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Bluetooth Won't Replace the Headphone Jack -- Walled Gardens Will (theverge.com)
Last year, when it was rumoured that the then upcoming iPhone models -- 7 and 7 Plus -- won't have the 3.5mm audio jack, The Verge's Nilay Patel wrote that if Apple does do it, it would be a user-hostile and stupid move. When those iPhone models were official announced, they indeed didn't have the audio jack. Earlier this week, Android-maker Google announced the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphones that also don't feature the decades-old audio jack either, a move that would likely push rest of the smartphone makers to adopt a similar change. The rationale behind killing the traditional headphones jack, both Apple and Google say, is to move to an improved technology: Bluetooth. But there is another motive at play here, it appears. Patel, writes for The Verge: As the headphone jack disappears, the obvious replacement isn't another wire with a proprietary connector like Apple's Lightning or the many incompatible and strange flavors of USB-C audio. It's Bluetooth. And Bluetooth continues to suck, for a variety of reasons. Newer phones like the iPhone 8, Galaxy S8, and the Pixel 2 have Bluetooth 5, which promises to be better, but 1. There are literally no Bluetooth 5 headphones out yet, and 2. we have definitely heard that promise before. So we'll see. To improve Bluetooth, platform vendors like Apple and Google are riffing on top of it, and that means they're building custom solutions. And building custom solutions means they're taking the opportunity to prioritize their own products, because that is a fair and rational thing for platform vendors to do. Unfortunately, what is fair and rational for platform vendors isn't always great for markets, competition, or consumers. And at the end of this road, we will have taken a simple, universal thing that enabled a vibrant market with tons of options for every consumer, and turned it into yet another limited market defined by ecosystem lock-in. The playbook is simple: last year, Apple dropped the headphone jack and replaced it with its W1 system, which is basically a custom controller chip and software management layer for Bluetooth. The exemplary set of W1 headphones is, of course, AirPods, but Apple also owns Beats, and there are a few sets of W1 Beats headphones available as well. You can still use regular Bluetooth headphones with an iPhone, and you can use AirPods as regular Bluetooth headphones, but the combination iPhone / W1 experience is obviously superior to anything else on the market. [...] Google's version of this is the Pixel Buds, a set of over-ear neckbuds that serve as basic Bluetooth headphones but gain additional capabilities when used with certain phones. Seamless fast pairing? You need Android N or higher, which most Android phones don't have.
So, does the new Bluetooth standards fix latency problems? Specifically, when watching video (hooked up to a monitor via HDMI) and listening to a bluetooth headset, the audio sync is *always* off.
Not going to buy a new set because Apple - or Google wants me to. Fuck them. I'd sooner switch cell phones. Eventually, the manufacturers will get the message.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
> And Bluetooth continues to suck, for a variety of reasons.
Does it? I have bluetooth headphones. They are not made by a company affiliated to either my computer or my telephone, the two devices I use them with. I turn my headphones on and audio starts coming out of them. The audio sounds fine. What part of my experience sucks?
Most of the author's complaints seem to revolve around how most fast-pairing protocols are currently proprietary, but... pairing your headphones is something you don't do very often, so it's at best a minor inconvenience.
I already have audio technica m50x's and beyerdynamic dt770s. I'm not buying a phone that they won't work with, and I'm not switching to your fucking bluetooth beats you greedy fucks.
a move that would likely push rest of the smartphone makers to adopt a similar change
Not the ones that I'll be buying from, until there is an alternative to the wire that is at least as good.
If that means I'm buying a older model, so be it. It probably won't, though. My
prediction is that there will be high-end smartphones with headphone jacks for a few years yet. There will probably be at least one remaining manufacturer that will be happy to take the money from people Apple and Google have decided are no longer important to them.
Mhmm. Right. One should think of the headphone jack as a simple electrical interface, rather than some sort of magical sound-transport medium. Past a certain point in the hardware, it's all analog anyhow. We seem to be arriving in a brave new world where we eventually won't even be able to connect light bulbs directly to the power grid. Something something luddite. Something something courage. That is all.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
(and Beats, and some other Mfgs) BT earbuds/headphones are superior
Beats? Superior??
Beats is downright terrible. They're one of, if not the, worst-sounding in their price range.
It adds extra bullshit to something that should be as simple.(like plug it in)
instead pair your device, make sure its charged and make sure to turn off Bluetooth when you are not using it! Then when done add those extra batteries to the electronic graveyard! I have had plenty of jacks work for years, I have also had Bluetooth transmitters that sucked so bad they were choppy from 3 feet away or burned out . I can replace a jack in most devices. Not an integrated Bluetooth chip.
Great Job!
While this is an interesting argument, I'd like to point out, as someone who has been using BT headphones for the last 3 years, that I have to replace headphones way more often than cellular devices. I think I'm on my 3rd set with this phone, and the right bud on this one has a short, so the third is not long for this world either.
So moving the "high end DAC" to the headset may have some advantages, but not having to rebuy it as often is NOT one of them.
Yes I am pissed at these assholes, Sony, Apple, Google and the whole shebang deserve to be roasted for what they do to classical recordings. Sell me pure 24 bit by at least 96 audio files of great well mixed recordings and I will pay but as long as you jackasses 'normalize' and compress the shit out of classical recording I want nothing to do with you and you will not get one more cent out of my pocket period.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
The other is currently a non-removable battery. Sure, the "high end" crap is a no-go that way, but I will get a phone designed by actual engineers, not by marketing morons and wannabe "designers". It will also be much cheaper and do what I need.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
For the invisible hand of the free market to work, you need competition. You also need informed customers making rational decisions. If customers are not informed, or if they are apathetic or if they make irrational decisions, it would produce weird results.
Market bubbles from tulip bubbles to emu farming to credit default swap derivatives ... to million people a day buying phones sans headphone jacks.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
There's a pretty huge difference between saying for best audio quality you need headphones made by us, our subsidiaries, or those who are paying us a licensing fee (Apple) and "Seamless fast pairing? You need Android N or higher, which most Android phones don't have." (Google).
Google haven't added something to the phone that means only headphones they produce or license can work, instead they added something to a headphone. And others could make headphones that do the same thing without paying special fees to Google. And the OS requirement doesn't mean you need a Nexus or Pixel phone, it could be from Motorola, or Samsung or LG or countless others.