Slashdot Mirror
Google Is Latest Company To Ditch Headphone Jack In Its Newest Smartphones (cultofmac.com)
When launching its original Pixel smartphone, Google mocked the iPhone 7's missing headphone jack in its marketing material. According to Cult of Mac, Google won't be doing the same for the Pixel 2. "The company has decided to remove the aging port from its latest handsets," reports Cult of Mac. "A new leak reveals that the lineup will rely solely on USB-C for wired connectivity." From the report: Incredibly reliable leaker Evan Blass has published pictures and details of Google's upcoming Pixel 2 smartphones on VentureBeat. He has also confirmed that neither device will feature a headphone jack, which means users will have to rely on a USB-C adapter or Bluetooth. It also means Google will no longer be able to put out Pixel ads that take sly swipes at the iPhone's missing port. Blass says both Pixel handsets will be powered by a Snapdragon 835 chipset -- the same one found in the Galaxy S8, the LG V30, and other 2017 flagships -- not a faster Snapdragon 836 processor as originally planned. Other features are said to include 12-megapixel cameras, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB or 128GB storage options. The smaller Pixel will pack a 5-inch 1080p display with a 16:9, while its larger sibling will pack a 6-inch Quad HD display with an 18:9 aspect ratio. Is the lack of a headphone jack a deal-breaker, or do you think the Pixel's other features, like stock Android and front-facing stereo speakers, will make up for it?
Android, leader in Chinese knock offs.
a slot for a MicroSD card. given that I have other devices that have a headphone jack.
Nope, not even going to consider it now.
Samsung, the biggest cellphone maker of them all, still supports the 3.5mm jack. My new Note 8 has one, and with the 256 GB MicroSD card installed I have a ton of downloaded Tidal albums...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
USB is a serial bus (2 pins for supply + 2 pins for serial signal), but USB-C isn't because is a parallel bus.
I think the problem for them is that headphones are cheap, ubiquitious little things. It makes it a perfect opportunity to screw their own customers over something silly. Then again, I quit with smartphones awhile ago, simple flip phone that makes calls, forget all the attention noise.
Another way for audioasses to annoy people in a restaurant.
Sony and Nokia have phones with the same processor but with the 3.5mm jack, expandable storage and water/dust resistance. Their software is close to Google's and Sony contributes to AOSP. Google loses. Oh, and if you want to make good photos, buy a goddamn dedicated camera. No phone comes close and none will due to the laws of optics.
Waka Waka!
It would be great if in conjunction with removing the headphone jack they were also releasing a bunch of affordable USB-C headphones. My current phone still supports regular headphones, but it also has USB-C. So every once in a while, I look to see if there are any USB-C headphones I can grab --- because I assume the audio quality will be better. But there's hardly anything on Amazon and what is there is more expensive than similar or better headphones that have the traditional plug.
And it's not much better in the Apple space, either.
The cost of the Pixel devices is the biggest drawback, this generation is no different. They are phones that should be half the price tag given what they are and what they have to offer.
If you don't like it, don't read the posts. Get over yourself, faggot.
it's a lot easier to transfer files from one device to another with a SD card as opposed to a USB cable or via a cloud storage service.
Hmm... 128 GB? That's about 160 albums of music (I like redbook quality - FLAC), with all the normal other stuff there. Not much, really. I like having another 256 GB of MicroSD for a dedicated 400 album music library - without touching my main phone's storage.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
>"Is the lack of a headphone jack a deal-breaker"
100% yes. Although I am not happy with lack of SD cards, I can handle that if a reasonable storage size is available, 64+GB. I am never happy with a non-swappable battery, but it seems that is beating a dead horse. Certainly also unhappy that wireless charging is so rare. Other unhappiness- lack of NFC, thinness instead of battery size, pixel density instead of brightness and efficiency, huge screen instead of portability.
But I have to draw the line somewhere, and it is at losing a simple, compact, compatible, easy, reliable headphone jack. There is simply no really good reason to remove it. I don't know when I will or won't need it, and I don't want to carry a stupid adapter that also is expensive, easy to lose, sucks more power, is likely to break, makes the phone weak and awkward while using it, and prevents charging while using it.
Bluetooth has really shit audio quality. You really don't want to use it. Plus you need to charge your headphones.
No SD slot, and likely no Miracast.
This is shaping up to be a very courageous phone design team indeed.
Please note I'm using the modern definition of "courageous", ie pants-on-head loony.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I'm listening to podcasts more or less all day while I work. Most bluetooth headphones can't last a full day (a few will). The ones that do, I don't find comfortable.
Full stop.
Sucks to get stuck with Bluetooth if you want to travel, though... Many overseas airlines will not allow use of Bluetooth headphones, and technically the FAA did not allow them either (just BLE-based devices). And that's not even talking about the audio quality hit you'd get with Bluetooth unless you're running something decent like AptX or AptX HD (neither of which is available on iOS).
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
This shouldn't come as any surprise considering how it was discussed in the context of DRM a decade ago. People choose the cloud, people loose choice.
...as big a deal to me as removing the ability to charge and listen at the same time without needing another dongle or special splitter. I have an iphone6+ at the moment, but it is the last iPhone I will ever own because of Apples decision to remove the jack entirely from their later phones. My next phone, which I will probably get in a few months or so, will definitely be an android, but hearing this news, I guess it won't be one made by Google
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
My car has aux in. They talk about how 3.5mm Jack's are crap and wear out. Well now I'm going to wear out my charging port and turn my phone into a paper weight. I think about it every time I plug my phone in to it.
Just like USB flash drives aren't useful for computers as long as the internal drives are large enough, right?
FLAC. Hmm. The human ear cannot detect most compression. In controlled environments testing subjects could not tell the difference. Even snobby audio snobs. Especially if you're over 16 years old. It's all in your head. i.e. your imagination. Facts. Pure facts. Stop trying to impress the internet and throwing your phone storay away.
I use it in my car to connect to my oem head unit. I use to connect to some old powered PC speakers in the bathroom. I use it to connect to aux in on a few other devices. In other words, DEAL BREAKER.
I'm always running out of battery power with Bluetooth earbuds. You see, not everyone is exactly like you. Some actually use phones for things other than Angry Birds.
You should get a flip phone. Should be good enough for checking on your grandkids.
What are these companies gaining by removing the head phone jacks? The phones aren't waterproof without them. I'm know, follow the money, right? I actually thini there has to be pressure from somewhere else that is forcing apple and Google to do this....
You may be right, but for some if they can’t be sure then they want to be close enough to the original. At that point if the audio sounds shoddy then you can hardly blame the compression.
At the same time 160 albums is not a bad number of albums on a device. Many people don’t have near that number in their main collection. So, hardly an argument for external storage and if it is, well there other devices and at different price points.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Looks like we're going to need to go back to multiple devices soon.
What's with the removal of all these well established and standardized ports?? I want my IEEE 1284 port back!
Does anybody make a small adapter that plugs into a USB C port on a phone and splits it out into standard Micro USB, USB C, and headphone jacks? Ideally, a small enough block to just snap onto the phone and leave it there. IOW not a dongle; a solid but small block, perhaps contoured to be like an extended bezel on the phone. Not sure what electronics would need to be in it...
PRIOR ART!!
I have a very nice set of wired studio cans at home, but I never use them anymore. Instead, I use some noticeably inferior (but still nice) bluetooth headsets, simply because the user-friendliness of being completely untethered beats the crap out of the advantages of a wired headset. Screw the snags. Screw the extra encumbrance. If I wanted to be on a leash I would call up a dominatrix.
Really should keep your Nexus / Pixel for as long as possible. Google has lost it's soul after restructuring. No more do no evil. Just in the recent update they have pushed in non-removable advertisements in both Android Chrome and Google App ( AKA articles for you / your feed ). It's good time to start looking for alternatives to Google Search, Maps and Gmail. Don't wait until it's too late...
it's a lot easier to transfer files from one device to another with a SD card as opposed to a USB cable or via a cloud storage service.
Really? Maybe for large files that you can't wait a few minutes for, but I have Keep and Dropbox on multiple devices and never have to think about transferring files as it's all done for me automatically. How does it get easier than that?
Deal breaker for me. The idea that I have to plug in and charge another device sounds insane. Using the original Pixel XL. Guess I'll be using it for a while. No thank you.
Using FLAC format for mobile player or say a car stereo is a waste of storage. Do yourself a favor, and download Foobar2000, so you can export your music collection into something like 256kbit mp3 files, apple lossy, or something similar.
Given the rapid deterioration of the inaccessible battery inside my Nexus 6p (which now loses 1% per minute with the screen on), I really want a phone with a removable and replaceable battery. And now you continue in the direction of "this is a blob that you can't access through anything but the screen and the one single port."
If you're going to be this limited, then at least when I connect a Mac dongle with power, a monitor, and a keyboard attached, don't decide that you're going to SUPPLY power to it.
iPhones and BT Beats headsets all use AAC at good bitrates. You probably wouldn't notice the difference between that and AptX, esp accounting for Beats quality ;)
Probably to avoid FCC asking them to enable FM radio
What happens once you stop paying your Dropbox bill? I thought in such a case, files past 2 GB got deleted. And how well does Dropbox work when upstream is $5 to $10 per GB, such as satellite or LTE, or when upstream isn't available at all, such as between a laptop and tablet on a city bus?
Why? The DAC in most phones is amazingly good - it's the output amp that sucks, high output impedance and low output current. Add a small amplifier to that jack and you have a surprisingly good source for your headphones. A quick check with an APx525 will show performance that is close to SOTA from 4 years ago. And with a great set of IEMs, you can hear the difference between 256 kbps MP3 and losssless compression...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Exactly.
All thumb drives, external hard drives, drive enclosures, etc should be ripped off the market. What kind of Luddites use that crap anyway? If that data isn't in the Cloud, then it's not important. Just throw it all in the trash when the server, desktop, or whatever is retired.
And if your cloud service provider ever fucks up, well your data, company, etc never deserved to exist anyway.
Captcha: progress (no joke)
Oblig.
His is a perfectly valid response. Just because something's from the 1980's doesn't mean we need to ditch it. Hell, I'm from the 1980's and I find new uses for myself all the time.
Incidentally, the 3.5 mm jack is actually 19th c. tech, just slightly scaled down for some applications in the 20th c..
I'm feeling joy at the miserable mental contortions the apple haters must be feeling right now.
We're talking about a plug which is on possibly billions of devices.
This isn't just headphones and headsets, this is being able to plug into the analog port on amplifier, this standard is used on boom boxes 20 years ago, on audio 'in' ports for the past 20 or 30 years on a plethora of devices.
It's all fine and dandy for smarmy tools to say "oh shut up, get USB-C headphones!" but USB-C headphones won't work on my OTHER devices easily and I sure as shit don't see them changing any time soon, literally billions of devices over the world.
Just how do you think Apple's modern headphones work anyway? They use AAC so as long as your headphones support AAC (which all of the decent ones do), then the sound quality is as good (or better) than it would have been with AptX.
If AptX were really better Apple would support that also.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
2 things I look for in a phone: A) headphone jack; B) SDCC card. With B I can kinda ignore the shovelware in the phone, and expand the internal 8 G (1.2G after shovelware) to 32G of stuff I care about, like videos, pictures, and MP3s. Headphone jack? Give me a break. I'm gonna spend $200 on easily lost doohickeys to replace perfectly usable $80 headphones?
Once again. No headphone jack, no sale. No SDCC card, no sale.
Just deleting Facebook, which I don't have an account on, gives me room for 2 more CDs, which I listen to a lot more often than I log into facebook. Sorry Zuck, I'm not one of your customers
fuck these asshole companies with their idiotic designers.. they can go fuck themselves.. im not paying $200 for headphones.
Hearing the difference now isn’t the reason to encode to FLAC. FLAC uses lossless compression, while MP3 is ‘lossy’. What this means is that for each year the MP3 sits on your hard drive, it will lose roughly 12kbps, assuming you have SATA – it’s about 15kbps on IDE, but only 7kbps on SCSI, due to rotational velocidensity. You don’t want to know how much worse it is on CD-ROM or other optical media. I started collecting MP3s in about 2001, and if I try to play any of the tracks I downloaded back then, even the stuff I grabbed at 320kbps, they just sound like crap. The bass is terrible, the midrangewell don’t get me started. Some of those albums have degraded down to 32 or even 16kbps. FLAC rips from the same period still sound great, even if they weren’t stored correctly, in a cool, dry place. Seriously, stick to FLAC, you may not be able to hear the difference now, but in a year or two, you’ll be glad you did. /pasta
Someone needs to take a deep breath, count to 10 and then get repeatedly arse fucked to release all that homophobic tension.
It's even easier using Airdrop.
That's ageism! Seriously though, what the fuck is wrong with companies? The headphone jack still works, digital wireless headphones have to use audio compression to have enough bandwidth and we're already listening to compressed audio in the first place. Are all new engineers deaf?
#DeleteFacebook
What the fuck? Lossy compression has nothing to do with the quality of data retrieval on a hard disk. If you've got data corruption, it'll affect any sort of file (and `flac -t` will tell you when a file is corrupted). a 320kbps MP3 stored with no intermitent data corruption from 2001 will have exactly the same bits and quality that it did in 2001. (Encoders have gotten better. A 320kbps MP3 from 2001 might sound worse than the song from the same source being encoded as 320kbps MP3 *today*, but that hs nothing to do with magical degradation.)
Fools recommended CBR (constant bit-rate). Educated people use VBR (variable bit-rate).
Do you hear the crack of the sound barrier as the whoosh flies overhead?
So instead of carrying a microsd card... You carry a wifi router and ups for your phone to broadcast the information to a another phone?
Well at least your phone is only an extra $50 for the extra 128GB storage. Right?
I bought the Pixel 1 end of last year and I've been pretty happy with it. It still performs the same as the day I got it. At the time it came out, it was definitely the phone to go with, though part of me wishes I had held out for the S8. After seeing the Note 8 and the iPhone X (not for me, but it has some technically impressive features), the Pixel 2 is extremely underwhelming. No new differentiating features to bring in people looking to make a change, and the lack of a headphone jack is a dealbreaker for me, and many others. I'm still at least a year away from upgrading to a new phone but I'm likely going to switch back to Samsung.
It's the ASD detection system working as designed.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Absolute deal breaker. I wouldn't even pay $20 for brand new device with such critical feature missing. Bluetooth audio sucks. No I don't want to pair it with my car, or my headphones, I want to plug in the wire and hear my music.
Unbelievable people are going for this crap.
*crickets*
Just because Apple does something stupid, doesn't mean you have to follow their footsteps Google.
What happens once you stop paying your Dropbox bill?
I don't have a Dropbox bill an if for whatever reason Dropbox went away I can replace it with the dozens of similar services that do the same thing.
I thought in such a case, files past 2 GB got deleted. And how well does Dropbox work when upstream is $5 to $10 per GB, such as satellite or LTE,
Maybe you live somewhere with exorbitant LTE prices, I pay $40/month for my SIM 8GB and never use half of it.
or when upstream isn't available at all, such as between a laptop and tablet on a city bus?
As above, maybe LTE is expensive where you live. Where I live it's cheap so I take advantage of it to avoid clumsy things like physical media swapping.
The moto x ^4 is headlining Android One for Project Fi in the US is a mid-range device ~$399 with a Headphone jack, SD-Card slot, and Micro-USB.
See: Motorola Moto X4 - Full phone specifications
Is all that needs to be said
Like devices that don't have removable batteries, bendy phones and most of all holding it wrong, it's only a problem when Apple is involved. Other manufacturers do the same or worse - Samsung Galaxy S6 cracked at the same pressure where the iPhone 6 bent - and people couldn't care less.
It will be the same with Androids that don't have headphone jacks. Sure sure, some people have said they wont buy them. And next Monday, they'll still not be buying the Pixel 2 and not caring about it. Also on next Monday, they'll still not be buying an iPhone 7 or later - but whining about it.
I already decided not to get the Pixel, before this latest reason. It's really unclear where Google thinks they are going with this. Apple envy? Giving value for money, not so much.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
In my house, I have a minimum of several dozen devices with standard 3.5mm headphone jacks. This includes my stereo, my TVs, my iPads (no intention of upgrading, they're good enough), my Windows tablets (we have at least 15 laying around the house), Kindle (for text to speech) ,etc...
To switch the headphones, I would need to replace about $40-$50,000 of devices.
3.5 mm jacks are imperfect and always have been. They're a terrible design but probably the best we could hope for given the manufacturing equipment of the time. The original 1/4" "telephone plug" or monaural plug dates to 1878. The 3.5mm jack dates from the 50's but I can't find anything more precise from Googling. The fact that something so small could be made in the 50's... especially when most things had to be hand-assembled back then is truly amazing.
So that said... given a standard that already dates back 60-70 years... I have no intention of giving up my headphones and their wires. They work well enough... I don't have to charge them... and since I prefer ear buds, I sure as shit don't want to lose them constantly because they're not physically attached to my phone.
Oh... and dongles are just plain stupid... I have Ajay 5 headphones and have bought 20-30 pairs of AJays over the years because they are more durable than most others. They don't make dongles of comparable strength or cable quality.
lack of headphone jack, annoying but not a deal breaker, last years processor and screen tech together with standard camera offerings and common storage levels... now we are at deal breaker, shouldn't google be trying to lead by example not trying to be yet another middle of the pack "ok" phone.
Sucks to get stuck with Bluetooth if you want to travel, though... Many overseas airlines will not allow use of Bluetooth headphones,
Like which ones? I mean really. I travel for work. I spend about 40% of my time in other countries and 10% of those on other continents. I have *never* been asked to stop using my bluetooth headset for anything other than paying attention to the flight attendant during the inflight safety demonstration.
Many international airlines not only don't give a crap about your bluetooth, many of them now run in flight entertainment systems over WiFi, offer in flight internet access, and some even have microcells to allow you to talk on your phone. Hell the last flight I took replaced the no smoking light with a no phone light to tell you when you were allowed to turn off flightmode.
As for the FAA, what they say or don't say is irrelevant compared to what airlines enforce. My above experience includes trips to the USA several times per year and the Bose QC headphones that you will typically see multiple people wearing and using on pretty much every flight and advertised in every in flight magazine, and even comes with airline adapters, and has bluetooth always on when noise cancelling is activated goes with me on every USA flight too.
Totally agree with the other posts that nothing is wrong with the headphone jack: https://rene.rebe.de/2016-12-0... No lossy bluetooth connection and another battery to charge. Or wear your usbc/lightning charging port. These companies and Apple are pathetic taking all the ports way (e.g. also on the Macs, ...).
Wish I could up vote all of you! :-/
No headphone jack, no deal. If you want to come up with a new standard for a headphone jack, be my guest... but it needs to be ANALOG, like current headphone jacks. But I don't object to making the jack smaller, as long as it's an open standard that any headphone manufacturer is free to produce. By the way, the OnePlus 5 has a headphone jack.
This sig intentionally left blank.
Maybe forgetful people aren't a key demographic, but I can get a replacement set of headphones for £5, from a shop in the station. Yes, they're cheap, and they're rubbish, and they're great for audiobooks.
I use the headphones a lot and I buy almost the cheapest ones because sometimes I wear them in a pocket in my pants and I can lose them or break them. Bluetooth is more expensive with less sound quality in most cases and I can use my headphone jacket with various devices so to me its a loss.
Don't allow ram/storage upgradeability. That way people will be forced to pick the highest storage/ram capacity when they buy because the salesperson will point out that they won't be able to upgrade later.
If there's a sweetspot storage level don't offer it. Offer half that at a low price or twice that. People who get the low storage option will run out of space soon and upgrade. People who buy the high storage option buy their extra gigabytes at a hefty premium from the manufacturer at sales time rather than from a third party when they run out of space.
Obsolete old connectors so people need to buy new peripherals
Don't allow user replaceable batteries. Lithium Ion batteries lose 20-40% of their capacity each year depending on temperature and this will force people to upgrade. Or find someone who can do a battery change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It seems to be spreading across the industry, especially in high end devices. In unrelated news more and more people are moving away from high end devices or just keeping old devices before these trends started.
I.e. it's all designed to make people upgrade high end devices more frequently. However the perverse effect is the exact opposite - people keep old high end devices around longer and when they die they replace them with low end ones. After all if phones and laptops are designed to be disposable, why buy a high end one?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The vendors are all about saving space and thus want to ditch the headphone jacks. They say "courage", I say bullshit.
How about finally making virtual SIM Technology real ?? - now that would be an innovation I can support. Removing the headphone jack is all about selling more expensive hardware (headphones). ...
What a load of nonsense.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
SUBJ. Now I will have to have 3 types of headphones - one for my iPhone with lightning jack, one for my android devices with USB-C headphones and one (ordinary one) for the rest - mp3 players etc.
Yeah - more money extracted from my pocket and more junk in junkyard. Planet will not say you " Thank you!" for that...
And then I remember that this company once wanted "Not to be evil" . haha , what a joke!
Sucks to get stuck with Bluetooth if you want to travel, though... Many overseas airlines will not allow use of Bluetooth headphones...
Seriously? You can get an adapter for peanuts and use any 3,5mm headphones you happen to have laying around your house. I've got literally two dozen earbuds and half a dozen regular ones all with the beloved 3,5mm jack.
If Apple jumped off a cliff, Google would be pushing themselves off it too.
There is nothing wrong with the earphone jack. It works perfectly, and has worked perfectly for decades in all sorts of audio devices.I won't be buying a phone that doesn't have an earphone jack, screw them.
No 3.5mm headphone jack == an immediate deal breaker for me. I will not purchase any phone that does not have headphone+mic capability, sans dongle, that I can use my existing headphones with. I also value a real line out, especially since Bluetooth compresses all audio plus adds latency to the signal. No headphone? May as well have no speaker or mic, and we're now back to the no-phone Ipod.
- This sig deliberately left blank. Nothing to see, move along.
Headphone jack, IP68 and smaller size is why I bought the Galaxy A5 2017. ... "Knox", the encryption gimmick, needs a Samsung or Google account to be activated / used. Fucking back door.
Downside is the shitty Samsung software
Hardware is nice but I will probably root the phone pretty soon to get full control.
Still not going to purchase a phone without a headphone jack. I am using my years old Sennheiser CX300. No battery to wear out, they just work.
Stop astroturfingfor cloud storage faggot.
That means that soon we will be running around with two devices in our pockets. One phone that gets supported and one that has a headphone jack. I've been through various bluetooth headphones and they all suck. Either sound is crap, battery life is crap, or the entire thing crapped out after a few months. That even with more expensive gear from well-known brands.
You can use Bluetooth after take off and landing and at crushing altitude.
Ryanair and Easyjet for starters. They still demand your phone is in flight mode and that means your bluetooth is turned *OFF*. That you have not been pulled up for using Bluetooth on a carrier where you have to have your phone in flight mode is irrelevant.
I'm on the market for a new Android phone and I'm waiting for today's Google Event to get the full facts about the Pixel phones.
I don't use headphones all that often with my phone, but when I do it's typically on a long flight. I have a good set of noise-cancelling headphones, so I'd prefer to not have to replace these. And while there will likely be a USB-C -> 3.5mm jack converter in the box, it means that not only do I have to remember to bring this with me (and if I forget it I can't use my headphones, and thus can't watch a movie on my phone), but I also cannot charge my phone when it will inevitably run out of battery and listen use headphones at the same time. And this is a bad thing. If I want to have a set of wired headphones at all, then I can't listen and charge at the same time. And wireless headphones require charging too...
So, yeah, this could be a deal breaker. I might find myself getting a S8+ or an LG V30 over the Pixel 2 XL, which will end my multiple-years of buying a phone directly from Google and having stock android.
Do I prefer stock android over my current headphones? Probably not. Samsung have some great stuff on the S8+ that may just tempt me in that direction. And they still have a headphone jack!
Crappy devices for gigantic prices. For some hardware, and the Pixel line falls very clearly in this, there is absolutely no explanation what you pay the premium price for.
The CPU is nothing special, the cameras actually used to be at best mediocre, software may suck a bit less but is not exactly a revelation either, resale prices aren't anything special, nor is the brand really worth anything, but the price sure is really high.
After buying a Moto G4 Play for my mother for $90 and using it for a while to test, I really have no idea what I'd actually get for those $600 or more on top, except the better camera. It rather seems like you are actually getting a lot less (no swappable battery, no headphone plug, no microSD slot, no dual SIM) for paying more.
I really hate that the market seems to split in 2:
- good phones for cheap prices with crappy cameras
- crappy phones for ridiculously hight prices with decent cameras
Neither seems like an attractive buy.
No, not most of the time. Among my last flights, only one single one allowed switching on Bluetooth.
All others required full flight mode.
That btw. was the same flight that had on-board internet available for purchase.
Maybe you can get away with it anyway, but you aren't allowed to.
I bought the note 8 because it has a headphone jack and I have expensive headphones. Please stop this madness
Actually it's not irrelevant at all. Flightmode is a stupid feel good measure and the airlines know it and treat it as such. The only time airlines ask you to disable flightmode is to enable full cellular calling. Many carriers will actively remind you that in order to access the in-flight wifi system you will need to enable wifi in your phone because flightmode has disabled it. Note the difference there, they don't ask you turn flight mode off, just to enable wifi.
Likewise even if you've just been told in your safety video to turn on flight mode, not a single person will complain that you turned on bluetooth or are using a wireless headset, though expect fire to pour down on you if your phone rings because then you didn't follow the instructions.
Quite clearly my phone is still in flight mode regardless if I enable wifi or bluetooth. I can prove it with the little plane icon on my screen.
What is said and what is enforced policy is irrelevant. No one will stop you from using bluetooth headphones on a plane. Including Ryanair which up until a few weeks ago I used to use quite regularly.
Kodak took a long hard look at how most people took pictures, and came up with the DIsk
camera with tiny negatives, fixed focus, but a form factor that would fit in your pocket.
Not much different from a smartphone camera.
A snapdragon 630 and only FHD screen for $400? You have to be kidding me. Those are sub $300 phone stats.
What happens once you stop paying your Dropbox bill? I thought in such a case, files past 2 GB got deleted.
I don't have a Dropbox bill
Then you're limited to 2 GB in your Dropbox account, or perhaps slightly more if you obtained invitation bonuses when they were available.
upstream is $5 to $10 per GB
Maybe you live somewhere with exorbitant LTE prices, I pay $40/month for my SIM 8GB
$40/month divided by 8 GB/mo is $5 per GB, as I estimated. That can still be expensive for moving multi-GB video files around.
As above, maybe LTE is expensive where you live.
Where I live, home Internet alone is about $60 per month from Comcast. If I were to cancel cable Internet with its 1000 GB/mo quota in favor of LTE, I'd end up using far more than the 8 GB per month that you quoted.
In one way, I'd love an external amp with a D/A converter. But I don't want to pay over $150 for something I can live without.
Just give me the damned headphone jack.
You can use Bluetooth after take off and landing and at crushing altitude.
All three of those examples are on the ground, only.
What about removing the headphone jack and adding a second USB port? That way people could listen on headphones (or a car without bluetooth) and charge at the same time. You could have an adapter permanently attached to old headphones or other audio cables rather than having to carry it around with your phone. You could walk around plugged into headphones and an external battery at the same time.
No he didn't hear it : the sound of the whoosh was encoded with MP3 at a too low quality setting, he should have used FLAC instead.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Then you're not listening. They have clearly said on many flights I have been on "turn off all wireless functions". Just because the flight attendant doesn't notice, doesn't mean you can use them.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Whether you use flight mode or not, they tell you to turn off all transmitting and receiving functions. At least they do in most if not all of the domestic flights I have been on.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
...no need to look at the Pixel 2.
And how do you charge the phone while you are using them?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It's not always about easy, or lazy. An SD card is not something that can easily be spied on remotely in a mass surveillance fashion. Your Dropbox and other stuff, well, can be and is. The lack of what you call easy is a feature, not a bug.
The only place where you need a wifi router to use Airdrop is inside your head.
Paid commentary and shills now promote brands.
Directly now.
Try any China airline. Cathay Pacific. Malaysia Air. Ask them if your Bluetooth headphone can be turned on. Heck, they insist you shut off your phone - like, turned off, not just in flight mode. And I fly too - Diamond on Delta and Gold on Cathay, about 270,000 miles a year (181K on Delta this year, 36K on Cathay - so far).
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Correct! Another thing to pack in my case... Yeah, it's small - but it is One More Thing to bring and break and lose...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
You didn't realize that it's a joke... you've obviously been drinking too much bleach.
It's a dealbreaker for me. I won't be owning a Pixel.
Last time I flew, they specifically said to turn the devices off, and that flight mode doesn't cut it.
And it uses up the connector. And dongles simply blow.
I've found Airdrop to be notoriously unreliable. Sometimes it takes an absurdly long time to locate the recipient device.
Bluetooth has had OBEX transfer support for a very long time, but Apple never implemented it. I don't know if it was because Apple wanted something they could control, or if it was cause the feature was too unreliable because most other manufacturers botched the protocol as well, but either way, I find it annoying that I can't easily transfer something to someone else who isn't also using an Apple product.
That being said, it's a feature I use so rarely that it's not worth factoring into my purchase decisions compared to other things (like knowing I will get software updates for approx 5 years after I buy the product)
I don't want to wear Bluetooth headphones 5 to 6 hours a day (noise-cancelling, courtesy of that productivity killer fad of open-offices).
As for the arguments for an SD slot : I want to be able to switch storage to another device easily and quickly and to do backups. Even if built-in storage was not so grossly overpriced, I would still choose SD.
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
It's sure beginning to look like Apple WAS being Courageous by being the first major Smartphone OEM that decided that the 3.5 mm headphone jack was an impediment to forward-progress in the smartphone design universe...
Cue the Haters and Fandroids.
What have you been smoking? Can I have some?
He'll, even 200$ stats...
I am a long time purchaser of nexus devices but I just bought a oneplus 5.
No they don't. They say flightmode. And if you have an example counter to that then it's not relevant in the context of the debate which is "many overseas airlines"
Then you're not listening.
Not only am I listening. I often get the same message in several different languages and they all say the same thing. Turn devices off. Small devices can continue to use flightmode.
Actually the word "transmitting" has never been uttered on any airline I've ever been on. And they have been A LOT.
But ultimately what is said is quite irrelevant compared to what is actually done, or in this case what isn't done: no one with a wireless headset (of which there are A LOT of people on flights) is asked to switch it off.
The entire flight?
I was on Southern China 3 months ago from Amsterdam to Brisbane. I flew Cathay Pacific from Hong Kong to Sydney in late 2016. Neither even asked me to turn anything off during takeoff landing, or the safety presentation let alone on the flight. In fact the Cathay flight I had provided in flight WiFi and Cellular, they specifically mentioned I need to turn off flight mode to use it.
I don't fly Delta out of principle so I'll defer to your advice on that.
I'm not sure, but probably not. I just put my phone in airplane mode and carried on as usual.
Just because it isn't called out, it doesn't make it right. That's the way a child thinks.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Fuck you :)
I won't buy a phone that is missing a headphone jack or an SD card. Which is why the last smartphone I ever own will likely be the HTC 10. Sad face.
Then I suspect you ignore safety requests/protocols and all presentations. Please see about 1 minute into this, cell phones are required to be turned off and MAY NOT BE USED during the flight. Flat out. You got lucky.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Yep! A common refrain at a client in SF is a wailing about all the dongles required to make their Mac/iOS device functional. I just smile as I open up my Lenovo laptop with all required connectors (USB, VGA, HDMI, MicroSD, headphones) and get to work...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Lots of compelling features there, but nope. No headphone jack, no go. I like music. BT audio is still terrible and can't be compared to a wired, unaltered signal. None of the BT codecs are good enough, and they still compress the crap out of the source material.
$40/month divided by 8 GB/mo is $5 per GB, as I estimated. That can still be expensive for moving multi-GB video files around.
Do you find Dropbox efficient with bandwidth usage? I found half MB file updated twice a day using 180 MB per day (upload + download) in connections to domains of Amazon and Dropbox. Consistently for days. Headless dropbox on a server with only Dropbox as a window to outer internet.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
So it's true, they didn't do it for the Pixel 2.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
You could always record at 5120 kbps. It'll last decades!
How crazy is this thread?
You are both arguing over the merits of a "cloud" solution when the obvious choice is to use a USB cable.
However, MTP has fucking broken the ability to easily copy files to and from a phone. That bullshit needs to die a horrid death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol
https://forums.oneplus.net/threads/mtp-reliability.87345/
http://www.transformerforums.com/forum/guides-tips-tricks/34852-how-solve-mtp-issues-all-android-devices.html ...and so on. MTP sucks.
To stay on topic: I will **NEVER** spend $1000 on a phone that does not use a generic USB mass storage device driver....yes, that means I won't buy another phone again. Why the fuck does everyone tolerate this bullshit???????????
Then you're limited to 2 GB in your Dropbox account,
Correct, which isn't a problem for me, but even if it was I'd happily pay for a service I find useful.
$40/month divided by 8 GB/mo is $5 per GB, as I estimated. That can still be expensive for moving multi-GB video files around.
As I said originally, except for large files. I can't imagine the market for moving large videos around on city buses is that large. Clearly the major phone manufacturers don't think so either.
Where I live, home Internet alone is about $60 per month from Comcast. If I were to cancel cable Internet with its 1000 GB/mo quota in favor of LTE, I'd end up using far more than the 8 GB per month that you quoted.
But you only need the LTE when you're on the Bus. Every other use case you use you home connection, work connection or wifi somewhere.
As above, the single use case of needing_to_move_large_files_between_devices_on_a_bus isn't really enough to build that feature into every single device.
$40/month divided by 8 GB/mo is $5 per GB, as I estimated. That can still be expensive for moving multi-GB video files around.
Do you find Dropbox efficient with bandwidth usage?
I have 1000GB on my home internet, unlimited at work, and 8GB on my phone and I've never even come close to exceeding anything so never had to think about it.
I don't move videos around (except for every now again when travelling I load up the tablet, but do this via USB), and photos only sync when on wifi. So most sync's are small files or one off photos I manually sync using Keep. So the LTE thing isn't a problem for me.
What might be really useful is a 2.5" hard drive 1TB and up, battery operated, with wifi : i.e. a mobile NAS if you need to call it that.
I will gloss over the smartphone software needed for a phone to copy files to/from it, sync with it, be it over samba or nfs or ssh or proprietary methods. Can be done, sure. Ditto other uses like streaming/playing media : if you have a companion app on the phone, good for you. I will simply like if there's a web interface that about any phone can use, at least to play music. Something like Emby server running on a NAS can about do it although it doesn't seem to work on outdated browsers. It would have to work on Android 4.4 browser and mobile Internet Explorer and other random old stuff (Firefox OS, iOS7) like real websites do.
Why? because everyone has some random smartphone, and the mobile music library can be read by any of them or the one with juice left in it, and requiring to install an app is a burden. Many people don't even have a google/microsoft/apple account required to install apps.
The mobile NAS might forgo 2.5" drive support, but it would be nice if it then supports two micro SD cards, perhaps one internal and one external, but the cost per GB is a lot higher obviously.
You can put your phone in flight mode, and then turn your bluetooth on without leaving flight mode.
Don't fornicate. Seriously, just don't do it.
It was using 90 times the data even if I consider a quite stupid algorithm to sync. Which means 0.5 MB , synced twice a day, both times the file is once uploaded fully and once downloaded fully, making a total of 2 MB. It used 180 MB - 90 times 2 MB.
Now maybe dropbox needs to use a minimum of 175 MB for its own purposes and to sync 8 GB dropbox might take only 8 GB + 175 MB.
But I wonder how much spying 175 MB per day could accomplish for dropbox. Because they never reply to this type of questions on their customer support or user forums.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
keep saying that to yourself..
audiophool
So I assume Google has figured out a way to make money on a new headphone connector, too?
Hearing the difference now isn’t the reason to encode to FLAC. FLAC uses lossless compression, while MP3 is ‘lossy’. What this means is that for each year the MP3 sits on your hard drive, it will lose roughly 12kbps, assuming you have SATA – it’s about 15kbps on IDE, but only 7kbps on SCSI, due to rotational velocidensity. You don’t want to know how much worse it is on CD-ROM or other optical media.
LOL, a computer file that dries up and rots like a stored apple in midwinter.
"Lossy" means that the compression method loses some of the subtler harmonics found in the raw music. Since most people cannot hear a difference in a 128 kbps rendering for a portable device and a lossless FLAC or raw PCM file; the point is kinda moot.
Record deterioration on storage media is totally different from a lossy compression codec. The Frauhoffer Codec, aka Motion Picture Experts Group Layer 3 encoding (MP3 for short), became a default standard as a most reasonable compromise between loss free digital encoding of audio and file size on storage media.
NRRPT/RCT
What do you want in a smart phone? Me, I want a PDA that makes phone calls. The camera is totally irrelevant to most of what I do with a phone.
The 4 pin phone jack is NOT optional. That is the hardware interface used for data collection ever since Apple iPhone came out using a non standard hardware interface. Using the 3.5mm jack instead made for a universal hardware interface for sensors.
Also, Bluetooth has lag. If you are watching compressed video, the lag is obvious with the lips moving then the sound arrives to your ears. That may be irrelevant for streaming your favorite anime; but it can bug the crap out of you if you are trying to evaluate a tech problem via live stream and the equipment positioning doesn't follow the verbal description of symptoms.
Ear bud type Bluetooth units have piss poor battery life. If I could find some that took hearing aid batteries; I would feel I could actually rely on them a bit as a poor substitute for a corded comm headset.
NOT having an SD card slot is simple arrogance on the part of the manufacturer. Not everyone lives in a cube farm and has cloud service. An SD card allows for moving files readily between phones when you change phones. This is in lieu of having to spend hours downloading data from the cloud or side loading with a USB cord. (Thunderbolt/C-Connectors are just the latest iteration of USB)
The paltry amount of memory in a phone makes having an SD card to hold certain apps is a bit of a must have for those that do more than make calls and stream cat videos.
What bluetooth on a phone is good for is putting an external keyboard to the phone so you can rough in reports in the field and streaming music and audio-books to the car stereo when driving.
NRRPT/RCT
We finally have a point of differentiation for the next thing to come along and knock off both Apple and Google with a simple appellation, "We respect the gear you already have! Give us your 3.5mm jack outputs, please!"
I expect a phone to last at least 10 years on my payroll grade, as do many in non-developed countries. Thus I limit my selection to (A) MUST have removable battery (can be away from an electric supply for days!) (B) desirable; Works and can be viewed in bright sunlight
Regards Eion MacDonald
I don't see the point in removing such a useful feature, as well as MicroSD slot and removable batteries. It's almost like selling you a car without seats. What are they thinking? Or not thinking rather...
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti