As an audio engineer, the headphone jack removal trend is an absolute travesty in an industry that utilizes AUX IN audio capabilities night after night.
I'm often using iPods or other local-music devices to pump sound into concert venues between acts. Taking away 1/8" audio standards in favor of USB-C or Lightning non-standardized ports causes chaos when needing to fill in music in a pinch.
In my industry, I simply cannot live without a standard audio port, which absolutely no one was clamoring to discard.
If my 1st generation Pixel were to break today, I'd buy another 1st generation Pixel.
I'm not against removing the Aux port on principal or anything, but I just don't understand why we're going toward removing seemingly core hardware.
Even on desktops/laptops 3.5mm audio is still used. Why do we need dongles to use core features?
Especially since we're removing an "out" port, now we're reliant on a single port to manage all in and out. I don't want to carry dongles to be able to use my phone normally.
Desktops and laptops have different constraints than phones. Bluetooth uses less power (from the device), makes waterproofing easier, and frees up space for battery. I personally would prefer having a headphone jack on the phone (even though I've never used mine), but I understand why they did what they did.
While driving the headphones, sure - I'll believe that in certain cases with high-draw headphones. But from a daily power drain perspective, I find that very hard to believe. Bluetooth transmitting is going to be orders of magnitude higher draw than corded earbuds. And when you're not actively listening, standby is still digging Bluetooth further in the hole.
It's hardly a scientific study, but it reinforces my prior belief that aux doesn't inherently require any electricity, while bluetooth is sending information over radio waves which of course has to use electricity.
I'm not sure about the difference when it comes to fancy, high-powered headphones, but my (anecdotal) experience with bluetooth vs. analog certainly supports the idea that bluetooth uses more power. I'd appreciate some citations if you have some other information about this subject.
AUX has to send electricity down the wire to drive the speakers in headphones. The Quora article you link to is weirdly written but confirms this, "the signal is from your phone and your phone uses it's battery to make it." I.e., headphones work by taking electricity from your phone and converting it to sound.
What on earth do you need a scientific study on? There are speakers in the headphones that produce audio. Where do you think the power for that comes from?
its up to the phone how much amplification there is on the analog output. the latest BT specification is pretty low power, but which is lowest will depend. in my own experience, it seems like i get longer battery when using the jack over the BT radio, but i have not tested this rigorously
My audio jack is neither core nor I need a dongle after it's removal. On the go I've got BeatsX, at the desk, I use good headphones which are connected via USB.
If you work in 'the industry', surely it would not be a big deal to carry around an adapter a long with the other standard tools of your trade? I imagine it'll be about as inconvenient as carrying around ear buds.
It is much more likely that I misplace an adapter or break the connector or break the port than it is that I have a problem with a built-in 3.5mm jack. And, similarly, this is why we still use 1/4" jacks and XLR for real audio gear. We could make all this stuff smaller, we could make all this stuff digital, but it'd be more stuff that breaks on us.
I lost my iOS headphones and the little white adapter so I can use the "old" plug. For the past two days I have been running in the gym without listening to absolutely nothing even though I have like 20 headphones in my closet. What a stupid idea.
"I'm sure you can put up with this massive inconvenience for a job and workflow I have no understanding of or context for but sure do have an opinion on"
The audio industry is the most adapter-heavy industry on the planet. I need to carry a bag of adapters, and I'm just a small-time home-recording guy.
Single/double RCA to mono/stereo big/small jack, double mono/stereo big/small jack to stereo/mono small/big jack, the other way around, and more, you name it.
Even if you got a 3.5mm jack, you’d still need adapters, because very little audio equipment uses 3.5mm jacks anyway. Even the most basic stuff only carries 1/4”, RCA or XLR. My headphones do not carry a 3.5mm jack as well.
You might think of committing to a single cable-type everywhere, and being done with it – but if you’ve ever coded in the real world you know how realistic that sounds.
I'm with you, fellow small time home recording guy who needs to carry around adapters. My synth is 3.5mm out, my mixer is XLR / 1/4 inch Mono or Stereo, my piano puts out in mono or stereo 1/4, and on and on and on.
I still think that the hubris to say 'what's one more adaptor' is enormous.
A 3.5-to-1/4 adapter or cable is a difference of kind to a Lightning or USB adapter. One costs me a couple bucks, is electrical, and in a pinch I can even repair it in the field. The other costs me no doubt more (and I say "no doubt" because I can't even find one for an Android device, and that's before we get into compatibility-matrix craziness), is digital, and is a black box to me.
With the iPhone, some combos are no longer possible with any adaptor. For example, audio out and data in. Nobody makes an audio+data dongle, only audio+charge.
I love my Pixel, but they just lost me as a customer for this reason. I'm not totally against removing the headphone jack, but it's not time yet -- the transition has been done poorly.
Same. I have a variety of different things that use the headphone jack. A good pair of headphones, a couple of pairs of sound-isolating earbuds, a couple of pairs of open-ear headphones for running and walking. Because those are cheap, I can always keep a set where I need them. If I lose them or give them away, NBD.
Taking away the headphone jack does not solve any problem I have. It would impose extra costs, both in conversion, and ongoing. And it gives me a worse experience overall.
Why is it not time yet? When I lost my Pixel on a trip, I switched to an iPhone 7 + airpods and it's been great. I don't want to go back to wired headphones. Apple certainly seems to have nailed it. I can't imagine Google + HTC can't too.
It's great that they work well for you, but AirPods and the like don't work well for me at all. The audio quality drop is noticeable to me; interference is a perpetual problem even when I'm just walking down the street or walking through my apartment. Bluetooth on both Android and iOS is clunky and annoying (and it's not totally their fault, the devices and the protocol have something to say about that) that the physical act of jacking headphones into a device makes unambiguous and easy. I very much want to be able to take the headphones I use on my computer and just go rather than play the pairing/reconnect dance or whatever.
If I don't care about what I'm listening to that much (podcasts etc.), wireless headphones are fine, don't get me wrong, but the usability across-the-board still sucks, while not in any way or at any level improving the experience for me. It is a strictly worse experience.
I'm not going to get into an audiophile/golden ear flamewar, but I am always skeptical of this claim. Yes, SBC is not the world's best, but it supports bitrates upto 500 kbit/s. I'm not going to claim it is completely transparent, but 9 times out of 10 it is being used with shitty bluetooth headphones (where the alternative is shitty wired headphones)... at that point the quality of the headphones (wired or not) has far more to do with the audio quality than anything.
And yes, I doubt most people will notice an audio quality drop in a pair of high quality Sennheisers going from wired to SBC (there isn't convincing evidence that aptX is much better than SBC). I wouldn't be too surprised about a conflicting experimental result, but skeptical for now. Anyway, most people are not hooking up high quality headphones to their phone, or they are purposefully using phones tuned for a particular lo-fi response (Beats)... who cares about whatever SBC does at 350 kbit/s at that point.
Edit: And walking down the street is hardly a hi-fi listening environment.
The audio quality issue is not due to encoding. It's due to garbling and interference from, you know, the two feet from my pocket to my headphones while sitting at home in my apartment. This has happened in every apartment I've lived in since getting Bluetooth headphones. It happened in my parents' house with a quarter mile to any neighbors. It happens when walking down the street. It happens at the gym. It happens at the office.
In an optimum environment it's fine. In the real world, having my headphones make farty noises in my ears two or three times in a ten-minute walk is silly and we live in the future and it should be better than that.
I ride the subway in NYC every day, and this is especially bad on my commute. The interference is absolutely unacceptable, and has convinced me that bluetooth is not ready at all for my use case.
The issue has nothing to do with bitrate. The first issue is that the signal cuts out randomly due to interference. The second is that you have to convert the signal to analog and DAC quality matters.
To increase battery life, you have to go with more simplistic conversion which reduces quality. To reduce the cost of 2 DACs (one per ear) you have to use worse hardware. The net result is that the onboard DAC is basically guaranteed to be better and the amount of interference over wired headphones will be minimal.
The airpods themselves, sold as a premium experience, lack the additional comfort and noise isolation of quality headphones.
The mere prevalence of people enjoying the stock iphone, ipod, cheap airline, and wireless headphones -- versus isolation quality you can get in a $20 pair of sony's suggests I'm a minority when it comes to audio quality.
You're really asking why overpriced wireless devices with mediocre to atrocious battery life and substandard audio quality are not a sufficient replacement for devices you can literally buy in any convenience store around the world for tens of dollars? There is room for a headphone jack in these phones (video below). The only reason they removed them when they did is to push accessory sales.
> The only reason they removed them when they did is to push accessory sales
This is baseless and ridiculous.
They did it because people are expecting more out of their phones e.g. better cameras, better screen, battery life, TouchID, FaceID all whilst demanding the same thickness. Something has to give. First it was the 30-pin adapter, now it's headphone, next will be SIM.
And Apple makes so little from their accessory sales compared to everything else they do so it is illogical they would intentionally cripple their flagship device to make a few hundred million.
> They did it because people are expecting more out of their phones e.g. better cameras, better screen, battery life, TouchID, FaceID all whilst demanding the same thickness. Something has to give. First it was the 30-pin adapter, now it's headphone, next will be SIM.
Way to completely ignore the fact that there is room for a headphone jack in the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 8. It was not removed in order to make room for anything. See the video I posted above.
My biggest problem with this is that I do not want to have yet another device that requires batteries and/or charging in order for it to function. Wired headphones powered through the audio cable are simple, don't quit working if their battery drain, don't require charging, and you can find them anywhere if you need a replacement.
I have... I don't even know. 20? 50? devices that need to be charged on a regular basis. I really don't want to charge anything besides my phone and my laptop. I don't want the ritual of taking 2 or 5 or 10 different things out of my bag at the end of the day, plugging them in, and then unplugging them and rewrapping the cables and putting them back into my bag. That is not "convenience" in my book.
There's also a small level of cognitive overhead involved with remembering which devices were charged when. We're not talking rocket science here but most of us are IMHO already in a constant state of distraction thanks to information overload, and I don't want more variables to think about.
Well for starters we are still at a point where the majority of owned headphones use a 3.5mm. Bluetooth is becoming more popular, sure, but 3.5 is still the norm. Now I have to carry around an adapter to use any of the nice pairs of headphones I own? Alternatively I have to buy a pair of $200 airpods that sound like garbage to get the full experience? The market isn't ready.
For me it's not time yet because it's a clunky and annoying process to switch bluetooth earbuds from my phone to my laptop and back, at least compared to the simplicity of unplugging something. This is something I do multiple times a day.
Apple is the only company that has figured out how to make it easy, but it requires a iphone/macbook of course.
I’m chaffing at the naked push towards buying apple’s expensive wireless earbuds here. I buy apple because they are the best phone out there, but lately I have been very frustrated with headphone dongles and looking elsewhere. I don’t want to buy more apple hardware to solve a problem apple created, and my other Bluetooth headphones are a nightmare to keep paired and charged.
Yep, after being really impressed with the Pixel I knew Pixel 2 was going to be my next phone. Not anymore. Lack of the headphone jack is an absolute no-go for me.
I think Google is okay with that. They know the phone isn't for everybody and fortunately there's a lot of choice in the Android world.
If you want to run iOS apps, you are kind of stuck taking what Apple gives you and so I think the frustration with removal of the headphone jack there is warranted. I don't understand why anybody cares that Google is doing this. We have a lot of choice in the Android world.
Because being forced to go to another Android device means you no longer get stock Android. That's why it's annoying.
Having used every Nexus device from the One through to my current PixelXL, except for the Nexus 6 which I skipped in favour of the OnePlus One, I'm very annoyed I'm going to have to put up with :
1) Someone else's skin on Android
2) Someone else's schedule for supplying my phone with software updates, which from my experience with the OnePlus One, and with anecdotal evidence from everyone who hasn't had a Google device seems to be "sometime, if ever".
Do you actually use the headphone jack? Most people don't and because of wireless headphones, I bet the number that do is getting smaller each year. I think the best you could say is that it's too early to get rid of the jack. It's definitely on track to get to the point where the value of it is less than the cost of it.
>>I don't understand why anybody cares that Google is doing this.
Because I wanted to buy a Pixel, and now I won't because of a decision they made? I can of course go and buy something else, but I'm just voicing my displeasure with this.
Yep. All that was needed to get me to switch from my current iPhone 6/iOS was a current Google branded Android phone with a headphone jack. Now there is no reason for me to switch if I am going to be stuck buying a bunch of adapters.
I wonder how many customers they will lose because of this decision? What I don't actually understand is what exactly is gained by its removal? It doesn't seem to be a limiting factor in either thinness or waterproofing, which are the only two I can think of.
I know I for one will never buy a phone with no headphone jack.
I think (good implementations of) wireless headphones are the way of the future.
What did they gain by removing floppy disk drives from laptops? Well, nothing per se, but it allowed them to make smaller laptops.
Removing the jack will allow them to make phones thinner - if not now, in future iterations.
And the thing with keeping features around is that it's not just a question of that one feature. It's cumulative over time. It's not just a question of removing the floppy drive, it's that AND the internal modem AND the CD drive, etc. The effects can add up.
The floppy disk stopped being good at moving files between computers and making backups because single files of popular types regularly exceeded its capacity at the time it stopped being a standard feature. Modems and CD drives had fallen into disuse in favor of alternatives by the time they started getting left out.
The analog headphone jack still does as good a job of connecting headphones, speakers and such in a practical sense as it always did. Perhaps even better since cars have aux in ports most of the time now[0]. It hasn't fallen into disuse either. While bluetooth headphones exist and enjoy some popularity, most people I know own, and regularly use wired headphones.
I don't think the analogy holds. The headphone jack is still as useful and popular with consumers as it ever was.
[0] Yes, they also usually have bluetooth, but getting a car and a phone to pair, and getting the right phone to be paired at the right time isn't always a good UX.
> The floppy disk stopped being good at moving files between computers and making backups because single files of popular types regularly exceeded its capacity at the time it stopped being a standard feature. Modems and CD drives had fallen into disuse in favor of alternatives by the time they started getting left out.
There were still people who had stuff on floppies who wanted floppy drives.
There was a big fuss when Apple first removed CD drives from their laptops.
> The analog headphone jack still does as good a job of connecting headphones, speakers and such in a practical sense as it always did.
Many people -- I'm not claiming it's the majority -- disagree. Many people find headphone cables a big pain in the ass.
> While bluetooth headphones exist and enjoy some popularity, most people I know own, and regularly use wired headphones.
At least part of that is that wireless headphones tend to be expensive and many of them aren't the best at pairing and staying connected. Those things aren't inherent to wireless technology and will change over time.
> Yes, they also usually have bluetooth, but getting a car and a phone to pair, and getting the right phone to be paired at the right time isn't always a good UX.
Again, that's nothing inherent to wireless. Apparently the Apple wireless pairing works pretty perfectly.
> Many people find headphone cables a big pain in the ass.
But they don't also find having to charge headphones, and eventually to throw them out and purchase new ones, to be 'a big pain in the ass'?
> At least part of that is that wireless headphones tend to be expensive and many of them aren't the best at pairing and staying connected. Those things aren't inherent to wireless technology and will change over time.
I'm pretty sure that expense and complexity are inherent to wireless. No wireless connexion is going to be as cheap and reliable as an equivalent wired connexion, if only because the wireless connexion terminates in … a wire.
The complexity in wireless such as Bluetooth is strictly because it's a digital, packed-switched network driven by a fairly complicated software stack.
Basically, chaos originates from the involvement of computer science.
Cordless home phones and "900 Mhz" wireless headphones to use around the house are dead friggin' simple and reliable.
> But they don't also find having to charge headphones, and eventually to throw them out and purchase new ones, to be 'a big pain in the ass'?
you have to buy at least one pair of wireless headphones (and eventually they'll be bundled with phones), but you wouldn't need to replace them any more frequently than other headphones. This is the way with all changes. When wifi first became available we had to buy new modems.
As for charging them, that doesn't seem like a big pain to me. I charge my phone and laptop each day, this is just one other thing. For me the benefits -- no cables to get tangled (and have to untangle) or get caught on things -- outweigh the costs.
> I'm pretty sure that expense and complexity are inherent to wireless. No wireless connexion is going to be as cheap and reliable as an equivalent wired connexion, if only because the wireless connexion terminates in … a wire.
I hear the air pods are very reliable.
Regarding expense, if economies of scale get going, which I believe will happen, and manufacturers get more experience making them, then this will make the prices come down.
> but you wouldn't need to replace them any more frequently than other headphones
Except that the batteries will eventually stop holding a charge. This is not a problem with wired headphones. I can plug a 40 year old pair of headphones my Dad got in college into my phone and they work the same now as they did then. You can't do that with wireless headphones.
This is an argument against non-removable batteries more than against wireless headphones in general. There's no reason headphones can't have both onboard charging and removable batteries in standardized sizes. It's fairly common in higher-end flashlights, for example.
And, it's not like most wired headphones last forever. I must have gone through 5 - 10 pairs in the last few years. Admittedly most of these were towards the lower-end, but still, they just stopped working.
>> The analog headphone jack still does as good a job of connecting headphones, speakers and such in a practical sense as it always did.
>Many people -- I'm not claiming it's the majority -- disagree. Many people find headphone cables a big pain in the ass.
I agree completely - wireless headphones are amazing, I hate dealing with cables.
My first pair of bluetooth headphones were shit, and very difficult to switch devices, so I went back to wired. My second pair of bluetooth headphones (Bose QC something) are fantastic! Easily connect to multiple devices, easily switch between the devices. My third (AirPods) are similarly amazing, easy to switch devices, easy to pair.
I'm never buying a pair of wired headphones again.
When they removed floppy drives it was because there was a better alternative. I don’t agree that Bluetooth is a better alternative than a cord that is 100% reliable to pair, perfect audio quality, and never needs to be charged
> From what I've heard the ear pods are very reliable to pair and have good audio quality.
I think the comparison to removal of floppy drives fails here because neither is clearly superior to the other.
Wired headphones are inconvenient (you need a wire) but have great sound quality and reliability. They're also cheap. Wireless headphones are convenient in some aspects (no wires) but inconvenient in others (need to charge them) and have decent quality and somewhat less reliability. They're also expensive.
You can't say wireless headphones supersede wired headphones, they just choose different tradeoffs.
> have decent quality and somewhat less reliability
I don't believe that is inherently true about wireless headphones.
Re: tradeoffs, you can say that about any set of alternatives, and there can still be one option that in the long term is best for most people. Eg horses vs cars as means for personal transport.
> I don't believe that is inherently true about wireless headphones.
I believe it is. Wireless headphones are subject to interference while wired ones are not. Physical connections are much less likely to fail. Wired headphones also lack batteries.
> Re: tradeoffs, you can say that about any set of alternatives, and there can still be one option that in the long term is best for most people. Eg horses vs cars as means for personal transport.
It's true that whether a product is superior to another is a subjective decision but I think there's a threshold to be met in terms of numbers.
Horses vs. cars is easy: Cars today are cheaper, faster, safer, require less space and require less maintenance than horses. The number of people who'd prefer a horse to a car is insignificant.
Wired vs. wireless is much closer. I think at best 50% of people would prefer wireless after trying them for a week or two.
Wireless and wired aren't mutually exclusive either. There's no reason a phone can't support both wired and wireless headphones and let people choose. That's what we've had for years now and unsurprisingly, wireless headphones haven't really taken off.
> Wireless headphones are subject to interference while wired ones are not.
The GSM "buzz" would like to have a word with you.
Admittedly it's no longer much of an issue as that standard is not used much anymore, but still...
> I think at best 50% of people would prefer wireless
I'm curious what your sample size on that is, as literally everyone I know who switched to a (good) pair a bluetooth headphones (20+ at this point) is 100% on the wireless bandwagon, myself included.
Admittedly - a large portion of that 20+ samples of anecdata are from pool players who like to wear headphones while playing the game. The fact that there are no wires means that said players no longer have to come up with a way of dealing with the wire to prevent it from interfering in the game (so, sure, my sample is biased).
> Wireless headphones are subject to interference while wired ones are not.
That's not true. Have you ever had gunk get into your headphone jack and have that affect the sound? I have.
> Physical connections are much less likely to fail.
I hear the air pods are pretty reliable. I've had plenty of wired headphones either stop working properly or stop working altogether. Wires can get yanked and this an effect the internal connections in the headphones, for example.
> Wired headphones also lack batteries.
The literal text of what I was replying to was "have decent quality and somewhat less reliability", and batteries have nothing to do with that.
> Horses vs. cars is easy: Cars today are cheaper, faster, safer, require less space and require less maintenance than horses. The number of people who'd prefer a horse to a car is insignificant.
We're not talking about horses vs cars today, we're talking about horses vs cars when cars were being introduced! That's the analogous situation.
> I think at best 50% of people would prefer wireless after trying them for a week or two.
On what grounds?
> Wireless and wired aren't mutually exclusive either. There's no reason a phone can't support both wired and wireless headphones and let people choose.
Yes, that's true. But I think that the longer-term picture is different. More features means more cost and complexity. And you can't consider this just in the context of one issue. It's cumulative over time. An analogy here is all the various features that have been lost in desktop and laptop computers over the years (and replaced by different ones). Sure, any one of those isn't necessarily a big deal, but in the longer term it's not about individual ones. If you said that about each individual feature, and kept it on, the devices these days would be really encumbered with all sorts of stuff.
> That's what we've had for years now and unsurprisingly, wireless headphones haven't really taken off.
We're not talking about decades and decades of good, consumer-level priced wireless technology. It's still pretty new, and that also means it's still pretty expensive. I think it's clear that a fair number of people who are against the wireless headphones still haven't actually tried good one, which shows that the exposure levels for the technology is still pretty low.
And removing the jack is the kind of thing that may push the adoption of wireless headphones and lead to the kinds of economies of scales that reduce the price and lead to more takeup.
Ethernet makes less sense on a mobile device, because you don’t carry routers on your body, and the standard was no where near as old. Again, removing because there was a better alternative. Adaptors are not a better alternative. Bluetooth is not a better alternative.
Your metaphor is dropping important details. The cable mattered because it tethered you to a location, which is not true of headphones. Routers also didn’t need to be charged before or after.
The headphone cables tether you to your phone. There are times when you want to be able to put down your phone and be able to use headphones but not be physically connected to it. Eg lying in bed listening to music, but then getting up to go to get something from the kitchen (and not having to pick up your phone, or carry it with you, or unplug the headphones) before lying back down again. And being able to do that while continuing to listen to the music.
Routers need to be plugged into a wall socket. Batteries don't require that constant use of a cable or socket.
I mostly use my headphone jack to connect to stereo systems at home and in the car, so wireless headphones don't really help (nevermind how much more expensive they are and issues with sound).
I understand that's the case now - I did say "the way of the future". I believe wireless will become the standard everywhere (for everyday use, at least).
Any transition like that is going to be awkward at first. If people tried to wait for perfect conditions, progress would never be made.
But does every networked device have ethernet these days? My laptop doesn't, nor does my phone. There are some contexts where Ethernet is more appropriate, but that doesn't mean it's more appropriate everywhere.
> Pushing progress is not an excuse to force transition with cost and effort burden on customers.
You can't make progress without doing some of that.
> But does every networked device have ethernet these days? My laptop doesn't, nor does my phone.
Every stationary or semi-stationary networked device should probably have Ethernet. A desktop or laptop should; a phone shouldn't (because it's mobile). It'd be nice if IoT thermostats and the like were wired, but that would require homes to have Ethernet-over-power or Ethernet runs in the walls or something.
WiFi is inferior to Ethernet, except when mobility is necessary. So for mobile devices like phones, it's not needed. For tablets, probably not (but imagine if your charging cable could also carry fast, reliable networking to your tablet, so you could have a better experience while reading or watching TV, but still be able to get up & go).
> Removing the jack will allow them to make phones thinner - if not now, in future iterations.
People keep saying this but the circuitry and the depth was very small. There was even that guy from China who hacked a working 3.5mm jack into the iPhone 7 without changing its shape AT ALL yet Apple cited that they had to remove it to fit in more stuff.
If this isn't something that's useful to remove now, they should wait until it IS useful. It's all very frustrating. I now have my non-techie family asking me what to do with their phone that doesn't have a headphone jack or they're asking for support for their bluetooth headphones which MOST of them still completely SUCK (especially for the average user).
I mean I ultimately agree with you but I think we're still years away.
They can make the phone thinner, but they are only doing that by putting more hardware (a DAC) into the headphone. It's massively duplicating one component for such a negligible advantage.
I don't think the consumer cares about such duplication (indirectly, they will, if it makes the headphones cost more, though I think that cost will go down over time).
An advantage I didn't mention in my original comment is: getting rid of cables. Personally, I hate headphone cables. They seem to always be getting tangled up when the headphones aren't in use (meaning I have to mess around untangling them before using them), and always caught on things while I'm wearing them.
It's cost vs benefit. Obviously there's differences of opinions on the costs vs benefits, but I'm of the view that the benefits of wireless outweigh the costs of charging the headphones.
Its a dealbreaker for me. Otherwise, I would have considered the phone. I use my headphone jack nearly every day. I have a nice pair of Shure earphones that I use. I have no desire to get some wireless earphones. The headphone jack is small, durable, and ubiquitous. Removing it is idiotic.
man. you're in the audio industry. most people are not. I'm talking the VAST majority of people. So they should cater to you? I think it is not unreasonable to expect the professional to have whatever equipment they need - there are aux adapters for USB C and lightning. They are small. They are inexpensive.
This was an unnecessary change no matter how you slice it. Just look at the other options: bluetooth or an adapter. With bluetooth you have to pair it and remember to charge the headphones. With an adapter you have to remember to bring it everywhere if you want to listen to a podcast or music or audio book. They say they're making a simple device but they're making my life more complicated. This is one of the few times where I'll get upset over such a simple change, especially since I was planning to buy a Pixel 2 until they announced this.
I'm not an audio professional and I think there's far more like me that you can't ignore.
then use another type of connector for headphones. aux does not have to be the only connector forever. what makes this so special that it is the only connector that people refuse to upgrade? EVERY OTHER CONNECTOR has gone through improvements. new USB standards. new video. everything. why is this any different?
> then use another type of connector for headphones.
USB-C is a nice connector, and for digital headsets it is pretty nice, but it has some disadvantages (and advantages!) compared to standard headphone jack:
1. Portable devices tend to only have 1, so no listening to music while charging. Common in car scenarios, not all cars have BT audio, and BT audio implementations in cars can vary in quality by large factors.
2. Sound degradation over BT is a problem. Recompressing an already compressed file (e.g. MP3) is going to result in a loss of quality. Since a lot of music is streamed at a bitrate that is "just above noticeable loss", further compression will result in a sound quality decrease.
3. It moves the DAC to outside the phone. This is mostly a good thing, assuming the dongle uses a good DAC, and eventually we'll see third party high quality USB-C DACs (as are already present on desktops for traditional USB)
4. Pure USB-C headphones require more engineering, and they require a type of engineering that headphone companies are not traditionally familiar with. Headphone companies are experts in making high quality analog sound systems, shoehorning the need for digital expertise is needless. (Though more and more headphone companies already have a digital team, it does raise the bar for new entrants.)
5. The AUX jack is pretty damn good. Replacing it with a digital jack isn't really needed. Even with a huge industry push, it'll be many many years before USB-C is everywhere, and if you count the professional markets, it will likely be decades, if ever. (This isn't helped by Apple pushing a competing standard!) Digital means software, which means things can and will go wrong. With an analog plug the quality of the signal is the quality of the physical connection and the wiring going between them, and as a species we have almost over a century of knowledge about analog signals. With digital, ideally quality never degrades, but with firmware/software bugs it can degrade, and to get optimal quality it'll require every device in a chain not have any bugs related to sound quality.
>EVERY OTHER CONNECTOR has gone through improvements. new USB standards. new video. everything. why is this any different?
Physical improvements have been necessary for USB to increase bandwidth. 3.5mm is a connector for carrying two (sometimes 3) analog signals, and backwards-incompatible changes aren't necessary until we develop a third ear.
What I really don't get is why we want to move the DAC into the headphone. It just makes sense to have a single DAC in the phone, that anything can plug into. Now every set of headphones needs its own DAC to convert that digital bluetooth/USB signal into something you can actually hear.
Then don't buy this phone. Headphones will soon all be either wireless or use USB C or lighting anyway. And if there are headphones that do not, use an adapter.
No one is going to move to usb c or lightning, it offers absolutely no intrinsic advantages over the 3.5 jack and isn’t going away from laptops, desktops, speakers and other electronics. You’ll just buy dongles or Bluetooth.
They end up having an intrinsic advantage when they are the only port present. I want the same jack for my headphones on my phone and laptop. I wish it was a 3.5mm, but since it isn't I'd prefer a lightning or USB C that did.
I bought headphones from Sennheiser with lifelong guarantee once, and I plan to use them until I die, just like my parents used their Sennheisers for decades.
There might be many people like that, but given the cost of such headphones they'd have to be a small percentage of the overall population of phone/headphone users.
No, only 24 to 60 months of all failures repaired, for free, without questions asked.
Afterwards you can get all parts replaced for basically nothing, though, or buy the replacement parts and do it yourself (I just replaced the leather pads and cabling on mine)
I agree the fact that a huge majority of headphones are still sold with the standard head phone jack - means the move is too early. Last release they even mentioned the head phone jack as a feature (and it was)..
I am not an audio engineer but I own a pair of bluetooth headphones and 2 devices that I use them with and it's a nightmare as both devices fight over it. It seems to be the USB problem all over but an order of magnitude worse. I can't just flip the cable over, I need to disable bluetooth temporarily on the device that I don't want to pair.
So you can arrive to your destination with 50% battery.
There's really no argument that paints headphone jack removal as a net positive. Samsung has proved you can waterproof a phone with one (and an SD card!).
I actually bought a $25 bluetooth -> aux adapter that sits in my car like 2 years ago. I get in my car, plug in my phone to charge, bluetooth turns on and auto connects.
Well, for some reason the ports on my phones would always kind of stop working at some point unless I held the headphone jack in at just the right angle. It wasn't the headphones because they would work fine on other devices.
> Well, for some reason the ports on my phones would always kind of stop working at some point
Lint. Headphone jacks and lightning ports on every iPhone I've ever owned would always stop working properly after 6 months to a year of being carried around in my pocket. (Sort of) easily fixed with a paperclip to pick the lint out of the port, of course, but annoying and the headphone jack was harder to clean than the lighting/dock connecter port.
Yeah, I love the direction LG has taken here. Rather than removing the port, they have added a higher quality DAC to make the inbuilt 3.5mm port even better!
So, I use it all the 3.5mm jack even more now. Is the idea behind an adaptor so that the user can use an even higher quality DAC?
Yes, I've hated this change ever since I got my last iPhone. It's a pain and doesn't actually improve anything. I bought a bunch of those little dongles because I always lose them.
I'm often using iPods or other local-music devices to pump sound into concert venues between acts. Taking away 1/8" audio standards in favor of USB-C or Lightning non-standardized ports causes chaos when needing to fill in music in a pinch.
In my industry, I simply cannot live without a standard audio port, which absolutely no one was clamoring to discard.
If my 1st generation Pixel were to break today, I'd buy another 1st generation Pixel.