We used to have earbuds that don’t need to be charged because they had a headphone jack, didn’t get lost so easily because they had a cord attached to a headphone jack, never lost the bluetooth connection because they had a headphone jack, and they cost less because they had a headphone jack. https://bsky.app/profile/daisyfm.bsky.social/post/3l3mfjc6sn62k
But they did tangle all the time. That was annoying.
And the cord would sometimes break inside/connector went bad.
Yeah, you’d snag the wire or slightly bend the connector and then you were just playing a game of making sure it stayed plugged into the exact right angle.
Had to make sure there has just the right tension on the left wire or you’d only get half the track. Bonus points for weirdly mixed stereo where that just sounded shit
Or replace it, those things were like 50 cents and all sorts of devices had earbuds delivered with them, included in the price.
and then you’d just replace them with one of the other three dozen you bought from Wal-Mart for five bucks back in 2016
And people wonder how the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and others like it came to be 🤦
hey I’ll have you know I keep all my broken earbuds in the same box in the garage with all the other cables and assorted dongles I can no longer identify and will likely never use, like any responsible citizen should
I don’t think earbuds make up a significant percentage of the patch to be here virtue signaling and shaming people for what they were encouraged to do by corporate greed. Your source says the great majority of the patch comes from agriculture and fishing.
I don’t think earbuds make up a significant percentage of the patch
Cheap and disposable plastics and electronics IS a significant part of the world garbage problem and yes, plastic particles is MOST of the garbage patch specifically.
be here virtue signaling and shaming people for what they were encouraged to do by corporate greed
Whoa, dude, hold your horses! I’m in no way blaming consumers. Making consumer electronics cheap crap that breaks easily and everything of decent quality prohibitively expensive is 100% on the greedy corporations, not their victims the consumers.
Your source says the great majority of the patch comes from agriculture and fishing.
Ok, admittedly a poor choice of example. Doesn’t invalidate my intended point though, however ill-stated heh
This is tough -
Making consumer electronics cheap crap that breaks easily and everything of decent quality prohibitively expensive is 100% on the greedy corporations, not their victims the consumers.
(US here) Gets me thinking about dollar store headphones. Consumers could buy decent headphones for about $10 direct from overseas. When that’s equivalent to more than an hour of wages, there’s still demand for the $1 version. Should this need not be met out of a sense of social responsibility?
(I don’t have a perfect answer myself)
Econ 101 on my mind here btw:
The problem is that our economic system has encouraged an environment where reputation is a thing to be immediately cashed out. You can’t even know if those $10 earbuds are any better than the $1 version.
When people talk about disposable plastic they don’t mean electronics like earbuds. They mean packaging, plastic bottles, plastic bags etc.
If you think Bluetooth earphones won’t also be in that pile once the batteries stop holding charge after 2 years, you’re in for a world of dissapointing sex
My point wasn’t wired vs wireless. It was disposable crap that breaks vs corporations not deliberately making crap the only thing most people can comfortably afford.
But they need to skimp on those few milligram ounces of solder per bud, so that they can make one extra low quality bud!
Or rather so they can make the same number of buds and double or more the profits for the amoral shareholder dividends.
My AirBudz are over five years old and still play for like five hours before I need to charge them… and I used them 40+ hours daily for all of those years.
How are your days 40+ hours long
We must know the secret of your 40+ hour days. Are you on Earth? What’s the battery tech like on your planet? We could use some help.
I’m here for the wired headphone -> pacific garbage patch vs lithium battery child labor -> wireless headphone fight 🍿
Or we could just have quality standards and price controls so that regular people can afford decent headphones that don’t break all the time whether they prefer wired or wireless 🤷
And a worldwide ban on child labor, of course.
Don’t fool yourself. Slave labor of children is not exclusive to batteries. They make most of the world’s textiles, for example.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods-print
Did I give you the impression I was fooling myself, or were you just speaking to the wider audience?
The wording implies that the wired headphones weren’t manufactured using child slave labor.
Somewhere the discussion chain has the following transition:
-> Hitler
Or if you buy the better ones you can usually replace the cord with a new one, making it work again.
The TWS equivalent to that is one of the buds no longer turning on. I just had to RMA a pair because of that.
Yeah! That’s why I loved Sennheiser IEMs, they had oval cables that never tangle up, no matter what you do. Still have a pair for my Switch
Loved those as well and I am very angry they are no longer sold (at least not here). Even Sennheiser doesn’t escape the enshittification for their mid-range earbuds
Only because people couldn’t be bothered with learning the over-under cable coiling method.
As a runner I hated cables. All the time I’d be in the middle of a run and my hand would catch the cord mid stride and yank them out of my ear.
All these people saying they like wireless earphones are completely missing the point. Devices with headphones jacks can do both. Taking away the headphone jack means you have to rely on wireless earphones, which have all the issues the post describes.
Wdym, there are adapters and natively wired USB-C headphones.
Those adapters are complete and utter shit
Because of….? Anyway I have headphones that have a lightning jack and don’t need an adapter.
You mean the proprietary ones that came with your iPhone? Well that covers every use case anyone could ever have.
It certainly covers the use case for an iPhone, right? Not sure what you’re trying to say. If you don’t have an iPhone why would you care if iPhones have 3.5mm jacks?
apple also makes a usb-c one, apparently it works reasonably well and is an actual DAC unlike some which are weird passive adapters that don’t work through hubs.
IDK. I use one and have no problem with it. My car’s bluetooth is rather unreliable at connecting, so I just us a USB C->aux cable. I’ve got no complaints. Is it as good a signal as a properly paired bluetooth digital audio connection? No. But it’s certainly as good as the old aux->aux cables I used back in the day.
Adapters are a cop out. Just put the adapters in the phone. It also means you can’t charge and listen to music.
Also while there are some natively wired usb-c headphones, I can’t think of any. Any decent headphones will use a standard 3.5 or 6.5mm audio jack, and then the dac being built inwith those usb-c headphones means you can’t use a seperate dac, it means you can’t plug them into studio gear. It’s just so incredibly limiting.
There is already a universal standard (3.5mm/6.5mm jack) it carries analog audio, why change to a digital connection which requires digital to analog conversion? Why not let the user be able to have a dedicated piece of gear to do that if they wish.
No professional equipment, or even semi professional equipment uses usb-c. It’s a good old fashioned analog audio jack and it’s like that for a reason
I use an adapter from Walmart and it works better than a regular aux plug in a car? Do you think that the audio signal is boosted over type c?
Maximum volume depends on which specific DAC adapter you got.
i really don’t want to have to carry one more piece of junk, and while USB C is way better than alternatives, bending the dongle in your pocket while it is attached to the phone is a scary thought, wired earbuds make a hard right turn right out of the socket. The socket does fill with lint, I kind of get it that removing reduces loss of the phone from water damage or related assembly costs to making the socket not-a-water-vector
maybe you’re completely missing their point
What point? That the removal of a feature like the headphone jack is a good thing?
no, that the inconvenience of wired earbuds outweighs any advantages. which would still apply to a different port
wdym? you can still use wireless with a phone that has a headphone jack.
I didn’t say you couldn’t? my point was that the people you were complaining about were merely saying they don’t like wired buds. that’s it. stop trying to infer a deeper meaning
Correct. That’s why I will NEVER buy brand new wireless earbuds from Apple, Samsung, or any other phone manufacturer. Oh, you took the aux port out of your phones? Go fuck yourself. I will not financially reward you for limiting my freedoms.
Currently I use Jabra Active 8s. The Jabra Active 10s are supposed to be so much better, but for the price, the 8s are just pretty good.
It also destroyed the “pass the aux cord” when driving with friends.
“Hey, I want to show you a song. Pass the aux cord.”
Plugs
Plays
Now:
“Hey, I want to show you a song. Let me connect to your car’s Bluetooth.”
“Oh, I can’t while the car is driving. Can you pull over for a minute?”
“Which submenu was is it in? Bluetooth or Settings?”
“Do you mind if I remove one of the devices already connected?”
“Oh, it just auto-connected to your phone instead.”
“Here, I’ll just send you a link.”
“Your phone locked. Can you enter your password again?”
“Oh, you don’t have [streaming service] premium? We’ll have to sit through an ad first.”
I feel a cold and detached anger, reading that.
Still can’t get my honda to Bluetooth.
My old car was a Kia. (Don’t hate me. It was 2009, and I was earning $19,000 a year.)
I got a used model that was the one higher than base, that included the deluxe audio package. Basically, it included an aux input and the crappy speakers had metal grills instead of plastic ones.
I spent years trying to figure out why the aux jack never worked, until in 2014 I took apart the insides, and then took it to a dealership to confirm that the factory had installed the standard wiring harness, which didn’t include connectors for the aux jack. They said it would be cheaper to buy a new car than it would be to have them fix the wiring.
I wound up missing the aux roadtrip experience entirely, and replaced the radio with one that did Bluetooth.
Bastards.I drive a 2001 which is in that sweet spot of being too new for a cassette deck and too old for an aux port. Fortunately, the stereo was built to connect to a 6-CD changer in the trunk and I was able to install an adapter that fools the CD player into thinking my phone is the 6-CD changer in the trunk.
You can still do that if you want. My car’s bluetooth is finicky, so I just have a USB C->aux cable adapter I use. You can share between people and have them share their music. It doesn’t help with the password issues, but you absolutely can still use an aux cable with modern phones. You just need to use a USB C->aux rather than an aux->aux.
So glad the Europeans finally broke Apple and their ridiculous charger shenanigans. A coworker just got a new iPhone and asked me if I had an iPhone charger, I told them no all Ive got is USB C. They said they didn’t know what they had and showed me the bottom of their phone and, sure enough, it’s USB C. They had no idea that only Apple kept making their own charge connector and that basically everyone else had settled on one charger/data port like two or three standards ago.
You just need to use a USB C->aux rather than an aux->aux.
And make sure it’s not a cheap adapter so you get a reasonable volume out of it.
I love my car but it DOESN’T HAVE AN AUX JACK. Insanity. This fancy ass infotainment system with insanely delayed Bluetooth and I can’t use my amazing Bluetooth-to-3.5mm adapter that connects INSTANTLY and doesn’t lag two second behind when I hit pause and ughhhh
Well, then that is truly bullshit. I wouldn’t even buy a car without one. Have you checked your manual? Maybe there’s a hidden wire somewhere that you can attach an extension cable to.
I have indeed read the manual :c it’s wild too, cuz it’s a super high end stock system with a million speakers and a subwoofer hahaha. Checked forums and yep… USB and Bluetooth ONLY :c
I could swap it out but it’s whatever, it’s not worth the effort and money. It sounds excellent, I just wish the BT was fast like my cheap BT-Aux adapter…
Then use the USB? That seems just as good, no?
Nawhhh I prefer Bluetooth… I like to be able to just get in and go but listen through my phone. I do have a flash drive in the USB, though!
Maybe try a Bluetooth fm transmitter? I have one because my car is too old for bluetooth and also doesnt have aux, but its great and snappy and i just have to reach down to the cigarette lighter to switch songs.
Great suggestion! My sound system is nuts tho, and I’m otherwise an audiophile so that doesn’t work out for me. But thank you <3!
You can sorta cheat at this with a USBC DAC/dongle (converts USB C to a headphone jack) and just pass the dongled cord around.
My civic has a Pioneer audio ui and I have an aux cord!! It’s a usb-c to aux but yeah. It works nicely. Too bad it’s USB-c and everyone’s phones still take lightning.
Give it 4 years and lightning will be a faint memory
Yep, I look forward to it.
Why on earth would you not just hand them the phone to put a song in queue. Also what songs are exclusive to a specific streaming service? Just play it on whatever you were already listening on.
You can do this with wired carplay/android auto if you really want. Basically every car made after 2018 has the two, even the cheapest of the cheap.
Bluetooth audio (only) only ever had a pretty short reign. And basically every car that came with bluetooth also had a USB port for ipods which still works with modern iPhones (and some android devices).
What do you mean used to? I still do. IEMs with replaceable cables are nigh on indestructible.
Yeah this is just another case of apple diehards forgetting the rest of the world exists. Almost everyone still has earbuds with cords.
Hardly just Apple. Android phones have been shifting to removing the headphone jack as well. The workaround is meant to be to use a USB-C dongle, but I ended up just getting multiple bluetooth headsets. I miss my wired earbuds though, that I could hang from my ear when I needed to talk to someone, and never had to worry about charging.
Have been? It’s already done for the most part. AFAIK, there’s only one, maybe two companies still making phones with headphone jacks. Drives me up a wall, I fucking hate it.
Not only has it already been done, but it happened for most android phones pretty much the model year or two after apple did it. Enough time to get all their snarky ads in, let apple take the heat, and adjust their plans to follow the business model exactly - push people away from included headphones and towards their own +$100 Bluetooth headphones.
And the thing is, I love Bluetooth headphones. I used to love wired but the convenience is just too hard to beat. But everyone is price gouging the shit out of them compared to what it costs to produce. Granted I run mine very hard at probably an average of 10-12 hours a day split between two pairs at work and home, and I got around 10,000 hours out of my AirPods 2 before they died so I definitely got my moneys worth. But I refuse to pay $100 when I can get a knock-off pair for $4 that sound 95% as good with surprisingly similar battery life.
I recent got some AirBudz pros and there’s a mode I can turn on where they go quiet when I’m having a conversation, which is neat. I never really use it though, because if I have them in, I don’t wanna talk to people.
Really? From personal experience it’s completely the opposite. Almost everyone I see wearing earbuds are wearing wireless ones and it’s not just Apple users with their air pods, it’s android as well.
Yeah, I earbud daily at work without having my phone on me at all times. Audiobooks are great for crunching mind numbing data.
Eh. I went for TWSes for my latest purchase because I wanted anti-wind ANC. I still have a wired pair (and one of those silly USB adapters) for long-term operation, though.
How are you liking the ANC? I feel like it’s a cool concept that can work well but that my noise isolation from a tight fitting pair of plugs works nearly as well without the complexity or extra battery requirements
Modern ANC is impressive.
When I’m on my bike I actually have less wind noise with my earbuds in than with my bare ears, which was a pretty odd feeling at first.
I also have a pair of over-ears, Sony XM5s, which have even better ANC. Used those while vacuuming and didn’t hear the motor of the vacuum cleaner. I heard its wheels, though. Freaky.
Of course all of this is tied to the usual Bluetooth headphone drawbacks so YMMV.
ANC is so fucking cool. When I upgraded my earbuds to ANC and first put them in, I thought the fans in my room turned off. Then my partner said something and I had no idea what they said. I got them to delete an annoying coworker from my life when I had to go into the office and they did the trick nicely.
I’ve thrown away so many headphones because the cable frayed though. There’s always some downsides.
What do y’all do to your headphones that this is a major issue? I’ve never really had wireless headphones and I think I’ve maybe had one pair of wired ones that had that issue in my life.
Normal use
But like… Clearly there’s something we’re doing differently here.
Pocket? Idk, it seems natural to me that moving around with a device in your pocket, plugged into a pair of headphones would cause bending and twisting of the cord, which would wear it out over time.
And lots of other stresses, like accidentally getting them caught on something and yanking them out of your ears, wrapping them up to put away in a bag/pocket, etc. It’s no wonder I wore out so many pairs.
OTOH, the only wired listening device I own now is a headset that I wear at my desk, which I expect to last forever because it’s subject to none of those stresses.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Guess I’ve just been lucky. I assume some people might also pull out the cable at the cord instead of at the base, I’ve seen that happening with charging cables sometimes.
At the moment I also have to use a little C to 3.5mm adapter and could maybe see that taking some damage but so far so good.
I could see the (USB-?)C adapter taking the worst of the wear-and-tear, and maybe being more resilient than plugging the 3.5mm directly into the device. Imagine the travesty if it turned out that USB-C adapters turned out to be the solution to fragile headphones all along!
Are you taking a belt sander to it? That might be the difference.
price is probably a big one, a $3 $10 $20 and $100 earbud will last wildly different amounts of time.
Just buy ones with detachable cables, or, better yet, mod headphones to use standard connectors such as MMCX (a set of Koss KSC75s). This also allows for different male connectors (3.5, 2.5, 4.4, quarter inch, XLR…) to suit different needs. There’s even bluetooth cables that can plug into otherwise wired headphones. Audiophile world > convenience world.
Modding headphones is way beyond my skillset and time I can invest.
Then just buy a set with detachable cables by default. I only suggest it for the KSC75 because they’re so good sounding and comfortable for cheap.
I’m just not so sure it’s worth it. If the cable frays, I still have to pay $ to replace it every time.
Some of my cables are in the $100 range. They aren’t fraying for many years, they’re outstandingly well built. This is the benefit of detachable cables, is the ability to buy third party. Apos makes a really nice, durable cable, that never gets bent out of shape. The point is that you never have to replace the entire unit.
Lithium ion batteries will degrade over time. It’s an inevitability. The cost of replacing an entire set of AirPods is far more expensive than replacing one cable every thirty something years. They’re unrepairable.
The AirPods Max are an excellent example of the issue. Big, expensive headphones that have peak battery capacity for three years, if you’re lucky–as opposed to the Sennheiser HD600, a set that people have daily driven for thirty years straight, sometimes replacing a cable, sometimes replacing an ear cup. Components, versus entire units.
I’d rather my headphones not be a subscription service.
I’m going into my third pair of ear buds because the batteries only survive for 1h after 2-3 years if you are a heavy user, my wired JBL is still going strong.
I remember they used to last me for years around 2005-2010. Now it is like every year at latest i need to get new ones because the cable got fucked.
I bought a pair of wired earbuds off of wish or temu, something like that, they were like eight or nine dollars.
Honestly compared to any Bluetooth headphones I’ve used, equivalent or better sound quality. And the wire can be pulled out and replaced for just a buck if need be. I’ve had them for 2 years now and they have been wonderful.
Also Moto phones with their operational 3.5 mm jacks for the win.
I didn’t believe the hype about wireless headphones until I bought some with noise cancelling and all that for around $130.
Pros:
1 - You don’t realize how “tethered” you feel on older headphones until you really try to use wireless headphones. There’s a certain freedom you feel when you realize you can place your phone on a hotel table but lie down in bed.
2 - Noise cancelling and noise passthrough is a transformative experience when travelling or find yourself abroad. Airports are much easier to feel relaxed in when 80% of the noise or so can be filtered out as you wait for your flight to board. Additionally, the flight experience is less annoying (no engine drone gets through, even passengers can mostly be ignored) but you still have the option for pass through if someone absolutely needs to talk to you.
3 - Many of these headphones come with some kind of EQ feature, which can occasionally mean that you get speakers with more tunability and thus slightly better bang-for-buck that works globally across apps.
4 - Audio quality. Since these are expensive drivers, you’re often going to get better sound quality than those cheap 30 dollar throw aways were ever going to give.
Cons:
1 - Latency. These things could never be used in professional audio situations other than listening to a pre-rendered song for quality judgements. I don’t thing gaming would be nice with these either, even if I’ve tried (and failed) to play counter strike on these on occasion to keep noise levels down.
2 - Mic quality of the built in is lacking on my particular headphones (Sennheiser CX Plus). They’re really only intended to capture the outdoor for noise cancellation IMO, not the greatest for calls or recordings. They’re servicable, but it’s the area I’d like the most upgrade (and it would probably improve noise cancellation features as well.)
3 - Environmental / Sustainability Concerns: Other than people just “losing” these devices with built in batteries that are bad for the environment being a problem in and of itself, there are other long-standing concerns I have about these devices. They often require proprietary non-open software to configure, meaning if the software gets delisted, you will no longer be able to configure them until someone comes up with some kind of alternative using reverse engineering (good luck). Batteries are likely to degrade over time, meaning you’ll eventually end up with a worthless ear bud on the left or right and the only solution will be to throw them out. These things are often pretty bad scoring on repairability metrics, and I can’t even blame the companies producing them here because they’re so small.
4 - Despite passthrough being a feature, it’s hard to convey to people that you can actually hear them through the device. There should be some kind of blinking light on the outside that indicates that passthrough is enabled or something.
So I actually do love these devices, but #3 of the cons is really the biggest real issue I have with them. If they’re going to cost over 100 dollars, I would like to know that these things won’t just become ewaste in the same way that cheap crappy wired headphones end up being as well (which sea life often chokes on or gets tangled up in.) If they costs a premium, I would really like to know that they aren’t a figurative dead end when they eventually fail.
Meh. I don’t miss getting the cord caught on door handles and having the earbuds violently yanked from my ears!
They also didn’t add an extra layer of compression between the player and your ears - because they had a fucking headphone jack and wires that could transmit audio data without compression.
In ancient times, the wire also acted as antenna to pick up FM radio
The copper age…
It still does if you buy a phone with a headphone jack and avoid shitty companies that disable the FM tuner.
On the other hand, bluetooth headphones never catch on a doorknob and yank out of your ears
On the other other hand, we already had the option of choosing Bluetooth headphones back when most phones still offered headphones jacks.
Truth is, there are obviously pros and cons of each, but it just sucks that we no longer have the choice without jumping through extra hoops.
And the noise cancelling/amplification is something wired headphones probably would never do, and they aren’t more expensive than ear buds, unless you got the cheapest ear buds (that probably sounded like shit and had cords that would fray within months of use), oh and if you used them at all “actively” the cords would eventually wear out even in expensive models. I’ve got a 20$pair of ear buds from 3 years ago(wanted to make sure I wouldn’t lose them before investing in expensive ones, now I don’t actually like my expensive ones except for airplanes, and still use my cheapos). Oh and you couldn’t be more than 3 feet from your phone if it was charging, and you couldn’t fast forward, rewind, play/pause (if you had a great pair it had a volume control, that didn’t actually change the volume, just added resistance to the signal).
Ask my wife, I was one of the biggest sticks in the mud about losing my headphone jack and changing over to Bluetooth, but since I made the change, I’ve found plenty of reasons to be happy with it. I still miss my old phones built in infrared blaster though. And easily replaceable battery. There were some neat things you could do with the aux jack (credit card reader), and there was some convenience to having things corded together (especially if you’re absent minded) but it’s not as rosey as many would insist it was.
The rose tinted glasses people use when looking back (car technology, streaming being worse than cable, the Internet sucking (though much better arguments for this one)) is really a burr in my side.
You can get headphones with removable cables.
Tbh I like the convenience of not being physically attached to my phone when listening to music. That said, the removal of headphone jacks from phones is a disgrace.
At least type c can send audio through aux via an adapter
Wait, did they removed the headphone jacks? Forever? From every brand!? 😨
No there are plenty of budget phones that still have it.
When they told you there was not enough room, **they lied ** When they told you it would compromise waterproofing, **they lied **
They just wanted to sell you wireless headphones
I surely love when corporations ruin their products as an indirect way of marketing their shitty stuff to me… (sacarsm)
That didn’t work, though? My phone came with headphones that plug into the Lightning outlet.
And yet you see everyone using wireless earbuds or speakers. Nobody’s buying the fabled USB-C or Lightning outlet.
Also i’m pretty sure that means you can’t charge your phone at the same time? I wouldn’t know because i’ve never had a phone that didn’t have a jack port.
People buy wireless earbuds because they want them though, not because they were forced into it.
Yes, the charging thing is annoying but it doesn’t affect me in most situations. Also, you can get an adapter for like $10 that allows you to charge and use wired headphones.
If you want a nice phone, pretty much yeah
iPhones don’t have the 3.5 mm jack anymore but I don’t see what the big deal is… you can still use wired headphones that plug into the charging/data port.
USBC and lightning are both still digital connections, meaning you have to have a digital-to-analog converter un the headphones themselves, making them more expensive and more complicated.
Also, you can’t charge and listen at the same time (without an additional cable).
3.5 mm is the “old reliable” - I will never buy a phone without both a 3.5mm jack and a MicroSD card slot.
Apple EarPods are $20 in either Lightning, USB-C or 3.5 mm. You can get off-brand Lightning for $6 at Walmart, so I don’t think price is a factor.
Anyway, I have had a phone without a 3.5 jack for 4 years now and it hasn’t really affected my life much. I thought it was lame they removed it too, I don’t really expect electronics manufacturers to keep a connector from the 50s forever.
Fair. Although I have more to say.
Maybe this connector from the 50s has survived this long because it’s perfect (or at least really good) at its job? There is a reason why all professional equipment uses analog connections.
I agree that at a price point of 6€ or 20€, it doesn’t make much of a difference for most headphones - although I’d like to mention that for 20€, you’re already in the price range of cheap IEMs (“In-Ear Monitors”), which are really good in terms of price to sound quality.
If you want reliable earbuds with good sound quality and affordable price (between 20€ and 100€), IEMs are a really good choice.
Also, their cables are pretty much always robust and replaceable, so if one does break, you won’t have to buy new headphones altogether.
The only “caveat” with IEMs is that they exclusively have analog connections (3.5mm). I think that’s a good thing, though: the manufacturer has more budget for better cables and audio drivers this way.
I hope I could shed some more light on this :)
Unfortunately, I think most people do want wireless connections at this point. We might even have phones with no wired connections at all soon.
I find the idea of a phone without any ports incredibly distressing. You’re probably right, though. It won’t be that long before apple and/or samsung try that.
I realize now that I’m likely in a loud minority.
As long as there are half-decent phones with usb & 3.5mm ports and sd slots, I’m content. The large manufacturers can do what they want for all I care - I just hope my niche persists.
Thanks for this exchange.
Sony still has it (And SD card too)
And they used to get tangled on everything all the time, got caught on things all the time, frayed and wore out all the time, had janky connectors that had to be jiggled to sit in just the right position to get stereo sound, and got tied in knots when you put them away not matter how carefully you wound them.
There’s a reason everyone is using Bluetooth now, gramps.
Bluetooth is lower fidelity, and I’d rather have tangled cables and ports than batteries that only last 5 years or less.
Don’t know where you pulled the 5 year from. I’ve got mine for longer than that and I have no problems with the battery. Also, didn’t notice the lower fidelity, but I mostly listen to podcasts so I not gonna dispute that claim. Why I bought the bluetooth earbuds was because no matter how much I paid for wired earbuds (up to 120€) none of them survived more than 2 years. Approx after a year one would stop working and some time later the other would die too. So yeah, if you enjoy the shitty ultra thin wires that’s great, but in my experience even cheap bluetooth earbuds work minimum three times longer than wired ones.
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Bluetooth as an audio standard is factually lower fidelity
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The average expected life span of a Li ion battery is 5 years
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I don’t know how you kill headphones so quickly, but you can 100% get quality wired earbuds for a third of the price of wireless earbuds with nice, thick, threaded cable. The YouTuber dankpods has a few videos about this with recs for cheap, good headphones.
Bluetooth as an audio standard is factually lower fidelity
Is this an analog vs digital thing? Bluetooth runs at a high enough bitrate that most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. And especially compared to the quality of the cabled headphones that used to be common any Bluetooth earphone is better
Cabled headphones have gotten a lot better and cheaper, and no it’s a compression thing, here’s an article about it
https://www.soundguys.com/understanding-bluetooth-codecs-15352/
And as I said, they have bitrates high enough that most people won’t notice a difference. Especially since the files/steaming they’ll be listening to have lower bitrate than Bluetooth.
Regardless, what matters most is the earphone quality and while there might be better and cheaper options now, that’s not the cheap bundled headphone people are nostalgic of when they post things like this.
Apple Earpods are very high quality actually, and are praised as a good cheap option by audiophiles
I carry my phone in my pocket so the wire that’s close to the jack bends very frequently and gets damaged. I’m glad you were able to find good wired buds. I searched for years and wasn’t as lucky as you. But since I switched to no-name bluetooth earbuds I’ve had no problems so I’m very happy.
Are you claiming that the battery stops working after 5 years? As far as I know the maximum battery charge gets lower with time but the device is still functional. It just lasts a bit less.
Yes the expected life span of a lithium ion battery is only 5 years, everything you get after that is just luck of the draw.
It’s minimum 5 years if you charge them every day. I charge mine maybe once a week when I use them regularly. So claiming that all lithium ion bateries last 5 years is misleading. Most manufacturers claim you have minimum of 2000 charging cycles.
If you have earbuds with a case, you charge them every time you put them in the case, and to add insult to injury a majority of those batteries are not replaceable when they 100% could be. That’s really my biggest gripe, they’re made to be not only finite, but disposable. It’s just such a waste.
It is minimum of 5 years on AVERAGE for lithium batteries.
The way you charge does not change the average.
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It might be lower fidelity but it’s not like it’s bad. I got some AirPod Pros using my credit card points and they’re awesome, plus the active noise cancellation means that they have more space to work when they aren’t fighting the metro system or whatever else. I did have some $100 ones that were pretty mediocre so I totally get that bluetooth can be bad but so can most anything else.
People chasing that last 2% of sound quality…I’m not going to waste our time saying that it doesn’t make much of a difference but they need to understand that almost nobody gives a shit. The only people that need to care are doing it for their job and that’s an entirely different situation.
And none of that even gets on the fact that without a cable to manage I can deal with them much more comfortably on the metro, in a car, on a bicycle, while walking, etc. I don’t need to think about where my phone is and I can even share them far more easily and comfortably. The battery, for my use case, just goes and goes and I barely need to charge them. They do everything better except for sound and they already crossed the threshold for great sound quality ages ago so that one is irrelevant to 99% of users.
Right but you could better quality and the same quality of speakers for literally less than half the price, and they’ll be more repairable because all you need to do to fix them is solder some wire. I also disagree that they do everything better but that’s really subjective. I can see using wireless headphones at the gym and things, but wired headphones still very much have a place imo.
It isn’t just the gym. When was the last time you went outside?
(The last paragraph is a summary of sorts if you don’t want to deal my wall of examples)
I like being able to sit on the metro or bus and use my phone normally, and then when I go to leave I don’t need to reorganize the wire to get it in a more comfortable position for walking around. When I drive, since the microphone in my car isn’t very good, I don’t need to think about dealing with a cable and putting my phone somewhere it can be safely and securely within reach. Being able to understand that other people have different needs I know that there is such a thing as a woman and they, unfortunately, don’t always have pockets that make dealing with a wire super straightforward.
In the summer I don’t want to have a wire down my t-shirt. It’s uncomfortable and I definitely want the thing hanging around loose, either.
When I’m at home it’s nice to not have to deal with wired headphones, and when I use my laptop for calls and stuff it’s so much easier to be able to use wireless earbuds. I can get up quickly to close a door, turn off an oven, frickin’ whatever the hell I want. Most of the time I use my PC, regular speakers, and Yeti Nano so this isn’t an issue but understanding that other people have different needs I can see why someone without those things would need a better solution.
I live where I rent bikes to get around a lot. I rarely want music while I’m biking but I’ve needed directions sometimes and having my phone plugged in while pedalling, even if the wire was long enough, would be a great way to shorten the life of the connection at the phone. Being able to understand other people have different needs I also know that others use headphones much more often, especially when we have safer bike infrastracture.
For you:
Understanding that different people have different needs I totally get why someone might want wired headphones. A little better sound quality if you’re into that kinda thing is fine. The cost is certainly a component and I won’t tell anyone who can’t afford Airpods that they need to spend that kind of money on headphones. I didn’t even do that as mine only cost $70 after my points took care of the other $310(these are AirPod Pro 2s, I also know that regular airpods are far cheaper but still pricey).
I also use wired headphones on my PC because Windows is ass and the firmware on the airpods as well will sometimes not behave either. I only use them because one specific meeting program doesn’t have anything to clean up the echo from my speakers so I need to cut that sound out entirely. Regardless, I understand how valuable a simple wired connection is. Sometimes my keyboard doesn’t behave without being plugged in, and whenever shitty Windows crapped out on my work computer and the bluetooth connection died I had to plug in to deal with that. I only use wired mice but frankly I really should get a wireless one as well to have that flexibility, though the cheapo wired one ready to go in a box nearby is fine.
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I never said wired headphones don’t have a place but you’re not getting that other people have different priorities.
It’s like saying we should all own GMC Savanas for the extra space when it would be better for 99.9% of people to grab a Honda fit or just take public transit, and then use U-Haul, a carshare program, or just borrow a friend’s car when they need to haul something once a year.
Ultimately, people just want to listen to music at all and in a comfortable way. The disadvantages of a wire are not worth the marginal increase in sound quality when it comes to daily use.
It just seems like cables bother you more than me. But I also don’t live in a city with a lot of walkability or good public transit. I would use wired headphones on my college campus, when I was done with them, I’d wrap them around my phone, unplug them and then slide the coiled wire loop off my phone and put them in my pocket. I also don’t care if the wires are out while my phone is in my pocket and my headphones are in. I’ve never run the wires through my shirt.
I used to run in highschool, and I just got used to holding my phone while I ran with headphones in. Idk man, maybe I’m just old lol.
And they do, yea. I’m just saying that I won’t try to tell you what you find important or should care about and we should acknowledge that most people want wireless. There’s still a big market for wired headphones and there’s always value in that having that cheap spare pair or two even for people who prefer wireless.
Anyway I hope I didn’t come off as trying to shame you out of your preference. My only goal was to show the other side of the coin.
But your statement is now relying on skills and equipment that - sure, don’t have that high of a barrier to entry - aren’t within everyone’s skill level, or budget vs storage capacity.
For what it’s worth, I personally wouldn’t go back to wired headphones, but I also want a mic jack because I want to play music to non-Bluetooth stuff and cars I don’t own/don’t trust with my privacy.
On the other hand Bluetooth can crackle if the airwaves are too noisy, you have to spend more for the same audio quality (and it’s still going to take a nosedive when calling someone because A2DP codecs like AAC or AptX aren’t available in HSP mode), and the buds have limited batteries which makes them unreliable for long-term wear.
It’s all about trade-offs and individual requirements. Of course these days you’re pushed to get wireless ones because most phone manufacturers are too cheap to include a headphone jack.
A friend was complaining that he was always losing his air pods. I told him about my awesome idea to sell a little cord that would connect them so they were easier to keep track of.
He was like, ‘Dude! That’s a great idea… You’ve got to start selling those before someone beats you to it-’
Then it dawned on him and he called me an asshat.
Last time I used wired headphones on my old phone, I was riding a bike. One of the buds slipped out of my ear and got caught in the front wheel, dragging my phone out of my pocket and smashing the screen. 10/10
I wish I could watch a video of that.
Also, headphone cords go under clothing when doing activities like that.
https://www.isadoraduncan.org/about-1
Isadora Duncan’s death was as dramatic as her life. On September 14, 1927, she encountered a young driver in Nice, France and suggested he take her for a spin in his open-air Bugatti sports car. As the car took off, she reportedly shouted to her friends, “Adieu, mes amis, je vais a la gloire!” — “Goodbye my friends, I go to glory!” Moments later, her trailing shawl became entangled in the rear wheel, breaking her neck instantly.
same
These jacks are still in every other audio device. They were removed from phones to force BT usage, which Google needs for their profiling telemetry network and Apple for their Find my Device thing. God forbid someone turns BT off or even decides they would prefer a phone without BT entirely. There is no other reason and how people prefer to listen to music has nothing to do with the subject.
Waterproofing is very difficult with a headphone jack. You’ll notice virtually every single phone with a headphone jack is ‘splash resistant’ while many without are able to survive being submerged. It also saves a relatively large amount of internal space, for something that easy to move external with an adapter.
If we’re talking about adding back in older communication standards, I would personally prefer an am/fm receiver and IR blaster; it would be cool to use my phone like a universal remote.
Waterproofing is very difficult with a headphone jack
Something I have heard in the past but is a headphone jack that much harder to waterproof vs a USB-C port? I’m genuinely curious because I don’t know. It feels like the two would be of a similar difficulty.
Yeah, also Samsung made it work in the S active phones, and Nokia has started carrying the torch with their XR line. That’s Def not the reason for them being removed.
I think most USB-C ports have sensors that allow them to turn off when wet. I’m not sure what the challenges are doing something like that with the headphone jack.
They don’t even need to do that. Just blast music straight into the water. It’s not like anyone would be listening anyway.
Samsung had headphone jack until note 10 and ip67/68 rating since s5. Similar story with other brands. What you described are two separate trends.
am/fm
Cheap phones still have fm radio support. Pretty sure it’s disabled in software in everything else, and you need cabled headphones to serve as an antenna either way (not sure if usb c works).
That makes me wonder how the Zune pulled of having a pretty solid and clear radio without an antenna. Must have had one wrapped around the inner casing or something.
I don’t get what people are doing who need waterproof phones, but I will accept that some people need this. To me it sounds far more like an edge case than people wanting wired headphones though, especially at the time they started removing jacks.
I really can’t say for sure. It rains a lot where I live, so water proofing is a pretty big boon for me. I used to carry around a USB-C to headphone port adapter, but I never used it.
Valid. I’ve been thinking though. What’s the problem with making a waterproof audio jack, if we have the USB C for charging?
I don’t want to hate on wireless by any means. I often prefer wireless. But it’s really fucking nice to have a power source connected and audio as well. It’s very convenient. Especially if you have a dock and headset.
It just feels like such a redundant transformation that achieved nothing for the user.
There’s adapters that allow charging at the same time. I’m not sure why audio jacks are difficult to waterproof. Samsung managed it on a few models, so it’s certainly possible.
Personally I haven’t had a situation where I wanted an audio jack in years, I assume the extra internal space goes towards things like longer battery life or slimmer form factors; not nothing, but also probably not a big deal for most people.
It seems like laptops are doing the same thing: all external ports are USB, and any specific needs get handled with dongles.
USB-C ports are pretty flexible, you can split one into many, use them for video & audio, use them for power delivery & networking, and they can transfer more data per second than cat5. It seems like manufacturers are trying to make it the one port to rule them all.
profiling telemetry network
Of course they need it for the very real scary words functionality
Every single signal your Android phone sends, like looking up the address of a website with Google DNS, or just synchronizing your time with Google time servers, which are defaults in most Android phones, goes right into at least a shadow profile.
Android exists to create highly detailed profiles of individuals, using your own device usage, and detecting other devices around you. Like WiFi hotspots to offer more detailed position information.
Every single time any of this happens, you leave a data point in a Google database. Collecting all BT devices every time you see them as data points is so dramatically valuable if this is your core business. Google is an advertisement platform.
You know bluetooth doesn’t need to be turned on in the settings for your phone to scan for devices right? Google doesn’t need to trick you with earphones to turn it on. Why do these conspiracy theories always involve the vampire politely asking to come into your home anyways?
I know they can still use the chip even if you don’t want BT. I know they can still use it regardless of your desire to disable it. If there was no reasonable user demand for it, then it would be pretty hard to sell a useless piece of metal that only eats up energy and space in the phone.
You know, like an audio jack.
No other type of audio device saw the need to have the jack removed. The BT-only headphones were introduced by the same companies who removed the audio jack from the phones.
Nobody is “tricking” anyone. This is just as regular a shady business practice as false advertising. The companies doing this just weigh their options to maximize profits. This is a laughably easy sell, apparently, so it’s reasonable they would be doing it. The complaints about this subject were loud from day one. Removing the jack is artificially limiting the features of the device for literally no plausible reason. Point to their material that explains it in more words than “we decided it’s time”.
We had the entire oil and tobacco industry lie to us for decades, but this is far fetched?
It’s really hard to follow your train of thought. Bluetooth isn’t a piece of metal in your phone. It uses the same antenna your phone needs for its other wireless connections and it’s also driven by the same modem. Compared to an audio jack its impact is miniscule. The demand for Bluetooth wasn’t created in 2016, it predates smartphones. There were countless wireless earphones before 2016 and they mostly weren’t even made by phone companies. Apple removing the headphone jack wasn’t ‘false advertising’, it was very well publicised.
Yes, phone companies removed the headphone jack from their phones to drive the sales of their own earphones. Yes, Google collects lots of data about you. But interpolating these to “Google wanted people to keep Bluetooth on for its spy network” is a far fetched conspiracy
This issue is solely the fault of capitalism. By removing choice you are forced to by a more premium product, but you’re advertised it by all the supposed benefits: one less external opening on the phone, no more tangled headphones, no more dealing with headphones that only work when the cord is plugged in just right, no more chance of your headphone port going bad.
They skip over the fact that most of these issues are directly problematic because of cost cutting and designed obsolescence (aka engineered lifetimes). The opening is one thing, but headphones tangle in pockets easily because they use such thin flimsy cords. Same thing goes for cords breaking in the lining and only working at certain angles: a more robust cord would be less prone to issues.
On top of this, the entire designs of phones not having repairability in mind is the only reason that a headphone port breaking is a big deal. If they were designed to be disassembled with replacement parts being readily available, it wouldn’t be an issue. They could even make the ports more robust to decrease failure rate.
