Slashdot Mirror
Headphone Users Rejoice: Samsung Reportedly Not Killing the Galaxy S8's Headphone Jack (thenextweb.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Contrary to previous reports, Samsung's upcoming flagship Galaxy S8 smartphone will come with a headphone jack, unlike the new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus and several other Android smartphones. The news comes from both Sammobile and Android Police. The Next Web reports: "Both Sammobile and Android Police are today reporting that Samsung is not actually killing the headphone jack. Sammobile, appears to be retracting its own report last month suggesting the jack would be dropped thanks to recent case renders, while Android Police has independently confirmed that the S8 will maintain the 3.5mm jack through its own source. In related news, Samsung's display unit may have also just given us our first good look at the S8. While there's a good chance the phone in the video is a generic model (it appears to be a render, rather than a physical object), as CNET points out, it looks an awful lot like the leaks we've seen from the S8 so far. There are also a few curious touches for a something that's supposed to be just a render, including what might be a faint visible antenna line (on the upper left corner) and a couple of LEDs or sensors to the left of the earpiece grill. By the way, there's also a definitely a headphone jack in this render."
If the headphone jack is their then my wife will swap from her iPhone 6 to that, she is already jealous of the quality of the camera in my s7 compared to her iPhone and constantly makes us swap phones when she is doing photos in less than ideal conditions, but the rumor that Samsung were headed down the same braindead path as apple was going to be a deal breaker. I guess we wait and see.
Yeah. Go ahead and squeeze a bigger battery in there while you are at it. If it doesn't fit, just man up and push harder.
Have gnu, will travel.
You mean "sudden outbreak of common sense"?
As in, you don't have to get rid of a 3.5mm headphone jack just because you want to start selling wireless earphones?
When the story came out last month that Samsung was killing the headphone jack, I said back then that something was up... there was no substantiation of the report beyond the article that Slashdot itself linked to, and every cross-reference I could find online always linked back to the same location... so either they made the whole thing up, or else the publishers at that website couldn't think past how juicy the story sounded to do even the most rudimentary fact-checking.
But hey... who can blame them? Fake news sells more site visits, I guess, so why should Slashdot be any different.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Oh damn, I nailed that.
Only out by two weeks.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
You don't have to use a cable if you don't like the cable getting in your way. That's the beautiful thing about this... it allows the customer the choice if using a 3.5mm connected device, or using bluetooth.
Letting users choose is the coward's way out! Courage involves forcing expensive, easily lost hardware with short battery life down customers' throats or into their ears.
Or, as Samsung refers to it internally, the battery overpressure release valve.
#DeleteChrome
enough said.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
A small rechargeable Bluetooth device that takes headphones with 4 conductors (TRRS) and then translates pushes on the inline controller as bluetooth commands. I've not seen one that does the bluetooth commands... just audio. Will go a long way to make the bluetooth translation less painful.
And I just found out, that there is no standard for TRRS, that there are two ways of interpreting that extra conductor and they are incompatible. Motherf**ker. So now we need one for apple one for android... or have a switch that swaps how they're interpreted. Bonus points if apple makes one and it has a W1 chip.
USB / micro usb / usb C headphones are a thing. They also sell usb to 3.5mm adapters if you really dont want to adapt.
That's asking to snap something off.
While being meant to be fancy.
Wired headphones can be a very little uncomfortable. But they have superior audio quality, they don't need recharging, they are cheap.
Wireless earbuddies are a nightmare are you can loose them while in use, audio quality can depend upon distance and em noise, aren't cheap at all.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
You make it sound like your opinion is somewhat unusual. I got a meager A3 2016 model few months ago after using an HTC for 5 years - naturally the last 2 of those years I used it to call as the enforced SW obsolescence made the phone almost unusable for anything else.
I dropped the phone 4 times int he first week - it was simply too thin and slippery. All my habits that worked for the HTC were not effective anymore [how to handle it; where to put it, ect.] and new ones did not help. So I went back to the shop and got a protector screen and a case. That transformed it into the GSM I always wanted. Reading books, some movie watching and music. Some gaming as well [for the first time on mobile platform for me]. Great!
And then I heard about the jack and was furious. True, most of my music I listen on a dedicated player which together with the ear plugs costs as much as the best telephone out there, so quality is paramount to me. I also have the phone and Koassilator phrase synthesizer - and the ear plugs go into all 3 devices via the jack. A dongle? Never! The plugs have L-shape contact minimizing stress - I don't need anything sticking out from a fragile, thin, slippery phone!
I look now for several weeks during my commute how many people do not have cases and screens on their phones. I found 3 persons out of at least a hundred [almost everyone uses their phone in the train]. Same at work - one guy out of 50-60 people.
So, I think most of us do not buy this whole scam but I am also afraid that sooner or later all companies will switch. For all kinds of reasons [marketing hype, enforced obsolescence, DRM control, vertical integration] but by Bob NEVER do anything that actually benefits your customers. For real!
So do i, but that little 3.5mm opening doesn't get in the way of anything on my device.
You can of course choose to let someone else make all your choices for you. And we can choose not to respect you for it.
Instead of simply killing the headphone jack, they plan to kill the whole smartphone, and maybe also the user and/or some bystanders. Their new Li-Ion battery can do this!
I will choose the path that's clear. I will choose freewill.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No Courage? You are talking about the company that recently bravely trialed a device with a built in self destruct? No courage indeed
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
This, together with the fact that Samsung's phones are the hottest in the market, will rekindle the interest of people in these devices. I am sure that the public is already burning with anticipation to purchase those explosive handsets, which will no doubt obliterate the competition with a huge bang. Samsung really is on fire.
I bought a Galaxy J3 for $120 at WalMart and am happy with it. I have since seen it priced as low as $80. It has a replaceable battery and obviously a headphone jack. The power and capability of mid-range Android phones has soared to the point where they are great bargains. I looked into getting a case for this phone, but at $20 for the case it didn't really make sense. So it's slim enough to fit well in my jeans pocket and it has good speed and a lot of memory. I bought a 128GB micro-sd card for it on Black Friday for $25 so it has a hell of a lot of storage, too. I have used Handbrake to put multiple entire TV series on it to watch.
I will choose Goodwill. There is some nice hardware out there, if you stalk the carts of stuff as it's brought out. ( The stuff on the shelves has been there long enough that the good stuff is usually already gone.) I have gotten Sennheiser headphones that way.
Will it come with an SD slot and a removeable battery?
No? then I'm not interested.
Choice isn't allowed - after all, how would you survive if you showed up at the latest free-trade-coffee/quinoa salad hipster hangout and DIDN'T pull out an iPhone? The ostracism would cause the wax on yourhandlebar moustache to drip down on to your skinny jeans and flannel shirt! No, the choice is simply not there - it's either iPhone of social obscurity. Standing out in the crowd is exactly the wrong way to get noticed!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I still don't get why these phones are so damn big.
I've owned the S4 Mini and S5 Mini and they are more than big enough, but it bugs me that - despite being otherwise close in spec - they never have USB-host enabled (which is basically a software option!) and other little niggles.
But I can't buy a phone that doesn't have expandable non-cloud storage. I use cloud storage TOO but that's not what I want when I get on a plane and want to watch movies, play games, and read books.
I also wouldn't touch one without a headphone socket. That's just stupid and somehow the fad infected the industry.
I also wouldn't touch one without a battery I can change either. But it does bug me when they put the SIM / SD under the battery, that's just a pain in the arse.
As such, despite being able to afford any of these these, I've stuck on the Mini models from several years ago because there's something stupid in all the other models they sell. Other manufacturer's don't get a look-in for similar reasons.
I would PAY THE EARTH for a Samsung Android phone, no Samsung fucking apps on it, no "compulsory" apps at all, TWO headphone sockets, TWO microSD slots, TWO SIM slots, TWO removeable batteries, with an IR blaster (Mini's have it still), and all the usuals even if it was the size of one of these big phones. But they say that it's space that's at a premium, it's not. The Mini's are smaller and differ only in software, and minor details that I would never miss basically.
Make me a "full-size" that has all the above, and I'd paid more than full-size prices. But you know what the problem is? You give me that and I'll keep it forever until it's literally dead (physically or technologically). But if you churn out limited shite, I have to make a choice when to ditch it even if it's for something that has things I don't really want.
Boy, do I want the "modular phone" idea to take out. Gimme a base phone with 20 module ports on it for anything from Bluetooth, GPS, IR, headphones or whatever and I'd spend twice as much on modules as the actual phone itself.
I just recently upgraded to Sennheiser headphones. I wanted the best sound I could get with good noise isolation but NOT active noise cancelling, but cheap enough (~$130 on sale, IIRC) that I don't care too much if they get trashed.
Also, two of my cars don't have bluetooth. One is a 1991 ZR-1 Corvette. To go the bluetooth route, I'd have to install a 3rd-party head unit and gut the interior to run signal cables, amplifiers, and build custom speaker enclosures to fit where the BOSE amp+speaker assemblies are. So... 3.5mm-to-cassette adapter (or just listen to CDs) for that car. I'm not terribly worried about originality any more since a tree fell on the car... but I rather LIKE the stock appearance so when I restore it, I'm hoping to keep the stock head unit. I'll probably do a stealth install of speakers and amps at that point though, sacrificing the rear storage compartments - and possibly ABS since I used to disable ABS in that car anyhow.
The other is a Saab 9-3 that didn't come with bluetooth, so I use an AUX jack. I'd upgrade the head unit in a heartbeat, if it wouldn't result in a loss of functionality (car system alerts and sounds - everything including door and light alerts, turn indicators, etc. run through the stereo system). if a CAN bus interface which preserves these features is released I'd go for it... but since SAAB is long dead as an entity and there will never be any more Saabs built, the probability of such a device being released is near zero.
And, I use 3.5mm to RCA/phono jacks for playing content via my home stereo receiver. If you think I'm going to accept further degradation of the sound via bluetooth, you're nuts. It would be a waste of Klipsch speakers. I may have well stuck with the crappy JBLs I had previously (they were almost as bad as BOSE - no highs... although the JBLs produced decent lows, unlike BOSE.. why BOSE thinks their shit smells like a rose, no one knows...).
So, yeah... I use the headphone jack... a lot!
I also use bluetooth: in the Lesbaru (which DOES have bluetooth... and a surprisingly decent sound system!), and for hands-free phone calls in the above-mentioned vehicles.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
"This, together with the fact that Samsung's phones are the hottest in the market" - I see what you did there
Remember kids: What's right isn't as important as what's profitable.
Ignore me, didn't read the rest properly. Duh!
Remember kids: What's right isn't as important as what's profitable.
> unlike the new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus and several other Android smartphones
i don't think the author knows what an iPhone is.
Love your post; even the sig.
Absolutely. I think any normal person, if they were actually informed of the tradeoff between performance/battery life and thinness, would choose the thicker phone. They're just too swayed by marketing and unaware of engineering realities to make that choice sensibly.
I've been playing around with wireless headsets since around 2008 and it was mostly junk (useful stuff but it broke after a short period of time) and they started to get a lot better with Liquipel. I still had wired headphones that I used from time to time but I recently got a set of Jaybird X2s that I carry around with me and I haven't used the wired stuff for at least several months. There is a loss of sound quality going from wired to wireless but I mainly use wireless headsets for running and a lot of listening is to podcasts where sound quality isn't a huge factor. When you run, you generate noise from wind, hitting the ground, etc., so there's already some quality loss. I use them in the gym too for safety reasons as wired headsets can get caught up on equipment. I'm not a fan of the new wireless headsets without a band between them as I like using the stalk on the cable for the controls.
No, Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuush!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's an exhaust port.
They also sell usb to 3.5mm adapters if you really dont want to adapt.
How does one NOT adapt with an ... adapter? *facepalm*
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.