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Google Replaces Its USB-C Headphone Adapter With a More Expensive Version (theverge.com)
Google is now selling an updated headphone adapter that's supposed to be more responsive and drain less of your phone's battery. But these minor improvements come at a cost. The new dongle costs $12, whereas the old dongle sold for just $9. "That also means Google's headphone adapter now costs more than Apple's equivalent adapter for the iPhone," The Verge notes. From the report: Physically, though, the dongle is nearly identical to the USB-C to 3.5mm adapter that Google has been selling since last October: this new version is just a hair smaller in almost every dimension. Google says the new dongle will connect to your phone ever so slightly faster, and, more importantly, it's supposed to draw less power, translating to 38 percent more playback time. Android Police first spotted the update.
Bummer
The original adaptor seems like it must be super poorly designed if a new version can reduce draw by 38%!! That seems like an insane gap. Seems like the original adaptor must have also gotten quite hot with that kind of extra draw?
Even if it's slightly more expensive I don't see where a dollar or two would make much of a difference, you're only going to be buying one or two adaptors at most (and many people need 0 if they just stick to bluetooth headsets).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Can I just sign over my unborn child's personal information for a discounted price?
The high-end Snapdragon processors come with a very good DAC built in. Probably better quality than these cheap dongles and also capable of higher output power.
You can even use USB-C Audio Accessory mode to route analog audio through the C jack, meaning cheaper $1 adapters, but Google is one of the last holdouts in supporting this.
Why force people to buy two DACs, Google?
If I get modded down as a troll, so be it, but I feel it needs to be said.
Not everything that shows up on The Verge needs to be a headline on Slashdot. Especially an article tries to make a $3 markup on a headphone adapter sound like an assault on consumers.
Let me know when you find an article analyzing the circuitry of these headphone adapters and explains exactly how modifying something as simple as a headphone adapter can extend battery life by 38%.
The new dongle costs $12, whereas the old dongle sold for just $9. "That also means Google's headphone adapter now costs more than Apple's equivalent adapter for the iPhone," The Verge notes.
Damn .... It'll be interesting to hear the Apple haters rationalise this.
That looks like a nice device for a nice price but will it work on Windows?
Maybe this is a bit of a switch, people wanting accessories and peripherals made for Linux to work with Windows.
Oh, and that's a serious question by the way. If it works on Windows then I'll take two.
You already spent hundreds for a phone with a USB-C port, and who knows how much more in accessories. Is anybody really going to bitch about the cost of a McDonalds burger?
If the drain is much lower, I would say it's 3$ well spent
That they keep coming up with all of these variants of USB connectors, requiring us to keep a drawer full of cords and dongles of one sort or another.
Can I offer a wild-ass guess that increasing buffer space on the DAC chip can allow the phone to extend the time between wakeups and thereby spend more time sleeping, extending battery life?
As we have seen in other areas of phone design(and the so called 'system on chip' generally), considerable savings of both cost and power can be achieved through denser integration of components, reduction in duplication of function, power hungry bus logic, and so forth.
Imagine, if you will, the sorts of power and cost savings that could be realized if Google took the revolutionary(indeed, Courageous) step of moving the dongle into the phone.
I realize that it's a radical proposal; and I don't make it lightly; but a handset that already has DACs and analog audio stages to drive its mic and speaker(s) would be perfectly placed to realize this gain of integration by adding just an extra couple of channels to support what is effectively one extra pair of speakers and possibly mic. Not possible today, perhaps; but what of tomorrow?
Google is now selling an updated headphone adapter that's supposed to be more responsive and drain less of your phone's battery.
A standard 3.5mm headphone jack is *really* responsive and doesn't use *any* battery power. Just sayin' ...
And for those vendors crowing about better water-proofing w/o this jack, my Kyocera Hydro VIBE from 2014 has a standard headphone jack and is "Certified waterproof for IPX5, and IPX7. Immersible for up to 30 minutes in up to 3.28 feet (1 meter)."
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Get back in your rocker, old timer! Time moves on, and yes, we're all one day closer to death.
Of course it is an assault on consumers!
Mostly, I would imagine, because it is not an Apple product, and that is the Verge.
A headline like 'Google released improved USB-C headphone adapter, with small price increase' would be WAY too much to ask for.
After all, Google is evil (true), Apple is not evil (ummm...).
There's an elephant in the room which needs to be cleared here:
Not only removing headphone jack requires an expensive dongle which can be easily lost it ALSO drains a lot of battery power?!
If this is the case when buying a phone without the jack you need to spend extra to use your older headphones if you don't want to worry about the audio quality and yet one more device with charge level. However this will also drain your non-replaceable battery faster and won't allow you to charge and use the phone at the same time.
That doesn't sound like a very good technical advancement to me.
or we could show some courage and include the old 3.5mm connector again.
If that means the phone gets slightly thicker, they are more than welcome to add more battery capacity.
L'Idiot
Wouldn't that increase latency?
If only there was some sort of adapter, a "jack" if you will, that could be built into the phone itself. You could make it a single standard that practically all audio devices could use. I wonder how much technology will need to advance before such a novel idea is possible ...
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