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Headphone Users Rejoice: Samsung Reportedly Not Killing the Galaxy S8's Headphone Jack (thenextweb.com) 79

Posted by BeauHD from the contrary-to-popular-belief dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Contrary to previous reports, Samsung's upcoming flagship Galaxy S8 smartphone will come with a headphone jack, unlike the new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus and several other Android smartphones. The news comes from both Sammobile and Android Police. The Next Web reports: "Both Sammobile and Android Police are today reporting that Samsung is not actually killing the headphone jack. Sammobile, appears to be retracting its own report last month suggesting the jack would be dropped thanks to recent case renders, while Android Police has independently confirmed that the S8 will maintain the 3.5mm jack through its own source. In related news, Samsung's display unit may have also just given us our first good look at the S8. While there's a good chance the phone in the video is a generic model (it appears to be a render, rather than a physical object), as CNET points out, it looks an awful lot like the leaks we've seen from the S8 so far. There are also a few curious touches for a something that's supposed to be just a render, including what might be a faint visible antenna line (on the upper left corner) and a couple of LEDs or sensors to the left of the earpiece grill. By the way, there's also a definitely a headphone jack in this render."
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Headphone Users Rejoice: Samsung Reportedly Not Killing the Galaxy S8's Headphone Jack More

Headphone Users Rejoice: Samsung Reportedly Not Killing the Galaxy S8's Headphone Jack

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  • good news (Score:3)

    by gravewax ( 4772409 ) on Friday January 13, 2017 @07:53PM (#53664543)
    If the headphone jack is their then my wife will swap from her iPhone 6 to that, she is already jealous of the quality of the camera in my s7 compared to her iPhone and constantly makes us swap phones when she is doing photos in less than ideal conditions, but the rumor that Samsung were headed down the same braindead path as apple was going to be a deal breaker. I guess we wait and see.

    • Re: good news (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Iphones always have crap cameras, I can get better pictures by having them sketched by a blind man

  • When the story came out last month that Samsung was killing the headphone jack, I said back then that something was up... there was no substantiation of the report beyond the article that Slashdot itself linked to, and every cross-reference I could find online always linked back to the same location... so either they made the whole thing up, or else the publishers at that website couldn't think past how juicy the story sounded to do even the most rudimentary fact-checking.

    But hey... who can blame them?

    • Conspiracy theory: fake news about Samsung removing the headphone jack would mainly benefit Apple. (Contrast with my alternate conspiracy theory that fake news, later retracted, gets free publicity for Samsung.)

  • Nailed that (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Friday January 13, 2017 @08:08PM (#53664621)

    Oh damn, I nailed that. [slashdot.org]
    Only out by two weeks.

  • Headphone jack (Score:5, Funny)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Friday January 13, 2017 @09:11PM (#53664911)

    Or, as Samsung refers to it internally, the battery overpressure release valve.

  • A small rechargeable Bluetooth device that takes headphones with 4 conductors (TRRS) and then translates pushes on the inline controller as bluetooth commands. I've not seen one that does the bluetooth commands... just audio. Will go a long way to make the bluetooth translation less painful.

    And I just found out, that there is no standard for TRRS, that there are two ways of interpreting that extra conductor and they are incompatible. Motherf**ker. So now we need one for apple one for android... or have a sw

  • While being meant to be fancy.
    Wired headphones can be a very little uncomfortable. But they have superior audio quality, they don't need recharging, they are cheap.
    Wireless earbuddies are a nightmare are you can loose them while in use, audio quality can depend upon distance and em noise, aren't cheap at all.

    • The fact beats are popular shows people don't give a shit about audio quality.
      Also the battery is a non issue too. When I can take an intercontinental flight and have 50% battery remaining the other end the battery life is sufficient. When not flyingI charge my headphones once a week. Not to mention Noise cancelled requires batteries anyway.

      Cheap? I paid extra to get rid of wires for a reason.

      The only thing idiotic is to not give the users choice. I use wireless headphones but I would not buy a phone that d

      • "The fact beats are popular shows people don't give a shit about audio quality." This. Although thinking about it, I know a LOT of people who ask me if beats are any good (I test products for a living) and I laugh everytime! I think it may be worse in that people who can afford it think they know that it "must be good as it costs a lot". In my experience any decent headphones worth having will ALWAYS have a wired option. Sennheiser, Bowers &Wilkins, Sony & even the Bose QC35 all have wired options
        • Well, as long as music will be stored/streamed with lossy codecs, top quality headphones/earbuddies will be just a waste.
          But having good/decent quality headphones/earbuddies will be a good move.

          • Well, as long as music will be stored/streamed with lossy codecs, top quality headphones/earbuddies will be just a waste.

            That is an absolute load of garbage considering that nearly all modern codecs are unoffensive to the ears (few artefacts if any) and that the quality of the headphones will contribute 99% to the audio quality. Naturally assuming that the audio circuit is not doing something stupid but then even cheap ones these days are relatively free of distortion.

      • The fact beats are popular shows people don't give a shit about audio quality.

        Right!

        The only thing idiotic is to not give the users choice.

        Everyone seems to be going to follow airdiotic by ditching the wired earbuddies socket.

    • Sometimes quality doesn't matter. I use my Bluetooth when I'm on the bus. Going back and forth to work. I'm mostly listening to voice podcasts, do I really couldn't care about audio quality. Music is usually streamed from Spotify, so the quality isn't amazing, and with all the background noise on the bus, the sound quality isn't going to be good. I got a Bluetooth dongle that can hook up to any pair of headphones. That way I only have to buy a single set of headphones, and I can plug them in if I want to, S

  • Instead of simply killing the headphone jack, they plan to kill the whole smartphone, and maybe also the user and/or some bystanders. Their new Li-Ion battery can do this!
  • This, together with the fact that Samsung's phones are the hottest in the market, will rekindle the interest of people in these devices. I am sure that the public is already burning with anticipation to purchase those explosive handsets, which will no doubt obliterate the competition with a huge bang. Samsung really is on fire.

  • Will it come with an SD slot and a removeable battery?
    No? then I'm not interested.

  • Phones. (Score:3)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Saturday January 14, 2017 @12:17PM (#53667723) Homepage

    I still don't get why these phones are so damn big.

    I've owned the S4 Mini and S5 Mini and they are more than big enough, but it bugs me that - despite being otherwise close in spec - they never have USB-host enabled (which is basically a software option!) and other little niggles.

    But I can't buy a phone that doesn't have expandable non-cloud storage. I use cloud storage TOO but that's not what I want when I get on a plane and want to watch movies, play games, and read books.

    I also wouldn't touch one without a headphone socket. That's just stupid and somehow the fad infected the industry.

    I also wouldn't touch one without a battery I can change either. But it does bug me when they put the SIM / SD under the battery, that's just a pain in the arse.

    As such, despite being able to afford any of these these, I've stuck on the Mini models from several years ago because there's something stupid in all the other models they sell. Other manufacturer's don't get a look-in for similar reasons.

    I would PAY THE EARTH for a Samsung Android phone, no Samsung fucking apps on it, no "compulsory" apps at all, TWO headphone sockets, TWO microSD slots, TWO SIM slots, TWO removeable batteries, with an IR blaster (Mini's have it still), and all the usuals even if it was the size of one of these big phones. But they say that it's space that's at a premium, it's not. The Mini's are smaller and differ only in software, and minor details that I would never miss basically.

    Make me a "full-size" that has all the above, and I'd paid more than full-size prices. But you know what the problem is? You give me that and I'll keep it forever until it's literally dead (physically or technologically). But if you churn out limited shite, I have to make a choice when to ditch it even if it's for something that has things I don't really want.

    Boy, do I want the "modular phone" idea to take out. Gimme a base phone with 20 module ports on it for anything from Bluetooth, GPS, IR, headphones or whatever and I'd spend twice as much on modules as the actual phone itself.

    • THIS:

      > But I can't buy a phone that doesn't have expandable non-cloud storage. I use cloud storage TOO but that's not what I want when I get on a plane and want to watch movies, play games, and read books.

      ----

      > I also wouldn't touch one without a headphone socket. That's just stupid and somehow the fad infected the industry.

      The "somehow the fad infected the industry" = "And of course, you will want these convenient $130 wireless, easy-to-use, inferior-sounding, needing-to-rechage-every-few-hours earbu

  • I just recently upgraded to Sennheiser headphones. I wanted the best sound I could get with good noise isolation but NOT active noise cancelling, but cheap enough (~$130 on sale, IIRC) that I don't care too much if they get trashed.

    Also, two of my cars don't have bluetooth. One is a 1991 ZR-1 Corvette. To go the bluetooth route, I'd have to install a 3rd-party head unit and gut the interior to run signal cables, amplifiers, and build custom speaker enclosures to fit where the BOSE amp+speaker assemblies are

  • > unlike the new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus and several other Android smartphones
    i don't think the author knows what an iPhone is.

  • I've been playing around with wireless headsets since around 2008 and it was mostly junk (useful stuff but it broke after a short period of time) and they started to get a lot better with Liquipel. I still had wired headphones that I used from time to time but I recently got a set of Jaybird X2s that I carry around with me and I haven't used the wired stuff for at least several months. There is a loss of sound quality going from wired to wireless but I mainly use wireless headsets for running and a lot of l
  • It's an exhaust port.

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