We used to have earbuds that don't need to be charged because they had a headphone jack, didn't get lost so easily because they had a cord attached to a headphone jack, never lost the bluetooth connection because they had a headphone jack, and they cost less because they had a headphone jack. https://bsky.app/profile/daisyfm.bsky.social/post/3l3mfjc6sn62k
These jacks are still in every other audio device. They were removed from phones to force BT usage, which Google needs for their profiling telemetry network and Apple for their Find my Device thing. God forbid someone turns BT off or even decides they would prefer a phone without BT entirely. There is no other reason and how people prefer to listen to music has nothing to do with the subject.
Doubt there is any conspiracy. Headphone jack was probably removed to cut cost since wireless earbuds were becoming popular and majority of users did not mind. It annoyed me at first as well, but once I went with BT earbuds and headset, I cannot imagine going back to wired except when stationary on PC. Battery life is 30 or so hours and I do not thing I have ever had problems with connection.
Only thing that worries me is that your earbuds probably are an e-waste once battery no longer can hold a charge. That said my current earbuds are basically destroyed even though their battery still is fine.
There were cut because they make a lot of money selling wireless earbuds.
It's no conspiracy. It's just a valid strategy to expand your business. It's not unheard of that companies form cartels. Car companies manipulate millions of vehicles to trick lab tests. Companies like Apple and Google don't have your best interest at heart. Don't ever assume their decisions are driven by popular demand. They actively lobby to steer demand.
Removing a few cents worth of metal to cut costs? Because not enough users need it? That sounds more convincing than one of these companies trying to expand their proprietary BT global network features? Not to me at this time.
Waterproofing is very difficult with a headphone jack. You'll notice virtually every single phone with a headphone jack is 'splash resistant' while many without are able to survive being submerged. It also saves a relatively large amount of internal space, for something that easy to move external with an adapter.
If we're talking about adding back in older communication standards, I would personally prefer an am/fm receiver and IR blaster; it would be cool to use my phone like a universal remote.
Something I have heard in the past but is a headphone jack that much harder to waterproof vs a USB-C port? I'm genuinely curious because I don't know. It feels like the two would be of a similar difficulty.
Yeah, also Samsung made it work in the S active phones, and Nokia has started carrying the torch with their XR line. That's Def not the reason for them being removed.
I think most USB-C ports have sensors that allow them to turn off when wet. I'm not sure what the challenges are doing something like that with the headphone jack.
They don't even need to do that. Just blast music straight into the water. It's not like anyone would be listening anyway.
Samsung had headphone jack until note 10 and ip67/68 rating since s5. Similar story with other brands. What you described are two separate trends.
Cheap phones still have fm radio support. Pretty sure it's disabled in software in everything else, and you need cabled headphones to serve as an antenna either way (not sure if usb c works).
That makes me wonder how the Zune pulled of having a pretty solid and clear radio without an antenna. Must have had one wrapped around the inner casing or something.
I don't get what people are doing who need waterproof phones, but I will accept that some people need this. To me it sounds far more like an edge case than people wanting wired headphones though, especially at the time they started removing jacks.
I really can't say for sure. It rains a lot where I live, so water proofing is a pretty big boon for me. I used to carry around a USB-C to headphone port adapter, but I never used it.
Valid. I've been thinking though. What's the problem with making a waterproof audio jack, if we have the USB C for charging?
I don't want to hate on wireless by any means. I often prefer wireless. But it's really fucking nice to have a power source connected and audio as well. It's very convenient. Especially if you have a dock and headset.
It just feels like such a redundant transformation that achieved nothing for the user.
There's adapters that allow charging at the same time. I'm not sure why audio jacks are difficult to waterproof. Samsung managed it on a few models, so it's certainly possible.
Personally I haven't had a situation where I wanted an audio jack in years, I assume the extra internal space goes towards things like longer battery life or slimmer form factors; not nothing, but also probably not a big deal for most people.
It seems like laptops are doing the same thing: all external ports are USB, and any specific needs get handled with dongles.
USB-C ports are pretty flexible, you can split one into many, use them for video & audio, use them for power delivery & networking, and they can transfer more data per second than cat5. It seems like manufacturers are trying to make it the one port to rule them all.
Of course they need it for the very real scary words functionality
Every single signal your Android phone sends, like looking up the address of a website with Google DNS, or just synchronizing your time with Google time servers, which are defaults in most Android phones, goes right into at least a shadow profile.
Android exists to create highly detailed profiles of individuals, using your own device usage, and detecting other devices around you. Like WiFi hotspots to offer more detailed position information.
Every single time any of this happens, you leave a data point in a Google database. Collecting all BT devices every time you see them as data points is so dramatically valuable if this is your core business. Google is an advertisement platform.
You know bluetooth doesn't need to be turned on in the settings for your phone to scan for devices right? Google doesn't need to trick you with earphones to turn it on. Why do these conspiracy theories always involve the vampire politely asking to come into your home anyways?
I know they can still use the chip even if you don't want BT. I know they can still use it regardless of your desire to disable it. If there was no reasonable user demand for it, then it would be pretty hard to sell a useless piece of metal that only eats up energy and space in the phone.
You know, like an audio jack.
No other type of audio device saw the need to have the jack removed. The BT-only headphones were introduced by the same companies who removed the audio jack from the phones.
Nobody is "tricking" anyone. This is just as regular a shady business practice as false advertising. The companies doing this just weigh their options to maximize profits. This is a laughably easy sell, apparently, so it's reasonable they would be doing it. The complaints about this subject were loud from day one. Removing the jack is artificially limiting the features of the device for literally no plausible reason. Point to their material that explains it in more words than "we decided it's time".
We had the entire oil and tobacco industry lie to us for decades, but this is far fetched?
It's really hard to follow your train of thought. Bluetooth isn't a piece of metal in your phone. It uses the same antenna your phone needs for its other wireless connections and it's also driven by the same modem. Compared to an audio jack its impact is miniscule. The demand for Bluetooth wasn't created in 2016, it predates smartphones. There were countless wireless earphones before 2016 and they mostly weren't even made by phone companies. Apple removing the headphone jack wasn't 'false advertising', it was very well publicised.
Yes, phone companies removed the headphone jack from their phones to drive the sales of their own earphones. Yes, Google collects lots of data about you. But interpolating these to "Google wanted people to keep Bluetooth on for its spy network" is a far fetched conspiracy