppy disks, cassette tapes, optical media/drives, DB9 serial ports, parallel printer ports, composite video, RCA audio jacks, VGA and countless other display output jacks, yet this silly 3.5mm headphone jack is the one that’s turned people so ridiculously mad! So unbelievable.
Just based on iPhone sales it doesn’t look like many people actually care, but those who do, boy are they vocal about it. Why is this such a burning issue? Just use the adapter or invest in a decent pair of BT headphones and never worry about it again. It’s been probably 4 years since I’ve even used a device with a 3.5mm plug.
> invest in a decent pair of BT headphones and never worry about it again
Except, everyday, when you need to charge them? And when you need to enable/disable the BT radio (unless you keep it always on but in that case the autonomy of the phone suffers).
I like my bone conduction BT headphones and use them almost everyday, but a passive "dumb" wired solution is very convenient and removing it is a strict downgrade. At a time when the new models don't really add a lot of value over the older ones this removal actually tips the balance to the wrong side. The improvements don't make up for it.
There is a middle ground that is at some level really stupid but functional in that edge case.
You can buy BT to 3.5mm adapters that charge with USB-C. Most of the time charge isn’t an issue so you get the benefits of wireless headphones but in a pinch you can charge the adapter off your phone.
Is it dumb to use BT for two devices physically plugged into one another — yes. Does it work for the few times it’s needed — absolutely!
They still make CDs, and in fact they're the only way to get many albums in a lossless digital format with no DRM.
> RCA audio jacks
You must not own a nice stereo amplifier. These are still the norm.
> VGA
90% of the classrooms at the university I work at have projectors with VGA only input. While it doesn't matter to me personally, I can see why some people want their laptop to be able to connect to these "obsolete" cables.
> It’s been probably 4 years since I’ve even used a device with a 3.5mm plug.
Well, good for you? Just like CDs and RCA cables, the 3.5 mm jack still works great. In fact it's the best (in terms of quality and reliability) consumer audio connector we've ever had, and probably ever will have. It's more than understandable why people would complain about having to switch to something that isn't as good. Just because you don't care about these issues doesn't mean that other people shouldn't.
I mean dongle hell is pretty annoying but I do see the argument against having a bunch of ports when there’s an “everything if you wire the pins right” port.
If adequate replacements really aren't available, that could be an indication that the people desiring such replacements truly are in a small minority, and that the market is functioning as it ought to.
Your bluetooth experiences don't mimic the majority. You've just had some shitty headphones and/or Android phones. Never a problem on my iphones 4, 6, 8 Plus and I'm sure my soon to be 11 Pro with 10s of bluetooth enabled devices (cars, headphones, speakers, etc).
I never claimed that my experiences reflected the majority. However, my experience is shared by a lot of other people nonetheless.
Also, I've tried a wide variety of different bluetooth earphones on a variety of different smartphones. If the problem is just that I haven't found the right combination, then I'd say that is an argument against bluetooth for this purpose.
I shouldn't have to do a deep research dive just to find the combination that works. We're talking about listening to music here, not something tricky where a large research effort is justified.
I'm on Android and bluetooth works fine in my car, with all the limitations that bluetooth has.
I use a headphone jack for headphones because I'm an audio snob and it's much better audio quality with zero latency, I can use quality headphones, and I don't have to charge another thing. Bluetooth is a step backwards.
pros of headphone jack:
much better audio quality, zero latency, lighter headphones, one less thing to charge every day
cons of headphone jack:
a wire
For me it's no contest, and there's no reason we can't have both.
I definitely won't be buying a phone without a headphone jack, and the suggestion that I have to make that compromise is stupid.
I use an iPhone 6s and sometimes my AirPods cut out randomly, and loses signal if they're in my pocket. I've been on quite a few walks where I need to hold my iPhone in my hand instead of having it in my pocket in order to listen to my podcast or whatever. Sometimes it's not a problem at all, though. Sometimes they don't charge, so I can only use 1 AirPod while I wait 5 minutes for the other one to charge a little. I can really understand why someone might find bluetooth maddening, but personally I find the wires even more annoying. Different strokes...
> Just based on iPhone sales it doesn’t look like many people actually care, but those who do, boy are they vocal about it.
Hmm... You mean how iPhone sales have platued in the 3 years since this change was introduced or do you mean how 2016, the year they got rid of the headphone jack, was the first year in the history of the iPhone where sales decreased? I am not really seeing your point. (These numbers are primarily due to changes in the broader market)
I have lived with no headphone jack and done the dance with Bluetooth dongles and wireless headphones. Even if you avoid the pairing issues, battery is consistently an issue. Making sure that the various dongles are charged when you need them is adding unnecesary cognitive load.
Bro. It's the descent into modernism we're talking about here. The fall of Eurasian civilization into degenerate idiocracy. Do we scrape the exoplanets or do we pick through our own landfills for the rest of eternity? It all hinges on the 3.5 mm headphone jack.
All those technologies you named above are part of my daily life. I can't imagine not saving my (plaintext) writing on a floppy. I listen to CDs, and I watch DVDs. All of my video output is VGA or CGA. My DVD player uses RCA.
The 3.5 mm jack works - and it works well. I can connect audio devices together which were created a century apart. Heck, I use the same earphones in my phone, my computer, my TV, and my grandparents' record player. No software is required, no time is wasted "pairing". It just works. And I believe every piece of new tech should be held to the same standard - if it can't work as efficiently and as compatibly as a 3.5mm jack, take it back to the drawing board until it does.
except you are ignoring the fact that the newer technologies we're drastically better. usb drives were far greater than floppy disks. cds were better then cassettes. Bluetooth is better than 3.5mm in a few small ways but inferior in every other way.
there was no reason why phone manufacturers couldn't leave the headphone jack alone until Bluetooth was ready but it was mainly a money grab to force customers to buy their bt headphones
I use my Airpods on my android phone, and they're pretty nice for when I'm doing housework and working around the shop. When I'm at work, I plug in my plantronics headset for conference calls, and my regular cans when I'm listening to music. Airpods don't have the stamina to keep up with a long day of work, nor the sound quality I want - they are a compromise device.
I don't really care about this debate too much anymore, since it seems that a few good manufacturers are still clued in that this is an actual need that a lot of people have (I've been using a Moto G5, and now I'm using an S9). But it is odd to still pushing the claim that "everyone got over it" with regards to headphone jacks - I never got over it, and I continue to vote with my wallet.