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Google Slashes Prices of Its USB-C Headphone Dongle Following Minor Outrage (mashable.com)
At its hardware event last week, Google unveiled its two new flagship smartphones: the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. While these devices feature high-end specifications and the latest version of Android, they both lack headphone jacks, upsetting many consumers who still rely heavily on wired headphones. To add insult to injury, Google announced a USB-C adapter for a whopping price of $20 -- that's $11 more than Apple's Lightning to 3.5mm adapter. This resulted in some minor outrage and caused Google to rethink its decision(s). As reported by 9to5Google, Google decided to slash the price of the dongle by over 50%. It is now priced at a more reasonable $9.
I am not a audiophile per say, but I have yet to find a decent pair of bluetooth headphones that don't have connection issues, or quality problems with audio. In fact I can easily spend half the amount on a pair of wired headphones and get far better quality audio then bluetooth. I would also point out that since a smartphone has built in speakers, all the hardware is there for a headphone jack. In reality this is not about saving parts costs, making phones thinner.
The dongle is admitting that people still use wired headphones, but that the obsessive competitive design of winning the thinnest smartphone is winning over practical use. I would not be surprised to see a phone maker take advantage and make a phone with a 1/8th jack and market as such.
Has anyone figured why they dropped support for good old audio out port?
Apple did it to sell overpriced accessories, but what are google's motives?
PS
If other manufacturers follow this idiotic move, "having analog audio out socket" will become top point in my "phone must have it" list, above OLED screen and SD card.
Newsflash: Google drops price of headphone adapter from 2% to 1% of the price of the phone. I agree that $20 is way too steep for the adapter, and $9 seems more reasonable (though it should probably be more like $5). However, Google's original attitude towards pricing of the dongle really just underscores how overpriced the phone is in the first place.
One superthin without headphone jack. One slightly thicker with headphone jack and a slightly bigger battery - which you need if you consume a lot of media on your phone anyway. I have a non-superthin Samsung smartphone with headphone jack. I am not interested in superthin - as long as the phone fits in my pocket, its okay.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
If you look on Alibaba bulk prices for this adapter are all over the place. I suspect once they have the molds made the per unit cost for this adapter is under $0.30 (not including packaging).
Very courageous of Google. Hip hip hooray! Three cheers and much applause for Google!!
This 128GB pixel 2 phone is practically a grand. WTF isn't a $9 usb-c to 3.5mm adapter included for free?
(price still £19.95 in the UK OBVIOUSLY)
imagine if your life became so meaningless you had time to rage against a $20 dingle for $850 phone.
It seems to me that companies have discovered that most people don't have much knowledge of technology, and are easily manipulated. So now it seems to me that companies are competing to see who can be most abusive. A few of the many examples:
Microsoft: Window 10 Spyware
Microsoft: Microsoft Is Filled With Abusive Managers And Overworked Employees, Says Tell-All Book.
Apple: Cupertino Mayor Says Apple 'Abuses Us'
Apple again: Criticism of Apple Inc.
Adobe Systemes: Adobe Flash, The Spy in Your Computer â" Part 1 Adobe seems to me to be one of the original abusers. The company demonstrated to others that average people cannot protect themselves from technology abuse.
Adobe Systems rents software: Software as a Monthly Rental
Google misses the issue, AGAIN.
It isn't the price of the adapter, it is the fact that you have to have one in the first place.
...but you will never know what I am listening with my headphones!
Three very slightly indented metal pads on the back of the phone, a connector with 3 slightly raised metal pads, magnets.
I just saw my nephew addicted to watching video on 5 inch iphone. The phone runs down to 5% charge. Now he can't use both head phones and the charger at the same time. Charges for a few minutes, gets very edgy and nervous, connects his headphones for a few minutes, keeps switching between charger and the headphones.
In some sense it is a welcome thing, forces him to break staring at that little screen for hours on end. Even with this forced break, he is going to end up with severe myopia, -15 diopters before he turns 15.
Coming back to Google Dongle, does this have this severe myopia prevention feature by not allowing charging and listening at the same time?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Bluetooth headphones is not there yet.
It is a nightmare to figure out what sound quality you get in bluetooth headphones/speakers today.
To send/resive audio via bluetooth you only need to support SBS audio. That is has bad quality compared to bitrate..
Some support MP3/AAC/LDAC/Apt-X/Apt-X HD/What ever.
The problem is that both sender and reciver have to support the same format for it to work. You can't just get some headphones that support Apt-X if your phone do not support it.
And most of the time it is almost imposibel to see what the phone/headphones/speaker is supporting. So it's but and hope for the best. Or spent a lot of time seatching the web to see if anyone have an anwser.
And after all that. Then there is also how good is the DAC in the speaker/headphones.
Most phones today have a good DAC. But headphones can support all the best audio codecs. And have a crap DAC. So it sounds bad anyway.
And putting a good DAC in the speaker/headphones also bumps the price. And then you have an extra thing to recharge.
Sure in the future when they have better standards for sounds. And you are sure you get something good. No matter what you buy.
But we are not there yet.
So why remove the 3.5 Jack stik. It works. And it has yet get a usefull replacement.
Dropping the floppy for CD-Drive and laver for USB stik.
Sure. The CD was an improvment over the floppy. And the USB stik had been improved a lot when it replaced optick drives in computers.
It would have faild if they did it when we only had the USB 1 standard. But it got better and storgage bigger and chaper. So you could do the switch.
Monthly phone payments are approaching that of a utility bill, and that is on top of the outrageous prices Americans are paying for the service itself. I have to ask myself how much longer this can go on.
A typical family of four is going to be paying more for their cell phones and service than they are for their primary vehicle, or possibly even their mortgage. There has to be a breaking point where people decide that it is just not worth it.
I'm glad to hear that they're at least doing something to correct this; the built-in speakers are about useless; I HAVE to put my phone on speaker, to hear anything at all, from the connected party, so I completely understand why headphones are relied upon. Even with headphones, the volume is low, but at least they can be heard. That they would even attempt to take this functionality out, completely dumbfounds me.
if a user asks for it. A usb-c to headphone dongle came with my Essential PH-1. It's been a month, and I still haven't used it (the dongle).
Perhaps they've done some market studies and determined that there are a lot more folks out there that don't care than who would switch brands/phones due to the slight inconvenience of having a dongle.
I haven't used wired headphones/pods with any of my phones in years.
Just saying . . .
Hard to figure why it should even cost that much. Classic example of asking too much in order to make the second offer seem reasonable.
Twinstiq, game news
Interesting that $9 is considered a "reasonable" price. A lot of people must be conditioned by the overpriced cables they local stores charge.
Hint: $20 for a 1m HDMI cable is not a reasonable price at all. A reasonable price would be around $2, if a shop sells for more they are just ripping you off because they can.
I doubt there is any amazing tech in these that would justify a price much above $2 either, certainly not $9.
Then again, it's not like the phones themselves offer anything that would even remotely justify their price either, so it's just consistent.
If you're "outraged" that this very expensive Google phone doesn't have a headphone jack, then why the hell would you even buy it in the first place?
Nobody upset about it would just buy it anyway and then also complain about the overpriced adapter that they already knew about also.
This is stupid.
Why would anyone buy a bluetooth headset if they're fine using a cable?
Well, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the answer to your question is basically because if they want to listen to their music, they are going to have to buy a BT headset, or at least a dongle until the industry transitions (sooner or later; my bet is sooner) to a portless phone. The trend is pretty clear: Ports are going away, and have been for awhile. Phones that don't have physical ports can be cheaper to make, are easier to ruggedize, and are significantly thinner, which are things that customers are telling them they really, really, want. Ruggedization is important to some customers, but not all of them, so that is not that much of a driver, but the other two points are. Not having to accommodate dead space in the form of a 9.6mm^2 circular hole in the edge of the case hits two out of three selling points for the customer.
But requiring a splitter to charge and listen at the same time is really annoying, and a dealbreaker for my purposes.
Oh sure, there's wireless charging... but this can be less convenient than wired charging in some cases... particularly if you are regularly charging from usb in many different locations, because then you are having to carry the charger around everywhere you go as well.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Or 1$ feature?
You decide what is better for the companies bottom line
I've got a few bucks and it's time to splurge
I bought a new Pixel cause I've got the courage
Just waiting for my price drop DRM dongle
So I can finally listen to my favorite songle
I bet your fun at partys.
There's a middle ground - the $200 - $300 price range. Like the Sennheiser HD600, which deliver a sound quality that is pretty amazing, but may require a headphone pre-amp (from $30 up) to use on a phone. Also, at the end of the $50 price range, there's quality stuff like the Sennheiser PX 100, which works well with my mobile phone with no add-ons. I compared the sound of the PX 100 to more expensive bluetooth sets (like Bose) and think it's far superior. Also, I really like that the back of my current android phone comes off so I can exchange battery & sim card, so I wouldn't buy a Pixel anyway... Disclosure: I bought both models with my own money and am using them a lot. I have no relation to Sennheiser other than being a happy customer, other brands may be just as good.
upsetting many consumers who still rely heavily on wired headphones
Then don't buy it.
Jews believe this of others they call goyim/gentiles (any non-jew): Jews = biggest racists of all (for which they "jew guilt" you for no less! They're hypocrites known as thieves all thru history or were Argentines in the 1940 under Perrone, Spanish inquistion, France (1306), Egypt (despoiled/robbed by jews), Arabs (pre & post 1948), England (1330 Edward longshanks), Romans under titus, Russia pogroms and Germany who got rid of them from their nations nazi german's too? No. Driven into DESERTS ages ago! Don't wonder why after all those exilings above. Should anyone doubt any of this see Jacob Javits' crony Rosenthal spill the beans on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4zMVZ8HnFI/ where he called all Christianity fools for helping Israel and the biggest scam of all time per their beliefs below from their Talmud. This is the province of the synagogue of Satan (Khazar/Pharisees whom Jesus Christ himself kicked to the curb out of the temple):
Barbara Spectre, a jew, tells everyone it's jews orchestrating the muslim migrant problem in Europe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFE0qAiofMQ/ . No migrant raping of women in Poland. Tons in Sweden. Do the math. Use common-sense. This is to get muslims and other goyim/gentiles to wipe one another out as incompatible cultures that will clash and always have.
George Soros who funds groups to create division in the USA?? A jew. One who sold his own jew people into death for the nazis. Zucker @ CNN is another frying publicly for lying about "russians" and John Bonifield a producer @ CNN said it is bs. Van Jones did also.
What World-famous Men have said About the Jews https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MYPzKNQUE0/
Harvey Weinstein the child molester tops it all off.
There are three types of people who call themselves Jews:
1. True Torah [Sephardic] Jews: these are the descendants of Prophet Jacob-Israel (Jacobites or Israelites) (about 5%-10% of all Jews)
2. Khazarian or Ashkenazi Jews: these are the descendants of a Turkic idol/phallic worshiping tribe who migrated to Russia in the 7th Century A.C. and whose nobility converted to Judaism in the 8th Century A.C. and now inhabit mostly Europe. (about 90%-95% of all Jews)
3. Zionist Jews: these are the ones from the 2 above who are pretending to be Jews for political reasons but whoâ(TM)re are actually Illuminists-Luciferian-Masonic-Satanists as Harold Wallace Rosenthal admits in this interview.
They are led by the neo-Pharisees (occult-priest-banklords). They want to establish a Zionist Luciferian state from the Nile to the Euphrates from where they plan to rule the Earth. The new Israeli Supreme Court funded by the Rothschilds Banklords is full of Masonic Symbols, just like the B.I.S. Bank of International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, which is the Mother of All Private Central Banks.
The hexagram symbol on the Israeli flag is the ancient Star of Moloch, a Satanic-Baal deity to which people were sacrificed. There is no such thing as a Star of David which the modern Jews have been fooled into believing; however, the True Torah Jews are not fooled by the Zionists Illuminatis and you can visit their websites for more info .
1. Sanhedrin 59a: "Murdering Goyim is like killing a wild animal."
2. Abodah Zara 26b: "Even the best of the Gentiles should be killed."
3. Sanhedrin 59a: "A goy (Gentile) who pries into The Law (Talmud) is guilty of death."
4. Yebhamoth 11b: "Sexual intercourse with a little girl is permitted if she is three years of age."
5. Schabouth Hag. 6d: "Jews may swear falsely by use of subterfuge wording."
6. Hilkkoth Akum X1: "Do not save Goyim in danger of death."
7. Hilkkoth Akum X1: "Show no mercy to the Goyim."
8. Choschen Hamm 388, 15: "If it can be proven that someone has given the money of Israelites to the Goyim, a wa
This is what you get from Apple. Their way or the highway. Oh, wait. Never mind.
-- "I'm not in a hurry; I'm in Hawaii." The Homeless Guy
It might also have something to do with generic ones selling for $2 on Amazon and eBay.
Things I will never buy: 1. Apple products
2. Any mobile device without a 3.5mm headphone jack
3. Dell or Alienware products
There's just no legitimate reason to remove the jack. If you can fit a USB-C connector in there, you can fit a fucking headphone jack too.
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