Honestly I’d be happy with a phone sporting two USB C ports, one centered and one off to the side where the headphone jack used to be, both fully functional.
Comment on Zero-day: Bluetooth gap turns millions of headphones into listening stations
tal@lemmy.today 14 hours agoI mean, there were legitimate technical issues with the standard, especially on smartphones, which is where they really got pushed out. Most other devices do have headphones jacks. If I get a laptop, it’s probably got a headphones jack. Radios will have headphones jacks. Get a mixer, it’s got a headphones jack. I don’t think that the standard is going to vanish anytime soon in general.
I like headphones jacks. I have a ton of 1/8" and 1/4" devices and headphones that I happily use. But they weren’t doing it for no reason.
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From what I’ve read, the big, driving one that drove them out on smartphones was that the jack just takes up a lot more physical space in the phone than USB-C or Bluetooth. I’d rather just have a thicker phone, but a lot of people don’t, and if you’re going all over the phone trying to figure out what to eject to buy more space, that’s gonna be a big target. For people who do want a jack on smartphones, which invariably have USB-C, you can get a similar effect to having a headphones jack by just leaving a USB-C audio interface with a headphones jack on the end of your headphones (one with a passthrough USB-C port if you also want to use a USB-C port for other things).
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A second issue was that the standard didn’t have a way to provide power (there was a now-dead extension from many years back that was dead, IIRC for MD players, that let a small amount of power be provided with an extra ring). That didn’t matter for a long time, as long as your device could put out a strong enough signal to drive headphones of whatever impedance you had. But ANC has started to become popular now, and you need power for ANC. This is really the first time I think that there’s a solid reason to want to power headphones.
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The connection got shorted when plugging things in and out, which could result in loud sound on the membrane.
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USB-C is designed so that the springy tensioning stuff that’s there to keep the connection solid is on the (cheap, easy to replace) cord rather than the (expensive, hard to replace) device; I understand reading that this was a major reason that micro-USB replaced mini-USB. Instead of your device wearing out, the cord wears out. Not as much of an issue for headphones, but I think that it’s probably fair to say that it’s desirable to have the tensioning on the cord side.
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On USB-C, the right part breaks. One irritation I have with USB-C is that it is…kind of flimsy. Like, it doesn’t require that much force pushing on a plug sideways to damage a plug. However — and I don’t know if this was a design goal for USB-C, though I suspect it was — my experience has been that if that happens, it’s the plug on the (cheap, easy to replace) cord that gets damaged, not the device. I have a television with a headphones jack that I destroyed by tripping over a headphones cord once, because the headphones jack was nice and durable and let me tear components inside the television off. I’ve damaged several USB-C cables, but I’ve never damaged the device they’re connected to while doing so.
On an interesting note, the standard is extremely old, probably one of the oldest data standards in general use today; the 1/4" mono standard was from phone switchboards in the 1800s.
isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 9 hours ago
Unboxious@ani.social 12 hours ago
That’s great and all but I’m not switching to Bluetooth headphones and I’m definitely not going to fiddle around with dongles every time I switch between listening on my phone and my PC. Phones are gigantic anyways; let my have my headphone jack. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that all these smartphone manufacturers that ditched the old standard will happily sell you shiny expensive disposable wireless earbuds.
baguettefish@discuss.tchncs.de [bot] 11 hours ago
as someone has been fiddling with dongles for years, it’s not that bad, and you can just permanently connect your headphones to your dongle. the apple dongle is excellent and beyond enough for iems and a lot of headphones. I personally have one dongle + iems for my phone and another dongle + headphones for my PC, and that setup works really well for me. You might want to consider it. Otherwise, those big beefy Bluetooth headphones might be semi-repairable, and there are of course also Fairphone Bluetooth earbuds that are apparently fairly repairable (though I know nothing about those). At least you can replace the batteries and the ear tips or pads, and that’s usually enough to last you a decade with these things.
Unboxious@ani.social 11 hours ago
you can just permanently connect your headphones to your dongle
No. Fuck that. My PC has a headphone jack, and I use it. I don’t have a bunch of extra USB-C ports on the front of my computer. Modern phones have plenty of spaces for headphone jacks. They could put it there, they just don’t want to.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 8 hours ago
I used a USB connection through my KVM to connect to one computer or the next. But it’s just something to plug my headphones into the 3.5mm jack.
Since it never gets unplugged, it doesn’t get lost; unlike all those “just have this snowflake dongle in one of all of your stuff so it can get lost monthly and you can buy another” people.
Again: my startac 7800 had a jack and it was tiny. Apple and Samsung have NO EXCUSE.
baguettefish@discuss.tchncs.de [bot] 11 hours ago
phones are already very full and dense, and a headphone jack is a very large component. plus, the Bluetooth is simply part of the small SoC, it’s a microscopic size. That doesn’t mean I prefer Bluetooth, but it makes some sense.
jonathan@lemmy.zip 13 hours ago
Great post, thank you.
gloktawasright@lemm.ee 8 hours ago
I know someone who works somewhat high up at Apple and he told me another reason was that they really wanted to improve the water proofing.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 8 hours ago
That’s just gaslighting. Other phones had audio jacks, water protection, and you didn’t have to hold them funny.
TheBat@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Yeah. One Samsung flagship phone (before they went down the Apple way) had headphone jack and stylus but still had better IP rating than iPhone.
wingsfortheirsmiles@feddit.uk 13 hours ago
I lot of great points here, I would be on aboard if phone therefore had two USB-C ports as standard
Bob_Robertson_IX@discuss.tchncs.de 12 hours ago
I think this is a case where the corporations were telling people what they wanted rather than people really asking for thinner phones. Same thing with bezels, I don’t know anyone who asked for the screen to go all the way to the edge (or worse, curve around onto the sides). Apple and Samsung said ‘this is what people want’ when in fact it was what their marketing department wanted because they wouldn’t be able to sell the iGalaxy N+1 if it was slightly thicker or heavier than the iGalaxy N.