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Google The Almighty Buck Hardware Technology

Google Replaces Its USB-C Headphone Adapter With a More Expensive Version (theverge.com) 86

Posted by BeauHD from the nickel-and-dime dept.
Google is now selling an updated headphone adapter that's supposed to be more responsive and drain less of your phone's battery. But these minor improvements come at a cost. The new dongle costs $12, whereas the old dongle sold for just $9. "That also means Google's headphone adapter now costs more than Apple's equivalent adapter for the iPhone," The Verge notes. From the report: Physically, though, the dongle is nearly identical to the USB-C to 3.5mm adapter that Google has been selling since last October: this new version is just a hair smaller in almost every dimension. Google says the new dongle will connect to your phone ever so slightly faster, and, more importantly, it's supposed to draw less power, translating to 38 percent more playback time. Android Police first spotted the update.
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Google Replaces Its USB-C Headphone Adapter With a More Expensive Version More

Google Replaces Its USB-C Headphone Adapter With a More Expensive Version

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  • Whelp, there goes my avocado toast (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Bummer

  • The original adaptor seems like it must be super poorly designed if a new version can reduce draw by 38%!! That seems like an insane gap. Seems like the original adaptor must have also gotten quite hot with that kind of extra draw?

    Even if it's slightly more expensive I don't see where a dollar or two would make much of a difference, you're only going to be buying one or two adaptors at most (and many people need 0 if they just stick to bluetooth headsets).

    • The original adaptor seems like it must be super poorly designed if a new version can reduce draw by 38%!! That seems like an insane gap. Seems like the original adaptor must have also gotten quite hot with that kind of extra draw?

      Even if it's slightly more expensive I don't see where a dollar or two would make much of a difference, you're only going to be buying one or two adaptors at most (and many people need 0 if they just stick to bluetooth headsets).

      That's exactly what I was thinking!

      The averageQualcomm based Android Phone has a battery with about the capacity of 3-4 old-Sokol "D" cell flashlight batteries!

      I wonder if Google was worried about BURN lawsuits from the melting insulation on that old headphone adapter!!!!

      • Re:38% seems nuts for an adaptor (Score:5, Informative)

        by viperidaenz ( 2515578 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2018 @10:20PM (#57294530)

        An single alkaline D cell has over 18W/hr of energy, That's at least a 4600mAh 3.85V cellphone battery. The Pixel 2 has a 2700mAh battery.

        The "talk time" rating is about 16 hours, that's while running an active 3G session for voice. That's about 600mW average power consumption.
        That's not a whole lot of power and I assume playing MP3's is much less power than a voice call. Apparently the 3G performance of the Pixel 2 is not very good.

        It's also not just the dongle consuming power. It's the USB host inside the phone as well. If the new chip in the new dongle is better at USB power management, that means less power consumed by the phone while it's in use. It probably has a more efficient amplifier too.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawguy ( 1600213 )

        The averageQualcomm based Android Phone has a battery with about the capacity of 3-4 old-Sokol "D" cell flashlight batteries!

        A single D cell alkaline battery has a capacity of 10000 - 20000 mAh depending on power draw. Assuming 10000 mAh, that's 15Wh of power.

        The Google Pixel 2 has a 2700mAh, 3.85V battery, or 10.4Wh of power.

        Even the old carbon-zinc D cells had around 8000mAh of capacity, or around 12Wh of power

        So a single D cell battery has a higher capacity than a typical android battery.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Megol ( 3135005 )

          While you call them the same they aren't the same. The D cell is a battery, the phone "battery" is actually an accumulator or secondary battery.
          One kind is one use, the second is designed for repeated charging and a longer lifetime.
          If wanting to make skewed comparisons why not use aluminum-air batteries for comparison? Much higher capacity, still one use.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by torkus ( 1133985 )

            If you're going to try and technical, at least read what's being replied to...which was "old school" flashlight batteries.

            But fine...take a modern NiMH D-cell which is 12-15Wh. That still puts a single D-cell on-par with what's in a phone.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by torkus ( 1133985 )

        The S9+ has a 13.48Wh battery.

        Alkaline D-cell capacity varies of course, but is typically 18-27Wh depending on brand, current draw, etc.
        A modern rechargeable NiMH clocks in around 12-15Wh

        So no. At best your phone comes short of a SINGLE Alkaline (old-skool) D-cell battery and ties a single, modern NiMH. At least check your facts before ranting on...

        • The S9+ has a 13.48Wh battery.

          Alkaline D-cell capacity varies of course, but is typically 18-27Wh depending on brand, current draw, etc.
          A modern rechargeable NiMH clocks in around 12-15Wh

          So no. At best your phone comes short of a SINGLE Alkaline (old-skool) D-cell battery and ties a single, modern NiMH. At least check your facts before ranting on...

          While I sincerely apologize to all the Sladotters that got so Butthurt about my accidently mis-remembering the capacity of a D-Cell battery when I posted that at around 3:30 am (yes, I still should have taken an extra minute and checked!), I feel obliged to point-out that "Checking facts before ranting on..." almost never seems to be a priority when some Apple-Hating Anonymous COWARD wants to (intentionally?) incorrectly state "facts" regarding whatever it is they are "on"-about regarding Apple when they ve

      • a battery with about the capacity of 3-4 old-Sokol "D" cell flashlight batteries

        Sokol batteries? So a bunch of Czech gymnasts [wikipedia.org] turn up and run on a treadmill to power your flashlight?

        • a battery with about the capacity of 3-4 old-Sokol "D" cell flashlight batteries

          Sokol batteries? So a bunch of Czech gymnasts [wikipedia.org] turn up and run on a treadmill to power your flashlight?

          Haha!

          Obviously, I meant the slang-term "SKOOL"

  • The high-end Snapdragon processors come with a very good DAC built in. Probably better quality than these cheap dongles and also capable of higher output power.

    You can even use USB-C Audio Accessory mode to route analog audio through the C jack, meaning cheaper $1 adapters, but Google is one of the last holdouts in supporting this.

    Why force people to buy two DACs, Google?

    • Unfortunately the USB standards says an official certified device may not rely on Audio Accessory mode being present, so they are forced to also have fallback logic, which is expensive, power draining, and dumb (in this case).

  • Sigh... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pollux ( 102520 ) <speter AT tedata DOT net DOT eg> on Tuesday September 11, 2018 @08:34PM (#57294014) Journal

    If I get modded down as a troll, so be it, but I feel it needs to be said.

    Not everything that shows up on The Verge needs to be a headline on Slashdot. Especially an article tries to make a $3 markup on a headphone adapter sound like an assault on consumers.

    Let me know when you find an article analyzing the circuitry of these headphone adapters and explains exactly how modifying something as simple as a headphone adapter can extend battery life by 38%.

    • Re:Sigh... (battery life) (Score:5, Interesting)

      by craighansen ( 744648 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2018 @08:46PM (#57294088) Journal

      Can I offer a wild-ass guess that increasing buffer space on the DAC chip can allow the phone to extend the time between wakeups and thereby spend more time sleeping, extending battery life?

    • Of course it is an assault on consumers!
      Mostly, I would imagine, because it is not an Apple product, and that is the Verge.

      A headline like 'Google released improved USB-C headphone adapter, with small price increase' would be WAY too much to ask for.
      After all, Google is evil (true), Apple is not evil (ummm...).

    • The original price should be below $1, so yes that is offensive.

    • The assault is not offering it free to every Google phone owner that is plagued with reliability problems on the included adapter.

  • Damn .... (Score:3)

    by Freischutz ( 4776131 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2018 @08:36PM (#57294026)

    The new dongle costs $12, whereas the old dongle sold for just $9. "That also means Google's headphone adapter now costs more than Apple's equivalent adapter for the iPhone," The Verge notes.

    Damn .... It'll be interesting to hear the Apple haters rationalise this.

    • At least there are other choices for Android phones.

    • Damn .... It'll be interesting to hear the Apple haters rationalise this.

      You're forgetting that many Apple haters also hate other phone vendors. I have never owned any pixel-addressable-screen-equipped mobile device that lacked an audio jack, and I don't intend to do so in near future.

      If people buy crippled phones based only on fashion value, shame on them!

    • I don't need a dongle to plug a 3.5mm headphone plug in to my Moto X4

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 )
      It's not really the cost of the adapter that irks me so - it's the fact an adapter is needed in the first place. At least the VAST majority of Android phones still have a headphone jack. Oh, and most support AptX, AptX HD, and hi-res audio (unlike iOS devices) if you care about those things...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megol ( 3135005 )

      Why should one rationalize it? And why do you think there are only two choices?

    • Damn .... It'll be interesting to hear the Apple haters rationalise this.

      Other than Apple eating the cost of its devices? After all, before Google showed the world how cheap these adapters actually are, do you even remember the cost of the Apple adapter?

    • How about this:

      If Apple hadn't courageously started the trend to needless remove a universal standard adapter that has stood the test of time from their devices, nobody would need a stupid dongle now.

  • I am kind of annoyed (Score:3)

    by toonces33 ( 841696 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2018 @08:44PM (#57294070)

    That they keep coming up with all of these variants of USB connectors, requiring us to keep a drawer full of cords and dongles of one sort or another.

    • The funny thing is that this is what UNIVERSAL serial bus was supposed to prevent in the first place.

    • I know, it's hard to keep up.
      I mean for small devices there's been 3 different types! Two of which have been used on cellphones!
      There's the usb mini, which wasn't really used and wasn't designed for lots of insertions
      There's the usb micro, which is very common
      Now there's usb type-c!

      I'm completely lost now.

      • It is more than that. I once had an HTC phone with some other proprietary connector. My old Samsung S5 had some other variant of micro to support USB 3. And now USB-C. I don't think I have ever had two cellphones that had the same connector.

        And then there are all of the little gizmos that really only use USB just to charge the battery. Mini, micro - all still quite common.

        • It is more than that. I once had an HTC phone with some other proprietary connector. My old Samsung S5 had some other variant of micro to support USB 3. And now USB-C. I don't think I have ever had two cellphones that had the same connector.

          And then there are all of the little gizmos that really only use USB just to charge the battery. Mini, micro - all still quite common.

          Damn, that's ridiculous!

          So, for all the Fandroids' bitching about Apple connectors, over the past 11.7 years, they have actually only had TWO charging/data connectors.

          And before you whine about Lightning being a proprietary connector, remember it was out and working in the real-world Before USB-C was a viable option.

        • The S5 has regular micro USB, and works perfectly well using any gas station micro USB cable.

          It can support USB 3, using a wider (and quite standard) connector, but nobody ever gave a shit about that *and* it is optional *and* those extra pins have nothing to do with charging the device.

          So the outlier here is early HTC. Fortunately, that's not very representative of the Android market.

    • It's been said that those who don't understand FireWire will be condemned to reinvent it, poorly.

      Maybe I have that quote confused a bit. It does work though, USB was supposed to be a cheaper and easier alternative to FireWire. It took them a while (only about 30 years) but they got all the features of FireWire, but all the baggage of backward compatibility with an inferior spec.

      The USB-C connector isn't bad but without Thunderbolt and/or DisplayPort on the cable it's only barely better than what I had fro

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by swb ( 14022 )

        Technology innovation has kind of stopped being about simply making better products, not its about using it to drive product segmentation, long roll-outs of features which maximize an innovation's earning power and driving lock-in and all its derivative product sales.

        USB seems to suffer particularly because while it is a standard, it's at the mercy of actual hardware vendors to go ahead and implement it and they run it through their profit maximizing models first, leading to weird, slow adoptions and select

    • requiring us to keep a drawer full of cords and dongles of one sort or another.

      No that's silly. Just throw away all your old hardware. It doesn't have any street cred anymore anyway.

  • As we have seen in other areas of phone design(and the so called 'system on chip' generally), considerable savings of both cost and power can be achieved through denser integration of components, reduction in duplication of function, power hungry bus logic, and so forth.

    Imagine, if you will, the sorts of power and cost savings that could be realized if Google took the revolutionary(indeed, Courageous) step of moving the dongle into the phone.

    I realize that it's a radical proposal; and I don't make it

  • Ya know ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2018 @10:02PM (#57294456)

    Google is now selling an updated headphone adapter that's supposed to be more responsive and drain less of your phone's battery.

    A standard 3.5mm headphone jack is *really* responsive and doesn't use *any* battery power. Just sayin' ...

    And for those vendors crowing about better water-proofing w/o this jack, my Kyocera Hydro VIBE [kyoceramobile.com] from 2014 has a standard headphone jack and is "Certified waterproof for IPX5, and IPX7. Immersible for up to 30 minutes in up to 3.28 feet (1 meter)."

    • and doesn't use *any* battery power.

      It's best not to put emphasis around anything that is demonstrably wrong. Unless you think speakers move through the motive force of hopes and dreams rather than electrical power.

  • or we could show some courage and include the old 3.5mm connector again.
    If that means the phone gets slightly thicker, they are more than welcome to add more battery capacity.

    • If that means the phone gets slightly thicker, they are more than welcome to add more battery capacity.

      Agreed, I don't know what the point is of having a paper thin phone? Hell, I bought one of those shock proof and water proof phones, it was at least an inch thick and it didn't bug me at all, battery life was good for three days (at least in the beginning) I used it for 7 years and eventually the battery died. I am sure if I replace the batter it will keep going for another 7 years. The only problem I

  • If only there was some sort of adapter, a "jack" if you will, that could be built into the phone itself. You could make it a single standard that practically all audio devices could use. I wonder how much technology will need to advance before such a novel idea is possible ...

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