Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, Apple, the Headphone Jack Isn't Going Anywhere (yahoo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Rob Pegoraro via Yahoo Finance: Two things unite almost every phone on display here at Mobile World Congress 2017: Android and a headphone jack. Apple doesn't exhibit its wares at this trade show, so the domination of Google's operating system is predictable. But the headphone jack's persistence did not look so inevitable when Apple cut it from the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus last September. Lenovo's Motorola subsidiary had already shipped a phone without a headphone hack, the Moto Z, and Apple's influence over the rest of the smartphone industry remains formidable -- indeed, within months, the Chinese firm LeEco had debuted a lineup of Android phones devoid of headphone jacks. As my colleague David Pogue predicted in a post approving Apple's move: "Other brands worldwide will be following suit." The hardware on display here at the world's largest mobile tech conference, though, suggests otherwise. Two days of walking around the show floor showed companies expressing a consistent unwillingness to abandon the humble headphone jack, even on models as thin as, or thinner than, the iPhone 7. The MWC floor revealed only one company willing to do away with the headphone jack: HTC. The Taiwan-based firm, which has struggled financially for years despite shipping such well-reviewed models as the HTC 10, used its exhibit to showcase the U Ultra and the U Play, which rely on their USB-C ports for audio output. Unlike, Apple, though, the company didn't make the move to save space, but rather to incorporate its "USonic" feature, which lets the phones' headphones calibrate themselves to your ears and provide noise cancellation.
And you will be disappointed.
Weakling!
"Unlike, Apple, though, the company didn't make the move to save space, but rather to incorporate its "USonic" feature, which lets the [USB] phones' headphones calibrate themselves to your ears and provide noise cancellation."
Oh, bullshit. There's no reason the headphone jack has to be removed to support that. They're not mutually exclusive.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Does anyone honestly think that Apple cares whether other companies drop the headphone jack on their phones?
They want to "close" this analog hole just as much as the last one. No, "smaller phone OMG!?!?!?!" is not a good reason anymore. These days the damn things are so small, that if you want it to survive daily use, you need a clamshell that's typically 2x bigger than the phone itself to put the phone in. I'd argue that most phones are too small already. Waterproofing it, can also be done if the money is shelled out for it, and wasn't one of the selling points of buying an iPhone the whole: "I'm so rich, I can afford to wear this bling! Be jealous." thing? They could up the damn price for that, and then some by saying the extra costs are for protecting the consumer's investment.
This has nothing to do with "better phone" it's all about control.
But its not true I'm still using it. Great Experience.
Apple didn't say the headphone jack would mysteriously disappear from the planet. They said that it would disappear from their phones. And it did. And will remain so.
Before new Coke, Pepsi outsold Coke by a bit of a margin. Coke changed to New Coke and everyone hated it. Coke went back to Coke Classic and has outsold Pepsi every year since.
Its a marketing ploy.
cease fire stand down,, the little ones are not being well served, our only real task remains,, see you there..
. . . for good reason. Apple can do it because they are the only vendor of iPhones, and they have a following. The rest of the world can't follow suit, because that means lost sales. Sure, some people don't care about headphones, and some prefer bluetooth. Dropping the jack does not provide them with any advantage though, so these people buy any phone regardless of the jack.
Other people have phones they want to use, so they make sure they get a phone with a jack. So if HTC doesn't have the jack, they buy a similarly priced & specced phone from samsung/huawei/whoever. To not loose sales, a manufacturer need a line of phones with the headphone jack. They can provide additional phones without, if the savings from dropping the jack outweighs the cost of having extra models. Or they can loose some sales.
There is a big market for headphones, both expensive quality things and cheap earbuds. They are still sold with jacks; because you don't need to charge or change batteries or "pair" them, and so they are hassle-free. And as long as they are common, no jack is a manufacturer's disadvantage. It is easier for shops, who can stock a mix of brands. If the customer wants a jack, they provide such a phone. A phone can be thinner than the jack plug and still have that hole (The phone don't have to encase the plug on all sides, after all.)
I do, and I remember all the freakouts over the lack of SCSI and ADB ports, and on the Windows side of the aisle everyone insisting manufacturers NOT kill the PS/2 ports. Ultimately, the technology advances, and old ports aren't needed any more. You may very well find phones with headphone jacks for many years to come. But more and more, the industry will shift to wireless headphones, and those jacks will get less and less use. Kind of like those PS/2 ports that still ship on a few models of motherboards....
Does anyone honestly think that Apple cares whether other companies drop the headphone jack on their phones?
Yes after a fashion. If Apple is wrong about their bet that people don't really care about the headphone jack then it will cost them business. If the other handset manufacturers follow Apple in removing the port then Apple's bet will pay off and they will continue on their merry way without the added cost and problems related to a headphone jack. If Apple turns out to be wrong and people stop or slow buying their phones because of that missing feature then you bet Apple will care.
So far it seems Apple is winning the bet because they are still selling huge numbers of smartphones and there seems to be little evidence that the lack of headphone jack is making more than a marginal dent in their business. You can be sure Apple is watching the situation but the longer things go without a drop in sales the more confident they will become about it.
Two days of walking around the show floor showed companies expressing a consistent unwillingness to abandon the humble headphone jack, even on models as thin as, or thinner than, the iPhone 7.
PCs held on to Dsub parallel and serial ports and PS/2 ports and floppy drives for many years after Apple kicked them to the curb. Blackberry kept making physical keyboards long after the market proved that most buyers don't care about them. Just because everyone else didn't follow Apple one year later doesn't really tell us much. It's going to take a few years for this to really play out. The other handset makers are going to be watching. If Apple sales remain strong you can bet that more of them will follow Apple's lead over time. No one should be surprised that there wasn't a stampede of removing the headphone jack in just one year.
The iPhone is a rebranded Samsung.
Here come the idiotic fanbois.
The headphone jack is ubiquitous and covers the majority of sound output quite well. There are a couple of cons though. The jack cannot tell what you're plugging in, which prevents a lot of interesting things from happening. Another is it being quite long compared to other connectors. Everybody is complaining about removing it, without talking about its limitations. The problem is the incentives for apple to remove it unfortunately. Its not courage, its a business decision. If they would have said all the downsides of a headphone jack and thats why they got rid of it, people would be less unhappy methinks.
I don't even know who Apple is designing phones for anymore. Who are these people demanding a thinner phone at all costs? They're already so thin bending them is a legitimate risk. I don't need thin, I need rugged without a case, a headphone port, and a replaceable battery.
Appy Apple appers know luddite headphone jackers are stuck in the 1980's. Appers app the earbud app and live appily ever Apple. Apps!
Why is this at all surprising? There was a resounding guffaw and gasp of outrage from the internet when Apple removed the headphone jack. Marketing folks at other phone makers noticed that, and decided to highlight their inclusion of the headphone jack as a competitive advantage:
"Our phones are more desirable than Apple's, because we include the headphone jack that they so foolishly removed."
Personally, I don't see the big deal about removing the headphone jack, because I've been using bluetooth headphones for about 2 years now, anyway - I hate wires for multiple reasons:
1) When I'm working out, the wire is either too short (pulling the phones off when I'm moving) or too long (getting tangled around shit when I'm moving);
2) When I'm at work, the wire tethers me to an approximately 3 foot radius of my laptop at all times - wireless gives me the ability to spin around and use my whiteboard without detaching.
3) When I'm using them walking around, I don't have a wire flapping around hooking on doorknobs, my arm, other people, etc.
I prefer wireless when it's available - bluetooth sound quality is adequate for any use case involving headphones worn at the gym, in a noisy office, on a noisy street, or on a noisy train, and the lack of wires is preferable to me. Others may differ, but it seems to me that the presence of a headphone jack is becoming increasingly irrelevant for many people.
Apple decided they could make better use of the space inside their phone without the jack; Other vendors think it's still important, and will continue to include it. Ultimately, the market will decide - if people require the jack, and refuse to buy phones without one, then Apple will have abysmal sales figures (pro tip: their sales figures are doing pretty good still.) If people don't require the jack, then the Android competitors trumpeting it as a competitive advantage will see little to no effect on their sales (pro tip: I've yet to see any reports suggest that "headphone jack" is a major selling point for most android devices - in fact, some reports on Q4 of 2016 suggest that the iPhone 7 saw a significant increase in market share vs. Android, which is curious if the presence of a headphone jack is that much of a critical differentiator for phones.)
No, but the death of the Replaceable Battery seems to be in evidence!
I'm not talking about easy replacement like the Galaxy S5 has (although that's nice). I'd settle for being able to open the back and remove the battery on my workbench without a heatgun and surgical tools.
Why do these phones have to be disposable?
To Copy from One is Plagiarism; To Copy from Many is Research.
"Two days of walking around the show floor showed companies expressing a consistent unwillingness to abandon the humble headphone jack, even on models as thin as, or thinner than, the iPhone 7."
Very good, and I'm glad to hear it. There is NO reason to let Apple set the standard, especially when the standard they set sucks or changes with every new model or just doesn't make any fucking sense. And don't give me that "courage" bullshit- I wasn't buying that line of crap then and I'm not buying it now.
Long live the humble headphone jack- a simple, time-tested bit of tech that still has a lot of life left in it.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
PS/2 ports needed to be killed because weren't hot pluggable. If you unplugged a PS/2 keyboard or mouse and plugged in a new one while the computer was on, it could hang or crash or even damage the computer. Not many users knew that because it worked as if it were hot pluggable about 9 times out of 10. But most techies knew it could hang the computer, and the developers of USB certainly knew it - USB was designed specifically to be hot pluggable.
And USB supplanted Firewire on the Apple side. Firewire was good tech for its time, but it flopped because Apple wanted $1 per port (not per device). USB was free to implement.
Unless you're "on the inside", you have no way of determining what the sales figures actually are.
You mean except for the publicly available financial statements and copious public data about sales?
Yeah we have plenty of information about how many smartphones are selling and who is selling them. It's not some closely guarded secret.
So PC companies held out and provided ports and functionality until they were absolutely sure no one wanted them?
No, they sold them to millions of customers who didn't actually need or want them for years after it was clear nobody needed or wanted them. All those legacy ports/devices did was add cost for 99%+ of customers. For the few who still needed floppy disks or 25pin Dsub serial ports there always has been the option to add them via expansions slots or USB adapters.
Honestly the 3.5 inch floppy disk should have died in a fire years before it actually did.
Then give me 2 or 3 usb-c jacks. I like to listen to music on my phone while sitting at my desk, and sometimes I plug in the phone to charge it while it is just sitting there playing music. Blue tooth and wifi headphones are a joke because now i just have more bulky items to constantly re-charge.
I think Apple dropping the 3.5 mm jack is a great opportunity for android phones to promote their inclusion of the jack as a value added feature that their phones provide, but Apple phones lack. Poor iPhone users don't even get a headphone jack with their phones.
I've been using Bluetooth headsets since 2004, and still have that phone, A Sony Ericsson T637. And I still use the headphone jack on my current phone to pump streaming into a Bluetooth speaker I don't want to pair with a specific device to avoid conflicts, and to my stereo.
One huge benefit to manufacturers is to enforce CRM all the way to the headphone plug. No, manufacturers won't directly benefit, but they ingratiate themselves with content marketers.
Just a wild ass guess, but I'll bet ALL ports and sockets will be gone soon.
It's far easier to make a phone waterproof, if you don't have any ports and sockets to seal up.
I suspect the rumors we've been hearing about Lighting being replaced by USB-C aren't accurate. I do think that we will see lightning converted to a mag-safe style flush mount connector.
So my prediction for the next iPhone is no buttons, switches or socket style connectors.
It's weird that you're not embarassed about treating tech companies/organisations as if they were football teams.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Given two hypothetical smartphones - all features identical, except:
The first phone has no headphone jack, but has a higher water proofing rating.
The second phone doesn't have as good of a water proofing rating, but has a 3mm headphone jack.
Both sell for the same price.
Which would you choose?
It's more robust, than a silly USB/Lightning connector
Why don't you eliminate the display while you at it. It will save you a lot of money!! bitter sarcasm
Few people remember, but the very first Android phone didn't have a headphone jack.
Eventually, everyone will follow Apple and remove the jack as well (not that I'm agreeing with removing it).
Is that the headphone jacks tend to wear out with repeated connect/disconnect. It's why I went with bluetooth headphones.
I know, your device doesn't have a radio, but we've seen discussions about it recently. My device (a 10" Lenovo tablet that was a Black Friday special) actually does have a radio ... but it only works when the headphones are plugged in. Like the old Walkman, the headphones are used for the antenna. So ... no headphone jack = no FM radio.
Wireless everything does sound appealing. Not only could the device be waterproof, but way less possibility for physical damage when inserting / removing connectors. (I have a five year old and I've learned all kinds of new ways to break things). I guess Apple has come a long way from the "No wireless, less space than a nomad" days!
it's not 'just' about waterproofing, (though it makes a good target for Apple's marketing). It's about saving pennies by omitting each physical add-on to the circuit board. Example the volume used to be controlled by two buttons, then moved to a single rocker switch, etc. You do know they're dropping the home button next in favor of an onscreen button, (sorry if we're wearing gloves & just want to see the time).
The fewer mechanical volume buttons, headphone jacks, home buttons, side buttons, etc there are... then the fewer physical objects need to be assembled & soldered to the board. Anyway you get the idea. Save 10 cents, upcharge 50 dollars.
>> HTC didn't make the move to save space, but rather to incorporate its "USonic" feature,
Its fine (although rater stupid if avoidable) to include a feature that only works with USB3-connected headphones, but it is completely retarded to then use that as justification to remove the 3.5 jack.
You've just eliminated your product from a (probably very large) market sector of people that care far less about some new DSP gimmick than compatibility with their existing headphones, and not having to spend more money to buy more headphones that now possibly bring further potential issues/limitations because they now have their own batteries.
My 3-year-old Samsung Galaxy S5 has a headphone jack, a USB3 jack, and a removable battery (with a back cover that's removable with your fingernail), and it's waterproof. It's not that hard to do.
...is a REMOVABLE battery! Battery down and not output available? I pop in a spare charged-up battery in five seconds. And I'm old and slow with arthritic hands. I have an 5 yo old phone that still work fine! And hell, no, the battery is not original and be damn if I pay Apple $100 or whatever to replace my phone with a refurbished one because it needs a new battery. And where the rutherfordium are the tablets with replaceable batteries?
Along with an adapter letting you use any 2.5mm headphones you want. Any you can use any bluetooth headset.
Try again.
Very pleased to know lots of companies are not following Apple's lead blindly anymore.
Both the Moto Z and the chinese brands that released smartphones without a headphone jack (I'm not talking about LeEco though, there were models from 2015 that didn't have it) had a clear justification for it: the smartphone was too thin to house a headphone jack module.
Perhaps they could've put a 2.5mm jack in place like dumbphones in the past, but I dunno how the chassis would hold for that, so I can't tell.
But Apple decided to go without it even though the iPhone 7 has the exact same dimentions of the iPhone 6. They can make all excuses they want to, the fact is that a huge part of the market still wants them there. Courage, because there was no space, because they want to move forward, blah blah... mostly because they have a stake in Beats audio, they want to push a proprietary wireless standard, and they want to force users to spend more on crap they don't need while keeping all the profits.
Regardless, I see no problems in people getting one if they don't use a headphone jack for anything... but it's quite obvious how Apple wants to further close the ecossystem and "walled garden". I want not part in that crap. Even their so acclaimed great wireless audio solution is about to be trampled over by the new Bluetooth 5 standard that will be coming out this year.
Your S5 is IP67 certified - dust and water resistant - not waterproof.
http://www.samsung.com/us/supp...
...about things like this.
Regardless of how you feel about the jack, I think it's more concerning that Apple is the only company with the balls to even *try* removing a legacy port.
If it fails and Apple falls on its arse, we've learned something, and Apple will have learned something too. No other company seems willing to take risks in this way.
It's an important question, but it always gets lost in the myopia of people arguing about fashion and money and personal inconvenience.
Just a wild ass guess, but I'll bet ALL ports and sockets will be gone soon.
It's far easier to make a phone waterproof, if you don't have any ports and sockets to seal up.
Given how vendors currently seem to have no problem with making IP67/68 rated devices with ports I don't follow your logic. Especially since the manufacture of these parts with these ports do not fall on the vendors.
The headphones are not "free". This is marketing 101 by now. The product is subsidized via a provider pre-payment/subscriber retention incentive system, and you've *already bought* an expensive, proprietary replacement for a general product, and by the calculated strategy of not including a headphone jack they have made using the product without their proprietary method and hardware more difficult and less desirable, setting a precedent for future clamp down.
And no screen. Those are so last year.
If you can take it without restriction into a residential swimming pool - it's waterproof enough.
The S5 is only "waterproof" for 30 minutes at 1 meter. My pool is 8 feet deep.
That's just stupid. I want to hang out in a pool for hours - listening to music and taking pictures. 30 minutes is no where near enough.
As far as stupid comments go - no consumer wants to go to the bottom of the Marianas Trench with a cell phone - that's a stupid comment.
Why the fuck do you people need the phone to be waterproof? What do you do, deep sea diving with it? While we're talking about "most people" (which is the only thing phone manufacturers care about), how about this: most people don't have any use for a waterproof phone.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.