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Taking the Headphone Jack Off Phones Is User-Hostile and Stupid (theverge.com)
A WSJ report on Tuesday claimed that the next iPhone won't have the 3.5mm headphone port. A handful of smartphones such as LeEco's Le 2, Le 2 Pro, and Le Max 2 that have launched this year already don't have a headphone jack. The Verge's Nilay Patel has an opinion piece in which he argues that smartphone companies shouldn't ditch headphone ports as it helps no consumer. He lists six reasons:
1. Digital audio means DRM audio :Restricting audio output to a purely digital connection means that music publishers and streaming companies can start to insist on digital copyright enforcement mechanisms. We moved our video systems to HDMI and got HDCP, remember? Copyright enforcement technology never stops piracy and always hurts the people who most rely on legal fair use, but you can bet the music industry is going to start cracking down on "unauthorized" playback and recording devices anyway.2. Wireless headphones and speakers are fine, not great.
3. Dongles are stupid, especially when they require other dongles.
4. Ditching a deeply established standard will disproportionately impact accessibility.:The headphone jack might be less good on some metrics than Lightning or USB-C audio, but it is spectacularly better than anything else in the world at being accessible, enabling, open, and democratizing. A change that will cost every iPhone user at least $29 extra for a dongle (or more for new headphones) is not a change designed to benefit everyone.5. Making Android and iPhone headphones incompatible is incredibly arrogant and stupid.
6. No one is asking for this.
1. Digital audio means DRM audio :Restricting audio output to a purely digital connection means that music publishers and streaming companies can start to insist on digital copyright enforcement mechanisms. We moved our video systems to HDMI and got HDCP, remember? Copyright enforcement technology never stops piracy and always hurts the people who most rely on legal fair use, but you can bet the music industry is going to start cracking down on "unauthorized" playback and recording devices anyway.2. Wireless headphones and speakers are fine, not great.
3. Dongles are stupid, especially when they require other dongles.
4. Ditching a deeply established standard will disproportionately impact accessibility.:The headphone jack might be less good on some metrics than Lightning or USB-C audio, but it is spectacularly better than anything else in the world at being accessible, enabling, open, and democratizing. A change that will cost every iPhone user at least $29 extra for a dongle (or more for new headphones) is not a change designed to benefit everyone.5. Making Android and iPhone headphones incompatible is incredibly arrogant and stupid.
6. No one is asking for this.
I am sure there will be plenty of manufacturers that will be glad to take up the slack.
You're forgetting they'd most likely include a lightening port to 3.5mm dongle, which would cost more than the 3.5mm jack in the phone.
That said, They'd likely make a killing reselling lightening port Beats Audio headphones to the hipsters & clueless.
The market hasn't moved on to bluetooth headsets. A segment of the market uses bluetooth headsets (myself included) but I'd hardly say we've moved on to them. They're great for making calls or listening to music in noisy environments where difference a quality pair of headphones makes can't be heard anyway, but bluetooth uses very heavily lossy compression, unless you're lucky enough to have a phone and headset that both support Apt-X, in which case you only lose quality to re-compression. A good pair of wired headphones simply can not be beat, though; no re-compression, no signal loss, no dropouts due to interference when everyone else on the bus or train has their own headset and half of them have a smartwatch, all using the very narrow sliver of spectrum available to bluetooth and all within range of each other.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Closer to saving $0.005 per unit. Yes less than a penny. That jack might cost you $0.05 or a little more if you were to buy a one off, but in the 10,000s that Apple purchases them in bulk they are super cheap.
It's just a dumbass move by a dumbass company who is totally out of touch with the end user.
Also even at $100k, Apple pisses that 100 times over every single morning. It's nothing.
It isn't a cost-saving measure, you insufferable twit.
It is mostly about making the next iPhone waterproof. Yes, there are waterproof 3.5 mm jacks; but they are all necessarily much bigger (in all dimensions) than the non-waterproof kind (which are already almost too "thick" for current smartphones). And "bigger" (and especially THICKER) is obviously the last thing a smartphone designer (regardless of Brand) wants to be...
But due to its design, Apple can waterproof a Lightning connector much easier than a 3.5mm jack. So the Lightning conn can stay; but the analog headphone jack must go.
I am not sure whether Apple will just ship a Lightning Headset with that iPhone, and either include or sell a Lightning "DACJACK"(tm) for those who want to use old-Skool analog phones; or whether they will just start leveraging Bluetooth 5, but more likely, that will have to wait at least one more product-cycle.
DRM in the form of something like HDCP. If the phone only allows an authorized (read as licensed) set of headphones to connect, and the link is encrypted, they've just plugged the analog hole that the media companies have been wanting to get rid of since, well, forever.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Samsung Galaxy has been waterproof without removing the headphone jack...
Some early HTC / Dopod windows phones had no headphone jack. It was all pumped through the usb. And It sucked. It sucked hard core. I have no interest in ever buying a phone again without a headphone jack.
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
Pretty much exactly this. Apple is and always has been a HARDWARE company. Removing these things and creating a walled garden on even the equipment that is usable with their devices just feeds right into that model, but goes against the rest of the industry giants (mostly anyway). Problem is this will eventually kill them if they can't keep coming up with revolutionary ideas (and be first to market with them), because everyone can do it cheaper while still making money and being compatible with everything else.
You haven't been paying attention. This is Apple.
They don't come up with revolutionary ideas, at least not regarding their products. They don't have to be first to market. Let HTC/Samsung, or even some guy on Kickstarter be first to market.
They take new stuff that already exists, make it better, package it well, market it well, charge a premium. Nothing revolutionary about that.
As long as their competitors keep producing inferior quality products, they can keep pulling this kind of stuff on their customers. They only need to keep the quality bar very high, and they are safe.
That was bullet point #2 in the list: 2. Wireless headphones and speakers are fine, not great.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Yes, here is a nice decent quality one with solder connectors
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2-5m...