Just randomly sharing my experience here. My sister told me a few weeks ago she was going to change for a new phone (a Motorola, she likes AOSP-like experience). I noticed that her new phone wouldn’t get a jack.
“Yeah, I know, I hope I can make it work with a USB-adapter”. She has nice headphones that she likes to use, so USB-C earplugs were not an option.
Fast forward to today, she told me the adapter she got starts to malfunction:
- she has to twitch the jack in the adapter for the thing to work
- when she plugs the adapter in, Google Assistant takes over and randomly starts skipping songs.
She’s now considering getting wireless earbuds, but she’s not a fan of having to recharge them to be able to use them, and is also cautious about the e-waste potential.
I have a Moto G84 which does the job. It’s not the best phone in the world, I’m eyeing a flagship from time to time and keep the G84 as a “connected walkman”, but would it break today, I would probably get a G55 (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Motorola-Moto-G55-smartphone-review-Inexpensive-doesn-t-have-to-be-boring.932900.0.html)
That’s it for me, do you have similar experiences to share?
I will be sad when my S10 dies, purely for finding a headphone jack. It might sound dumb, but I only see drawbacks to bluetooth audio, as it’s not solving any problem I had to begin with. :)
My biggest regret was swapping out my old S9 for a free* “upgrade”. Miss that phone everyday.
Sony Xperias have headphone jacks.
Thank you! I had a look, as I thought they were discontinued in the UK, and it looks like I can get one sim-only from a few places. :) Awesome, that’ll do nicely when the time comes, thank you again!
I got mine from Amazon (Xperia 1 VI [XQ-EC72]) since the newest one is non-US, but cellular works.
A good quality DAC connected to your USB port will give you far better sound than having a headphone jack.
The jack is for convenience while you’re mobile. I have a good collection of really decent iems and use them all the time when I’m not worried about the cable snagging on something. At work I use BT, it’s okay but not great. But yeah, for my uses, a headphone jack is a must.
Good thing that type-c port is still there either way then.
This is why I don’t like the idea of one device for all my communication and media needs. I have smartphones for comms and dedicated audio devices for music and podcasts, with headphone jacks.
Honestly the more I think about this the more I think that you are not only right, but putting all of our proverbial eggs in one basket with smartphones was a horrible horrible mistake. We have done too many trade-offs for convenience.
Try to buy a digital camera today, pocket digital cameras basically aren’t made anymore. And even a mid-range pocket digital camera from the mid 2010s significantly outperforms a modern smartphone camera. It’s simple physics, bigger lens captures more light gives you a better picture.
Try to listen to music. Almost all the digital music we are served up is lossy compressed for streaming. And then we feed it into Bluetooth headphones with even more lossy compression. The sound that actually goes in the ears sounds like crap and bears little resemblance to what the artist laid down on their master, but we’re all used to it so we think that’s what music is supposed to sound like. A late 1990s Discman has significantly better sound quality even with a cheap DAC.
Try to do something online. A whole lot of new sites and services don’t even bother making a website, it’s just a promo to download their stupid privacy invading app. And if you want to do whatever you are doing on a real computer with a big screen, you’re SOL.
And then there is the unintended effect on our kids. I have always been an advocate of mobile technology. But I am looking at the actual effect of growing up with smartphones and tablets, and the result is an awful lot of kids with attention spans measured in seconds rather than minutes. Kids who can edit video and insert images into a document with their eyes closed, but can barely write three coherent sentences.
I have always been an advocate and user and enthusiast of smartphones and mobile technology. I buy this stuff, I use it, I recommend it to others.
But I think maybe I was wrong. I think maybe we all were wrong.
I look at the overall effect smartphones have on society, and I honestly can’t say the world is a better place as a result. We take crappy pictures, listen to crappy music, have crappy attention spans, but it’s all very convenient so we don’t care.I think maybe we were better off the other way. And maybe some of that inconvenience is a good thing, in the same way that having to do physical work is good exercise.
Agreed, really enjoy my fiio m15s
“USB-adapter” in this context used to be quite a shitshow.
I’ve seen at least the bastardisations of the USB-c spec where manufacturers just repurpose a couple of pins for analog audio. One for samsung, one for Xiaomi etc.
I hope most have gone over to being proper USB soundcards with a DAC today.
I was dead against losing my 3.5mm jack, and tried to use a USB-to-3.5mm adaptor but it was poor, with issues like your sister experienced.
I finally decided to try a set of relatively cheap earplugs and I wish I’d done it sooner. They’re lightweight, have good connectivity and a convenient charging case. I’m getting better quality audio and experience than I was with my 3.5mm jack - i’d have to replace my headsets every year or less as the wires got damaged over time, and the audio quality is actually better with my bluetooth earplugs. I used to avoid bluetooth after bad experiences over the years with audio drop out and connection issues, but I’ve not had any problems with my newer devices.
I’m not pretending they are audiophile quality but neither is 3.5mm audio in a phone - they just don’t have good quality DACs in phones. Bluetooth is finally a decent and convenient step up for me for day-to-day use and I’m finally not as bothered about losing my 3.5mm port. It’s also worth noting that if you want better audio, you can get bluetooth DACs and plug wired audio into those for an even better experience - I’m tempted but it’s expensive and I’m not sure I’d appreciate the benefit enough to make it worthwhile for me.
I get it. However, I switched to having a good set of overear headphones connected via Bluetooth some years ago. I’ve never looked back, the freedom is amazing!
If you are making music, so is the latency.
I just keep buying phones with headphone jacks. I use bluetooth headphones too, but have a wired set for fallback, especially when travelling.
Also, if you’re on a call or vc, a good wired set wth a well placed mike on the wire (e.g. marshall mode) gives you better sound quality and better exclusion of environment noise than any bluetooth headphones, and you don’t have to worry about earbud batteries running out mid call.
It limits phone selection a lot, but so far there has been good phones with headphone jacks every time
she has to twitch the jack in the adapter for the thing to work
This is the downfall of all headphone jacks tbh
My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy A32, the last in the A3x line that has one. It’s really nice to have a headphone jack because… well, you plug your pair in, and it just works. You don’t have to worry about Bluetooth connections, or another battery that will die one day that you constantly have to recharge. Also, you get FM radio functionality on your phone, which isn’t really useful, but it’s pretty fun to mess with. I’m surprised Apple never had it on the iPod Touch despite the Nano and Classic both having it (some with a special accessory that unlocks the feature, some have it built in).
Also, support for my phone ends on Android 13 (One UI 5.1), meaning if I want new features (or even emoji updates), I have to get a newer phone, and that means either getting a lower tier model to keep that headphone jack at the cost of performance, or getting the same tier (or higher) at the cost of the jack. And I was never convinced by other Android phone manufacturers either, especially since companies like OnePlus don’t sell their products in my country, so my options are either Samsung, Google, or a whole bunch of Chinese companies, many have really terrible skins of Android. Either that or I get an iPhone, and none of the ones that are currently supported have the headphone jack. So I guess I’m sticking with my A32 until the day it nukes itself.
I got some bose bluetooth headphones probably 7-8 years ago at this point and they’re still working fine. I hate earbuds, personally, so that was never an option. I do hate having one more thing to charge and possibly die, but the noise canceling is also super helpful so that’s fine for me. I’ve had zero problems with google assistant or anything else, but I’m pretty sure I have it mostly disabled on my phone.
My friend group used to be very big on “pass the aux cord” when we’re hanging out. It was incredibly easy to switch out our phones (or iPods and portable CD players before that) to let all of us contribute music for the gathering.
Now? Ok, I disconnected from the BT speaker. Do you see it yet? Lemme try turning the BT speaker off and on again. [BING BONG!; “Connected”] Ugh, it reconnected to my phone. Let me just turn BT off on my phone and you try again.
It’s just such a PITA with BT, and having to keep USB-C and Lightning adapters on hand is even more annoying than that. If only there were a reliable and dedicated connection for audio devices…oh well.
On the other hand, YouTube and Spotify let you add songs to the queue from your phone without taking over the whole thing.
Also BT has allowed multiple devices to connect to the same one for ages. Like since 4.0 at least.
I can have my headphones connected to my phone and my computer so that I just pause the audio on one and start up in the other. Sometimes the switch takes a second or two but that’s it.
It’s been like that for years on BT speakers, but probably not the very cheapest ones from like 5 years ago, (no offense to anyone I buy the cheapest ones I just happened to get a morr expensive one by luck back then), but my cheap-ass Chinese headphones can do that as can my generic brand bt speaker.
If you connect two devices, it usually prioritises the one which started playing media most recently. As in I put a song on, but then you click a song on your phone so it takes over.
So I feel like it’s more a skill issue with the guy you’re replying to but might just be older BT.
yeah, in case all of you use their services
Lol welcome to old age pops. “You kids with your blue tooth get off my lawn!”
Headphone jack and removable battery are the two features I will not compromise on. Makes selecting a new phone pretty damn easy. I would have loved a fairphone but sorry, no exceptions.
What is your current phone?
XCover 6 pro
Seems like a nice device, it was on my list for a while, but a bit too chunky
Add ip rated and removable storage and you have my list. I have had to compromise on the removable battery on the last few phones though.
My device has both - on top of headphone jack and removable battery.
A “must”, only for a subset of users.
If it were truly a “must”, more people would be complaining.
I get it, you find Bluetooth unappealing for reasons, just like I find larger phones unappealing. Unfortunately, we’re a minority, neither of these are a “must” for most people.
I actually quite like the Bluetooth DAC I got because of the disappearance of my headphone jack. It breaks that physical attachment of my headphones to my phone while giving very good quality audio.
I’d recommend checking out the Fiio BTR line if interested.
Thanks!
About 4years ago, I decided to get a phone that I could modify (custom rom, root and such) and that had a proper camera. So I got a xiaomi mi 10, which has no audio jack (or even sd card reader…)
The default adapter lasted about 3years (I dont use wired earphones that often) and I decided to get a “proper” one from a ugreen brand (I found reviews that their previous model was bad and they had released a new better one) (it’s this one
UGreen AV161). It seems sturdy (it has that fiberglass sleeve too), hoping it will last.It’s indeed bad that they dont put a headphone jack and I find it sad that fairphone dropped it too, cuz I’m thinking of buying a phone from them in the future. Not only it reduces the phone’s usability, but also indirectly forces you to buy wireless earphones. On top of that, using wired earphones puts extra wear on the single usb port (which I dont know how easy it is to replace it, I’ve only replaced a micro-usb port).
I dont exactly know where I’m going with this comment, but ok😅
Thanks for sharing the reference to that seemingly sturdy adapter, I’ll share it with my sister if she wants to give it a try.
I edited it to include the model I got.😄 So far it works, not sure how it will be performing in 4year.
The extra wear on usb-c port is definitely still an issue as I have had that be the reason for needing to replace my wife’s phone twice now. It was worse with micro-usb in my experience, but it stopped me from making use of my usb-c dongles. BTW, if you’re using usb-c DACs, most kinda suck. Weirdly, I found the one from Google actually had the best sound, but if you haven’t had an issue thus far then don’t sweat it.
It was worse with micro-usb in my experience
Indeed, I had to replace the micro usb port in about 4 years (and it was already mulfunctioning probably for years), while the type c port still works almost flawlessly.
About the dac, even though I dont think I can detect the difference, I remember seeing comments that the previous model of my adaptor had a bad dac (or it didnt even have one??), but they seemingly fixed it ij the new model.
(PS. I download flac songs, but I dont think I can tell the difference between a proper lossless flac and a 64kbps opus, lol. It might be bad equipment, it might be my hearing, it might be that I tend to listen at low volumes, a combo of all the above or something.)
It had to have a DAC if it was converting the bluetooth digital signal, but it could have been either a bad DAC or just poorly implemented DAC chip. I’ve seen it in a lot of these types of devices (Fiio, I am looking at you). It’s not like the chips are that expensive in comparison to the final price of the device.
Oh oops, I was talking about a type c to audio jack adaptor
indirectly forces you to buy wireless earphones
USB-C wired headphones exist
edit: lol, replied too quickly. You mention wired headphones in the next sentence.
