Alternatively, if your current phone doesn’t have a headphone jack, do you wish it did?
Credit where it’s due, Bluetooth headphones have come a long way. I like the ones I have now. That said, removing the jack and micro SD slots was extremely anti consumer and they should come back.
My issue with BT isn’t quality it’s the cost and the battery. I do have a very nice pair that I enjoy on occasion but I have another set of wired headphones that I use sometimes 12 hours a day at work. BT headphones would quickly wind up in the garbage under those circumstances since batteries are wear items with limited charge cycles and once they go bad, they render the rest of the device useless.
I also don’t like having another device that needs charging or that’ll leave me ‘stranded’ because I wasn’t monitoring the charge close enough and it died.
I don’t think we should be forced to choose one or the other. Both have advantages and we should get a real choice as consumers. Currently I’m limited to low spec’ed phones if I want 3.5mm or high spec’ed with no 3.5mm (and no SD card and no replaceable battery). It’s a shitty choice all around.
Cheap knock off ear pods are getting a lot better. I can get a pair of 20 dollar ear pods that are actually better than name brand wireless ear buds I got a few years ago. When it comes to audio quality they’re better than the audio jack earbuds I have for my tablet and I don’t have ti worry about pulling the cable. Also usbc ear buds never seem to break no matter how much they’re pulled on or chewed on by the cat.
Yeah, I mostly use bluetooth with my phone but not always. Sometimes it’s not possible and you just need to use an aux cable or wired headset.
Bluetooth headphones have come a long way
What advancements have been made since Apple removed the headphone jack?
Why wouldn’t you prefer a headphone jack in your phone? It is yet another option for headphones that worst case you don’t use. The only reason it has been removed is because it saves companies a few cents on the cost to build the product.
They remove it to push people to use bluetooth, on iOS this means you wont disable it permanently and keep Apples tracking network alive. Not that nasty on Android but I suppose the same reasoning
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It’s naaaaaaaasty.
Eh… I’m not sure it has anything to do with AirTags and the find my network. They weren’t a thing until a couple of years after the 3.5mm jack was removed. It’s probably a benefit now, but I suspect most people don’t bother turning off Bluetooth anyway.
Interesting, I always keep Bluetooth off unless I’m using my BT headphones. Saves battery. I never took privacy into consideration
Disabling things like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi has had a negligible affect on battery life for years
For sure, but I don’t think the average non-technical person messes with that at all. Privacy is technically a concern with wifi and Bluetooth on because your phone basically acts as a beacon, but there are some mitigations in place to switch mac addresses and stuff fairly regularly.
I should have added, that for companies that sell Bluetooth headphones it also helps drive sales for those devices, particularly that is why Apple did it.
Yeah, Apple even bought Beats and immediately let the brand stagnate literally just so they wouldn’t have any competition in the marketing space. That kind of move basically confirms that other moves they did likely had similar rationale.
It’s possible that Apple is actually aiming towards their “portless phone” dream, and this death of the jack was just a step. But I’ll take it for the “we must employ the closest practice to profiteering as we can in the wireless audio space” aspect it appears to have.
I am curious when they want to buy Bose, as they are pretty much the most common headphones people wear around me
So many times I’ve forgotten my Bluetooth headphones or they’ve died and I always find some wired ones but can’t use them, or I can even go into a gas station and just buy some for $1.
Also my Sony headphones have an optional aux port to plug in, nice to use when they die because it doesn’t need battery, or if I want to plug into another device without having to pair everytime.
That sounds nifty, headphones that let you run BT and port as you choose? I didn’t know this existed, will keep in mind!
These are the one I have https://www.sony.com/ug/electronics/headband-headphones/wh-ch700n
I have very similar ones. Love em.
I had a pair of Sony headphones that could do the same thing!
Sadly, they were bad on both choices, BT’s battery didin’t last sh*t, and the wired input somehow reduced the volume (like, by a lot).
More importantly it removes the expectation to include earbuds with the phone as well as allows them to sell you Bluetooth ones
This is the real reason. The cost savings is negligible. But as soon as Apple got rid of the headphone jack, they introduced the AirPods.
Then Google did it, Samsung did it, and every other phone manufacturer followed suit. They all have their own wireless earbuds.
Fairphone did it too, of all the companies. Shows that the margins on these things are pretty big for Fairphone to do such a thing.
It’s why I’m getting a Zenfone to replace my ~6 year old phone now instead of a Fairphone. It even has a far better IP rating than the fairphone despite the “horrible” water intrusion supposedly caused by 3.5mm jacks.
Fairphones lying BS about why they removed the port convinced me to never buy one of their phones, even if I didn’t care about it.
Sony listened to their customers complaints and brought back the headphone jack for the 2nd generation Xperia 1.
Their phones continue to feature some of the best waterproofing (real world performance, and not just the rating they slap on it) in the entire industry.
That has never been a justifiable argument against the headphone jack, despite being an all-too-frequent one.
That’s why I buy the $20 straight from the Chinese factory ones, because fuck 'em
I really doubt this is the primary reason. I think it was multifaceted, but really the people in the business of designing phones were already using Bluetooth exclusively and felt that it was good enough. Some designs probably rushed it as a means to sell more premium headsets (Apple, Samsung), other saw it as removing an unnecessary redundant feature that was more prone to breakage and a waterproofing difficulty (Google). I think it really just came down to the personal preferences of the (affluent) people who were doing the designing, not necessarily a purposeful cash grab. It really was not great since wired headphones were way cheaper than their Bluetooth counterparts. Luckily Bluetooth has gotten much better and less expensive. I think there should be options for both.
Let’s be honest though, included earbuds were pretty universally garbage and the world is probably better off without the ewaste.
That said, please bring back the headphone jack.
I’ve always been lambasted for this opinion, but I feel the same way about the charging cable and charger.
I do not want yet another 1 metre (if they’re even that, most likely 3 foot) USB-C cable that barely reaches from the charger on the floor to the bedside table - and largely precludes actually using the phone while in bed - nor particularly the included charger. So many things need to be plugged in these days that single-output chargers are also basically e-waste.
Of course because some business genius had the idea that making the USB cable 0.9 instead of 1.8m saved them $0.06 per unit shipped, we all got lumped with those useless cables.
Now of course there will always be people for whom it’s their first phone (or whatever situation), who do need those accessories. But all that requires is there to be a retail bundle with the now-accessory charger and cable. Preferably that bundle costs the same as the phone with them included does today and you get a token discount for the phone without them, although we all know it would never work that way :(
I’m in the minority on this myself, but I fully agree. Honestly, I don’t even need the discount, tell me I can make a fraction less plastic waste and I’m pretty much there. When I got a new phone a couple years ago, I just put the cable at my desk so I had a spot to plug in misc stuff, but I definitely didn’t need it.
Mostly true, yeah. The “AKG” ones that came with my S8 were honestly pretty damn nice though.
Yea I had a pair of those that I used for other phones, until I lost the pair.
I tried getting some “oem” ones from amazon but they weren’t the same
AKG ones were always great. I have a USB C pair from an old Samsung and they’re good too.
One positive for me about the included earphones is they are great utility earphones for when I’m mixing/mastering music. They have a pretty flat and even response so it’s one of the devices I use to test my music on “regular” sound systems to make sure they sound good on all types of equipment.
That totally depends on what headphones though. Apple’s maybe, I wasn’t really too discerning last time I had some of those, but on Android it was a mess. Samsung had decent ones some years, Google’s were generally okay at best, and LOADS were just actual trash.
Yeah I forgot to mention I was pertaining to the apple wired earphones specifically.
Color me surprised to hear that then. The few times I had used them, I couldn’t get over how uncomfortable they were for my ear (which is why I never used then much)
Or they can include $20 wireless earbuds and say “Early preorder bonus earbuds, a $200 value if you ORDER NOW NOW NOW”
Just another thing I don’t use that takes up space and can go wrong. Same reason i don’t need it to have a cassette deck or 8-track player.
Oh, cassettes were just designed to go wrong altogether 😆
But while wired headphones are indeed “analog devices” they do not have any mechanical parts moving, so really if you take good care of them they can last a lifetime. (Unlike BT headphones with batteries with approximate estimations of life). 🤒🤕
I never said anything about the headphones. I was referring to the port, which can get gunked up, damaged by water, or all sorts of other stuff. in my many many years of using Bluetooth headphones of all types, I’ve never had a single thing go wrong— and because I am a responsible adult, I’m capable of recharging my batteries.
The era of annoying snags painfully pulling out wired headphones from my ears is a headache I’m very glad to have left behind long ago.
I think the point is more that in seeking to satisfy people like you, they’ve made everyone who likes the more reliable tech SOL.
Personally I love my bt headphones, but I also liked having a wired set for backup in case my battery ran out. If I had a choice between a jack and no jack on an otherwise feature-identical phone I’d choose the jack
I’m capable of keeping my batteries charged and haven’t really run into that problem. I also appreciate having my phone be water resistant and having one last thing to go wrong like getting the port get gunked up from stuff in my pocket. 
As far as reliability goes, I suggest you try some better headphones, because I’ve never had a reliability problem either. 
Why wouldn’t you prefer a headphone jack in your phone?
I’ve seen some people literally say that they don’t want a phone with a useless hole in it (in fact, it was said right here on Lemmy not long ago), whereas others claim that not having a headphone jack == bigger battery. Some, like Fairphone fanboys in particular, have gone as far as claiming that removing the headphone jack reduces e-waste…
All valid arguments
None of those are valid arguments, especially e-waste. It’s literally the opposite, fairphone is gaslighting.
Some, like Fairphone fanboys in particular, have gone as far as claiming that removing the headphone jack reduces e-waste…
That is a terrible argument for someone to make. There is no way to argue that removing the headphone jack does anything but create more e-waste. First from all the perfectly good wired headphones that are now forced to be replaced, secondly from the fact that Bluetooth headphones all have a shelf life due to the li-ion battery after which they become e-waste. Even with the Fairphone headphones the battery becomes e-waste that wouldn’t exist with wired headphones, cables do wear out too, but replacing that part will have a smaller energy footprint to replace than a battery.
I use wireless headphones. However, I like to have non-distracting background music at work (open-plan office), and I won’t put my personal files (music) on a company-owned laptop. So I run a wire from my phone’s headphone jack to the laptop line-in, and can thus play music without any mixing of data.
I don’t actively need a headphone jack on my phone but when I do need one I am annoyed that my phone does not have one.
I don’t get it. This poll is largely in favor of jacks. I love my Bluetooth buds so much more. No more with I have to deal with broken wires. No more do I have to deal with moving my hand and accidentally snagging the cord, forcing my phone to the floor. No more do I have to deal with the cord creating noise as it rubs against the zipper of my jacket…
Have one, use it all the time.
I’m in the minority that basically never needs one and is okay with using a USB-C dongle in those cases. But I don’t mind phones having one, and perfectly understand the argument for keeping it. Form over function is definitely a factor in modern phone design.
I usually use wireless headphones nowadays, but there are still plenty of instances where I’m happy to have the headphone jack. Random parties where someone needs to play music via the aux cable, going somewhere with only some small wired headphones in my pocket because I dont have space, etc. For me it’s still quite important that my next phone has one.
On the one hand, you make a compelling point for a headphone jack. On the other hand, you can just create a collaborative queue on Spotify or whatever music app you are using.
I do not use mine, because if I want to listen to something in public, I just save it for later, when I’m home. Then I can play it at whatever volume I want.
Back when I went to the gym before covid, I had a dedicated music device I used for music, not my phone.
I’d like one, sure.
It’s not a deal breaker either way. I have a USB dongle with a headphone jack so it’s not a big deal.
I absolutely want wired headphones, though. One less set of batteries to worry about, especially when traveling internationally.
I was gifted a phone without a headphone jack after my last one died a few years back. I miss it all the time, remembering to charge bluetooth headphones and not losing bluetooth buds is tricky for me. So a lot of the time I just dont play music anymore. Very annoying.
I’m fine with the dongle because all I ever use the headphone jack for is for listening in my car (no bluetooth), so the dongle just stays on the end of the aux cord in my car.
No dongle would obviously be better, but it’s a very minor inconvenience for me,
I find in the car is the most inconvenient. Having the GPS open drains the battery pretty quick on my old phone, leaving no way to drive for hours with both music and navigation.
I have an adapter that splits so I can charge my phone while I talk on a headset while working. Does that count?
No.
I haven’t used wired since around 2013, and would have switched to jack-less if available at that time. I don’t understand the “anti-consumer” theories around their removal. Most people who end up buying phones without jacks end up buying BT headphones from a manufacturer other than the phone one. Unless you think there’s a conspiracy where Sony and Bose are giving kickbacks to Samsung and Apple…
I much prefer wireless headphones, because I keep breaking every plug. I even tried soldering them, but that ended in a catastrophe lol. That being said, I recently lost my wireless pair and had to pick my old K450. Now I’m grateful that I picked a phone with a headphone jack. I wasn’t even checking if it has one while buying.
