Google Is Latest Company To Ditch Headphone Jack In Its Newest Smartphones (cultofmac.com) 391
When launching its original Pixel smartphone, Google mocked the iPhone 7's missing headphone jack in its marketing material. According to Cult of Mac, Google won't be doing the same for the Pixel 2. "The company has decided to remove the aging port from its latest handsets," reports Cult of Mac. "A new leak reveals that the lineup will rely solely on USB-C for wired connectivity." From the report: Incredibly reliable leaker Evan Blass has published pictures and details of Google's upcoming Pixel 2 smartphones on VentureBeat. He has also confirmed that neither device will feature a headphone jack, which means users will have to rely on a USB-C adapter or Bluetooth. It also means Google will no longer be able to put out Pixel ads that take sly swipes at the iPhone's missing port. Blass says both Pixel handsets will be powered by a Snapdragon 835 chipset -- the same one found in the Galaxy S8, the LG V30, and other 2017 flagships -- not a faster Snapdragon 836 processor as originally planned. Other features are said to include 12-megapixel cameras, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB or 128GB storage options. The smaller Pixel will pack a 5-inch 1080p display with a 16:9, while its larger sibling will pack a 6-inch Quad HD display with an 18:9 aspect ratio. Is the lack of a headphone jack a deal-breaker, or do you think the Pixel's other features, like stock Android and front-facing stereo speakers, will make up for it?
Copying Apple takes courage! (Score:4, Funny)
Android, leader in Chinese knock offs.
Re: Copying Apple takes courage! (Score:4, Informative)
what about (Score:3, Interesting)
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Google wants to keep you confused in their cloud while they sift through your files.
Re:what about (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:what about (Score:4, Interesting)
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I want a pony, but I'm not going to get one.
Re:what about (Score:5, Informative)
If you're not carrying some chip on your shoulder over Sony, unlike many people here, you might check out their phones.
The Xperias are still getting OS upgrades a few years later, not just security patches. My own handset is only about a year old from its own introduction, but it's been upgraded from 6.0.1 -> 7.0 -> 7.1, and is supposed to be getting an upgrade to Oreo in the future. It has a microSD card slot, a headphone jack, supports 192 khz/24 bit audio, Apt-X lossless bluetooth audio, and mine at least (Xperia Compact X) isn't stupidly slim, so it gets good battery life. I'm probably a bad example of phone usage, but I only charge it once every four days.
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The Xperias are still getting OS upgrades a few years later
So did the PS3 - as anyone who used the "Other OS" functionality will remember.
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Just 2 years? I've had my current smartphone for 4 years, and I'm just starting to think about a new one. I think it's insane that we don't get at least 4-5 years of guaranteed security updates for a device that costs nearly a thousand dollars.
I don't personally care about a headphone jack or an SD card (although I understand why some people do). I can even live without a removable battery, even though that's the only part of my phone that's slowly degrading. It's the assumption that I'll only be keepin
Moto X (4th gen) headlining Android One in the US (Score:3)
The moto x ^4 [motorola.com] is headlining Android One for Project Fi in the US is a mid-range device ~$399 with a Headphone jack, SD-Card slot, and Micro-USB.
See: Motorola Moto X4 - Full phone specifications [gsmarena.com]
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it's a lot easier to transfer files from one device to another with a SD card as opposed to a USB cable or via a cloud storage service.
Really? Maybe for large files that you can't wait a few minutes for, but I have Keep and Dropbox on multiple devices and never have to think about transferring files as it's all done for me automatically. How does it get easier than that?
Re:SD Slot? Get over it already (Score:4, Insightful)
What happens once you stop paying your Dropbox bill? I thought in such a case, files past 2 GB got deleted. And how well does Dropbox work when upstream is $5 to $10 per GB, such as satellite or LTE, or when upstream isn't available at all, such as between a laptop and tablet on a city bus?
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What happens once you stop paying your Dropbox bill?
I don't have a Dropbox bill an if for whatever reason Dropbox went away I can replace it with the dozens of similar services that do the same thing.
I thought in such a case, files past 2 GB got deleted. And how well does Dropbox work when upstream is $5 to $10 per GB, such as satellite or LTE,
Maybe you live somewhere with exorbitant LTE prices, I pay $40/month for my SIM 8GB and never use half of it.
or when upstream isn't available at all, such as between a laptop and tablet on a city bus?
As above, maybe LTE is expensive where you live. Where I live it's cheap so I take advantage of it to avoid clumsy things like physical media swapping.
Re:SD Slot? Get over it already (Score:4, Insightful)
It's even easier using Airdrop.
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The only place where you need a wifi router to use Airdrop is inside your head.
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Using FLAC format for mobile player or say a car stereo is a waste of storage. Do yourself a favor, and download Foobar2000, so you can export your music collection into something like 256kbit mp3 files, apple lossy, or something similar.
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You may be right, but for some if they can’t be sure then they want to be close enough to the original. At that point if the audio sounds shoddy then you can hardly blame the compression.
At the same time 160 albums is not a bad number of albums on a device. Many people don’t have near that number in their main collection. So, hardly an argument for external storage and if it is, well there other devices and at different price points.
Re: SD Slot? Get over it already (Score:5, Funny)
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What the fuck? Lossy compression has nothing to do with the quality of data retrieval on a hard disk. If you've got data corruption, it'll affect any sort of file (and `flac -t` will tell you when a file is corrupted). a 320kbps MP3 stored with no intermitent data corruption from 2001 will have exactly the same bits and quality that it did in 2001. (Encoders have gotten better. A 320kbps MP3 from 2001 might sound worse than the song from the same source being encoded as 320kbps MP3 *today*, but that hs noth
Re: SD Slot? Get over it already (Score:5, Informative)
Do you hear the crack of the sound barrier as the whoosh flies overhead?
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It's the ASD detection system working as designed.
Woosh sound (Score:5, Funny)
No he didn't hear it : the sound of the whoosh was encoded with MP3 at a too low quality setting, he should have used FLAC instead.
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One reason Apple got rid of earphone jack was to help with water resistance (or so they say). I think MicroSD slot would be a step backward on that metric.
My camera is waterproof to 50 feet and has a SD slot.
If Google can have a USB port and keep the phone water resistance I don't see why they can't do the same with a MicroSD slot.
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Not the market leader (Score:5, Insightful)
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Google Pixel in one soundbite: excessive resolution for an excessive price.
And the loser is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And the loser is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not even close. A top-of-the-line DSLR from 10 years ago would be a Canon 1Ds Mk III. With a full-frame sensor at 21.1 megapixels, it wipes the floor with most smartphone cameras even if you don't factor in things like oh, I don't know, zoom lenses....
That would be the 95% of the population who have never used an actual camera, of course....
Re:And the loser is... (Score:5, Informative)
Hello. Pentax K-S2 owner here, with five lenses (only three of which I regularly use).
I'm on your side -- I think cell phone cameras are atrocious. The ergonomics are terrible, the sensor is tiny and noisy (though admittedly improving all the time), the lenses are short, the aperture is effectively fixed so you have no control over depth of field (you have to fake it in software), and rolling shutter is the rule of the day. There are various kluges around these shortcomings, but they are just that -- kluges.
That said... 95% of people don't care, and can't be made to care. All they want is something to take snapshots. This is why the market for point-and-shoot digital cameras is disappearing. Cell phones absolutely crush them on features (larger screen, larger storage, built-in network connectivity, etc.) and have long been their equal in image quality. If you want something to take snapshots, your cell phone is absolutely the way to go.
However, if you want to get in to photography, then you'll need something better. Alas, there just don't seem to be that many people looking to do that.
Re:And the loser is... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you fundamentally miss what it is that motivates people. It's not that people aren't interested in photography and only want to take snapshots, it's that people don't want to carry something.
I'm into photography (FE, F5, D40, D70, D200, D800 owner here) but the majority of my photos are done on my cellphone as it is the camera I have with me.
The thing is quality wise in a standard well lit scenario it is very difficult to tell a cellphone from a DSLR. It's only when you want to get fancy, depth of field, low light, non standard zoom ranges (the GP calling out the ability to zoom as a killer feature makes a mockery of those of us with 50mm f/1.2 lenses), or issues which demand extreme dynamic range, THEN the DSLR stands out.
It's why Apple's marketing department showed some hipster douchebag doing a studio model shoot on his iPhone with fantastic results. There's an element of just because you can doesn't mean you should, but for the vast majority of the population who's cells are in their pocket and who's SLRs are at home, the option doesn't exist.
Also nitpick, cellphones weren't the only thing that killed the point and shoot. I know a great many people who now have jumped on the mirrorless bandwagon which offers them a lot of the advantages of an SLR without the heft. Around here you'd be hard pressed finding a household which doesn't have a mirrorless or SLR around.
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You are right. But 95% of the people never used anything as nice as what you are talking about. The average cell phone camera is in fact better than anything I've ever used in my life. It takes pretty good photos. If I was a photographer, even an amateur one, then yes, I'd buy a camera. Frankly, I wouldn't know how to use it properly and I'm not willing to spend the time to learn. I just want to point and shoot.
Re:And the loser is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not even close. A top-of-the-line DSLR from 10 years ago would be a Canon 1Ds Mk III. With a full-frame sensor at 21.1 megapixels, it wipes the floor with most smartphone cameras even if you don't factor in things like oh, I don't know, zoom lenses....
That would be the 95% of the population who have never used an actual camera, of course....
So my daughter takes from 12-20 pictures (most of which are selfies) on her way to school each day to post on snap-chat and instagram. Do you think she'd get better quality pictures from a 10 year old full frame dslr than her smart phone? I think she'd get some super high resolution photographs of her ear lobe, her left elbow, the backseat of the car, etc. The bulk of the camera, the relatively tiny 3" rear facing LCD, and lack of any sort of Internet connectivity would make the Canon an extremely poor choice.
Yes, that camera could be used to produce some really large prints that would look like crap from a phone camera. It's also better suited to dealing with challenging light or photographing things from a distance, but at a very high price, both in terms of cost and convenience. What did that camera cost when released, about $8,000? That's 10 times the price of even a very expensive smart phone. And that's just for the camera body. Lenses that make a camera like that even worthwhile are also going to cost a small fortune and would be quite bulky. And how many fps was the Canon capable of? 5? Compare that to the burst mode of a modern smartphone. Could a 5D even shoot video?
For the photos most people shoot the vast majority of the time, using a full-frame DSLR is like using a dump truck to pick up groceries. Whatever added benefits there might be are far outweighed by the cost and inconvenience.
Now don't get me wrong. I own a decent DSLR, a classic SLR (actually 3 at the moment), a Range Finder, and a medium format film camera. I have a really nice film scanner and some good quality glass. I appreciate what a good DSLR and other high end equipment can do. But they are overkill for most of what people take pictures for.
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Re:And the loser is... (Score:5, Interesting)
A modern cell phone takes better pictures than a top-of-the-line DSLR from ~10 years ago. Those DSLR photos were touted as being great quality.
This is just a case of a large part of the populace (and this poster) having no concept of quality cameras. You don't even need to look at a top of the line camera. I have a Canon 40D (not even a full frame) with a few low ($80 plastic case 50mm f1.6 fixed) and my general med-high end lense ($1600 EF 24-70mm f2.8).
I bought this in Sept 2007 for my sons birth, so it's literally a 10-year old camera.
Nearly without exception, anytime I whip it out, take a few shots, and send to whoever was at my house etc, I'll get comments along the lines of "OMG - what a great shot. How many mega-pixels was that thing????!!!!" and some assumption I'm really into photography. No, I'm rubbish and usually had it on auto. It's just a half decent old camera that isn't even 'full frame'. 10.1 mega pixels was even low compared to the cheap non-SLRs at the time, but has never been a good measure of camera quality.
I've got an iPhone 8. It takes great happy snaps, but even with some effort they are often underexposed or no wow factor as it's so unnatural in whatever way it compensated for lack of optics.
"The best camera is the one you have with you", because there's no way I'm lugging 2 or 3kgs everywhere, but lets not pretend any of these phones are technical better than a real camera.
It would be great.... (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be great if in conjunction with removing the headphone jack they were also releasing a bunch of affordable USB-C headphones. My current phone still supports regular headphones, but it also has USB-C. So every once in a while, I look to see if there are any USB-C headphones I can grab --- because I assume the audio quality will be better. But there's hardly anything on Amazon and what is there is more expensive than similar or better headphones that have the traditional plug.
And it's not much better in the Apple space, either.
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USB-C is just the connector, the cable can carry both analog and digital signals.
AFAIK USB-C analog mode is only meant for adapters, my guess is because noise cancellation isn't very good over distances beyond a couple centimeters. This is probably why you don't see any licenced USB-C headphones. Because it's just an adapter, there shouldn't be any difference in sound quality.
Digital headphones are a different matter, they have their own DAC inside instead of using the one in the phone. With phone DACs bein
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Well, the good news is I have the LG V20 which has a nice DAC in it.....
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My wife has that phone. I really like it. I always bought Samsung before but the lack of a removable battery moved me to LG.
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I look to see if there are any USB-C headphones I can grab --- because I assume the audio quality will be better.
That is not a good assumption to make. In fact I would wager the opposite. You're no longer paying for analogue audio design.
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Apple throws in a Lightning-standard headphone jack adapter with each new iPhone. That being said, having switch to Bluetooth headphones and earbuds awhile ago (V-Moda Crossfade 2 Wireless and V-Moda Forza Metallo), I would say it's like switching to a cordless mouse. You really don't want to go back.
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I'm listening to podcasts more or less all day while I work. Most bluetooth headphones can't last a full day (a few will). The ones that do, I don't find comfortable.
Re:bluetooth headphones (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple also has AptX equivalent (Score:3)
Just how do you think Apple's modern headphones work anyway? They use AAC so as long as your headphones support AAC (which all of the decent ones do), then the sound quality is as good (or better) than it would have been with AptX.
If AptX were really better Apple would support that also.
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Just how do you think Apple's modern headphones work anyway?
Poorly. Any benefit of AAC is completely destroyed by playing them through a set of Beats or those other pieces of crap Apple advertise with the worlds "high quality".
They use AAC so as long as your headphones support AAC (which all of the decent ones do)
As I said, Beats are not decent, and AAC support is very sparse outside of the trendy audio companies. (Bose are also far from "decent")
If AptX were really better Apple would support that also.
Same reason they are late to the market with everything else, they are cheap, don't want to pay license fees, prefer vendor lock-in to their own pet projects (remember the first company to sell AAC formatted m
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Sucks to get stuck with Bluetooth if you want to travel, though... Many overseas airlines will not allow use of Bluetooth headphones,
Like which ones? I mean really. I travel for work. I spend about 40% of my time in other countries and 10% of those on other continents. I have *never* been asked to stop using my bluetooth headset for anything other than paying attention to the flight attendant during the inflight safety demonstration.
Many international airlines not only don't give a crap about your bluetooth, many of them now run in flight entertainment systems over WiFi, offer in flight internet access, and some even have microcells to a
Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
>"Is the lack of a headphone jack a deal-breaker"
100% yes. Although I am not happy with lack of SD cards, I can handle that if a reasonable storage size is available, 64+GB. I am never happy with a non-swappable battery, but it seems that is beating a dead horse. Certainly also unhappy that wireless charging is so rare. Other unhappiness- lack of NFC, thinness instead of battery size, pixel density instead of brightness and efficiency, huge screen instead of portability.
But I have to draw the line somewhere, and it is at losing a simple, compact, compatible, easy, reliable headphone jack. There is simply no really good reason to remove it. I don't know when I will or won't need it, and I don't want to carry a stupid adapter that also is expensive, easy to lose, sucks more power, is likely to break, makes the phone weak and awkward while using it, and prevents charging while using it.
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I use mine while traveling, and yea its a pain in the butt to carry more shit around when I have to actually go on a trip, I got a charger, headphones, battery pack cause my stupid thin phone has a grand total of jack shit battery life
and the killer of it all is that stuff is cheap, go to a conference, you end up with a entire bag of cables, chargers, headphones, battery packs and all sorts of other junk ... and yet companies want me to pay out the nose for a dongle I use 4 times a year and will loose after
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I don't want to carry a stupid adapter that also is expensive, easy to lose, sucks more power, is likely to break, makes the phone weak and awkward while using it, and prevents charging while using it.
https://www.amazon.com/Headpho... [amazon.com] For $6.90 your problem is solved. But keep whining if that makes you feel better...
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You either missed the point or ignored it. I don't care if they remove it. There's always someone to sell me what I want.
Re:Yes (Score:4, Informative)
>" https://www.amazon.com/Headpho [amazon.com]... For $6.90 your problem is solved. But keep whining if that makes you feel better..."
Let's see:
1) 1.8 star review
2) Something else to remember
3) Something else to carry
3) still consumes battery
4) can't charge while using
5) can't use headset, only headphones
6) no option for inline controls
7) major compatibility issues
Exactly how does this solve the problem? So yeah, I will keep whining.
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No headphone jack, no replaceable battery... (Score:5, Funny)
No SD slot, and likely no Miracast.
This is shaping up to be a very courageous phone design team indeed.
Please note I'm using the modern definition of "courageous", ie pants-on-head loony.
Re: No headphone jack, no replaceable battery... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are people so blind and so quick to dismiss their elders? We didn't bitch and moan when USB replaced serial ports, parallel ports and PS/2 ports, because USB was clearly superior. We didn't bitch and moan when USB flash drives replaced floppy drives because we were already way past the 1.44MB capacity of those damn discs.
But ditching the headphone jack? Why? Bluetooth is not superior in any way: for losing the wire, all you gain is low-quality compressed audio, expensive headphones and yet another battery to recharge every day.
Re: No headphone jack, no replaceable battery... (Score:5, Insightful)
People who quote the horseless carriages in this case only show their own ignorance of history.
It took a good 30 years for the horseless carriage to catch on. By that time the costs plummeted and it started showing real advantages including actually being faster and more comfortable than the horse drawn counterpart. There was a long history before mass adoption where the horseless carriage was a piece of shit that was slow, useless, and in some cases even required a person walking in front of it to be used legally.
That is where wireless headphones are right now. There's not a single wireless headphone on the market that can out perform its wired counterpart in any metric other than not having a wire.
They have their use cases, but they are not in the general all encompassing case superior.
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Simply plugging the "analog hole" (Score:5, Insightful)
This shouldn't come as any surprise considering how it was discussed in the context of DRM a decade ago. People choose the cloud, people loose choice.
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DRM and plugging the analogue hole doesn't make any sense in the context of audio. The argument is always that the final signal is analogue so you can always record it.In the video world this process is imperfect and takes a considerable quality hit as the final analogue signal is made up of millions of individual analogue signals.
In the audio world this process is absolutely perfect. The signal levels required to drive the analogue transducers to make sound to go in the ear are perfect for recording at top
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You can buy a dongle but are incapable of following the logical flow of a conversation. You're in no position to call others a moron.
Requiring USB headphones is not... (Score:2)
I miss my audio port! (Score:5, Insightful)
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My car has aux in. They talk about how 3.5mm Jack's are crap and wear out. Well now I'm going to wear out my charging port and turn my phone into a paper weight. I think about it every time I plug my phone in to it.
USB Type-C is rated for 10,000 connect/disconnect cycles [anandtech.com], So that's 4.5 years worth at 6 cycles/day.
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Mine used to. Cables in the front of the car between the phone and the hifi are one of the dumbest ideas we ever introduced. From a safety perspective alone a bluetooth radio is a good idea in the car.
That's also the only place it's a good idea. Cars are noisy, speakers are imperfect, they are horrible acoustically so there's no real problem having craptastic bluetooth audio pumped into a car.
The same can't be said for headphones.
Wired headphones, bluetooth car for me.
It's not just a headphone jack... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I use it in my car to connect to my oem head unit. I use to connect to some old powered PC speakers in the bathroom. I use it to connect to aux in on a few other devices. In other words, DEAL BREAKER.
New technology not suitable for person with 1980's technology. News at 11...
If it ain't broke (and it ain't)... (Score:5, Informative)
Oblig [xkcd.com].
His is a perfectly valid response. Just because something's from the 1980's doesn't mean we need to ditch it. Hell, I'm from the 1980's and I find new uses for myself all the time.
Incidentally, the 3.5 mm jack is actually 19th c. tech [wikipedia.org], just slightly scaled down for some applications in the 20th c..
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His is a perfectly valid response. Just because something's from the 1980's doesn't mean we need to ditch it.
I never said you have to ditch it. If you are happy with 1980's tech then by all means keep using it. But some of us like moving forward and am happy to upgrade to take advantages of new features. USB-C supports both Digital and Analog, so for me who has a bunch of analog and digital things, it's a step in the right direction of unifying to a single connector for everything (analog/digital/data/power).
Re:It's not just a headphone jack... (Score:5, Insightful)
The most advanced of soundboards still use connectors developed before WWII. This is literally an ain't broke, don't fix it situation. 3.5mm was just a shrinking of the size of patch cords. Requiring USB-C just adds unnecessary complexity to the simplest type of connection, basic stereo audio.
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The most advanced of soundboards still use connectors developed before WWII. This is literally an ain't broke, don't fix it situation. 3.5mm was just a shrinking of the size of patch cords.
But why shrink when 6.35mm ain't broke? Why not demand 6.35mm connectors for everything?
There's reasons for change, just because you don't agree with those reason doesn't mean they don't exist. For me, unifying to a single connector for analog, digital, power and data is justified.
Requiring USB-C just adds unnecessary complexity to the simplest type of connection, basic stereo audio.
Same was said with parallel to serial, and RS232 to USB, records to CD to DVD to Blueray etc. and the same will be said with USB-C to the next thing.
There will be some bitching an moaning at first, and in ten years people will w
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Improving something isn't the same as "fixing" something.
You're 99% of use cases are 1% of use cases for someone else.
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I don't. From a safety point of view I ripped the head unit out and replaced it with one with bluetooth. Cables get tangled, and get in the way. Many negative points for the idiot that thought the AUX in point should be down near the gear stick.
I use AUX in in many places, and headphones in even more. But cars, and noise cancelling headphones in planes are the two places where bluetooth audio really shines.
Do they still sell MP3 players? (Score:4, Insightful)
Looks like we're going to need to go back to multiple devices soon.
No headphone, no sale (Score:5, Insightful)
We're talking about a plug which is on possibly billions of devices.
This isn't just headphones and headsets, this is being able to plug into the analog port on amplifier, this standard is used on boom boxes 20 years ago, on audio 'in' ports for the past 20 or 30 years on a plethora of devices.
It's all fine and dandy for smarmy tools to say "oh shut up, get USB-C headphones!" but USB-C headphones won't work on my OTHER devices easily and I sure as shit don't see them changing any time soon, literally billions of devices over the world.
Once again (Score:2)
Once again. No headphone jack, no sale. No SDCC card, no sale.
Just deleting Facebook, which I don't have an account on, gives me room for 2
Google discriminating again! (Score:4, Insightful)
That's ageism [wikipedia.org]! Seriously though, what the fuck is wrong with companies? The headphone jack still works, digital wireless headphones have to use audio compression to have enough bandwidth and we're already listening to compressed audio in the first place. Are all new engineers deaf?
it's not a problem because Apple isn't involved (Score:2)
Like devices that don't have removable batteries, [samsunggeeks.com] bendy phones [redmondpie.com] and most of all holding it wrong [tumblr.com], it's only a problem when Apple is involved. Other manufacturers do the same or worse - Samsung Galaxy S6 cracked at the same pressure where the iPhone 6 bent - and people couldn't care less.
It will be the same with Androids that don't have headphone jacks. Sure sure, some people have said they wont buy them. And next Monday, they'll still not be buying the Pixel 2 and not caring about it. Also on next Monday
Already decided not to get the Pixel (Score:2)
I already decided not to get the Pixel, before this latest reason. It's really unclear where Google thinks they are going with this. Apple envy? Giving value for money, not so much.
Imperfect, but standard (Score:4, Insightful)
To switch the headphones, I would need to replace about $40-$50,000 of devices.
3.5 mm jacks are imperfect and always have been. They're a terrible design but probably the best we could hope for given the manufacturing equipment of the time. The original 1/4" "telephone plug" or monaural plug dates to 1878. The 3.5mm jack dates from the 50's but I can't find anything more precise from Googling. The fact that something so small could be made in the 50's... especially when most things had to be hand-assembled back then is truly amazing.
So that said... given a standard that already dates back 60-70 years... I have no intention of giving up my headphones and their wires. They work well enough... I don't have to charge them... and since I prefer ear buds, I sure as shit don't want to lose them constantly because they're not physically attached to my phone.
Oh... and dongles are just plain stupid... I have Ajay 5 headphones and have bought 20-30 pairs of AJays over the years because they are more durable than most others. They don't make dongles of comparable strength or cable quality.
off my upgrade list (Score:2)
OnePlus 5 (Score:2)
No headphone jack, no deal. If you want to come up with a new standard for a headphone jack, be my guest... but it needs to be ANALOG, like current headphone jacks. But I don't object to making the jack smaller, as long as it's an open standard that any headphone manufacturer is free to produce. By the way, the OnePlus 5 has a headphone jack.
No jack and no sd-slot equates to no sale. (Score:3)
I don't want to wear Bluetooth headphones 5 to 6 hours a day (noise-cancelling, courtesy of that productivity killer fad of open-offices).
As for the arguments for an SD slot : I want to be able to switch storage to another device easily and quickly and to do backups. Even if built-in storage was not so grossly overpriced, I would still choose SD.
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USB 3 is still serial, it has separate transmit and receive signals, like old fashion serial protocols like RS-232 and RS-422
Re:Jack is the de-facto standard for the people. (Score:5, Informative)
I know this is blatantly off topic and I'm just feeding a troll but I've been hooked and can't let go.
USB is a serial bus (2 pins for supply + 2 pins for serial signal), but USB-C isn't because is a parallel bus.
The Universal Serial Bus is a parallel bus?
USB-C is a new plug which can implement the USB3 protocol.
The USB3 protocol uses two sets of differential pairs for high speed communication. This is a serial bus and the same setup as many other systems including Serial ATA.
For backwards compatibility USB3 plugs contain wiring for both the serial USB2 signal and the serial USB3 signal, typically referred to as a dual signal. A typical device enumerates on one of the two busses, hubs enumerate on both to form two hubs one of which handles downstream USB3, the other downstream USB1/2.
However multiple serial busses does not make it a parallel bus, especially because the two signal sets run independently are clocked at different rates.
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What's with the removal of all these well established and standardized ports?? I want my IEEE 1284 port back!
This is a DEAL BREAKER! If they expect me to buy a new printer just so I can print then they've lost a customer. Parallel ports 4 lyf!!!!
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Re:no parallel port, either! (Score:4, Informative)
It has not gone away. Most brand new motherboards in mATX and ATX form factor do have headers for a parallel port and also a serial port.
You would just need to get brackets for them to get sockets out the back - just like you had to do with AT motherboards back in the day.
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Sure, but then that's another device you have to charge up in order to use.
Also, with earbuds especially, that "leash" comes in handy at saving them from getting lost if one should fall out of your ear.
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