New Pixel phones on October 4.
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I've seen some amusing butthurt from Fandroids about the TRRS jack
But mainly the sort of "this technology has been around for 140 years, and they'll have to pry it out of my dead cold fingers" sort. The vast majority are 'meh'. My theory is that Apple removed the jack in the 7 to get all the predictable wailing and gnashing of teeth out of the way for the 8/X phones, thus avoiding anything overshadowing the X announcement. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson. |
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I have a different theory
For whatever reason, I think they couldn't waterproof it and couldn't/wouldn't license the relevant patents from Samsung/LG/Sony/Whoever. All the reasons they gave were bullshit, especially after they didn't fit a second speaker to the 7 (the space is occupied by a bit of plastic because reasons). Also, accessories. For a company that's literally made out of money, Apple is oddly keen on nickle-and-diming its users. A replacement lightning->headphone adapter? $19. Fucksake. That's a dollar's worth of parts at Apple volumes, surely. ETA: On the UK store, it's only £9! Bargain! Wireless headphones are great until they're not, and the "listen & charge" solutions involve a dongle that, if you presented it to The Steve, would be a resume-generating event. My Sony MDR7506 headphones last literally forever because they don't have any batteries :D (they also sound absolutely brilliant, and are better than just about anything else at the price point even if you add a hundred dollars to it, but that's another debate) Some lunatic has only gone and modded a 7 to have a headphone jack! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utfbE3_uAMA&feature=youtu.be (Side note: if the headphone jack socket is so awful, why do all Apple's new products that aren't phones have one?) |
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The Essential apparently has a solution to this problem.
http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/09/14/highlights-todays-ama-andy-rubin-essential-team/ "Headphone jacks are pretty big components and they don't play nice with all-screen Phone architectures. We studied it very seriously, but fitting a headphone jack into our Phone required tradeoffs we were uncomfortable with. We'd have grow a huge "chin" in the display and reduce the battery capacity by 10%, or we'd need a huge headphone bump! We decided it was more important to have a beautiful full-screen display in a thin device with solid battery life. Then we made sure we to build ya'll a high-quality DAC in a tiny adapter that can elegantly live on your headphones." Presumably they could also get together with other manufacturers and simply create a new wired headphone connection that wasn't so voluminous. There's been a 2.5mm standard since the '50s - surely it could be even smaller and more robust. But wireless lets them charge the customers more, so that's the way the industry is going to go. Unless someone is willing to vote with their dollars... FWIW. Cheers, Scott. |
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This "thinness über alles!" meme that's infected every IT hardware designer's brain is such utter BS
...we'd need a huge headphone bump! We decided it was more important to have a beautiful full-screen display in a thin deviceWhat the fuck do I care if a phone is 11.8 mm thiCk in stead of 9.9 mm? Does that extra oh-so-humongous 1.9 mm make it impossible to pocket the device, or what? Same thing with laptops; my late-2016 MacBook Pro is some 2 mm thinner than my old late-2014 one. The older one was actually nicer to carry; this new one, I'm not sure if it has sharper edges, or if it is so thin that it in effect is a sharper edge. Sure, there is some level until which it is useful to work to make stuff thinner. That level is probably somewhere around half-an-inch, a-centimeter-and-a-half for laptops; three-eights-of-an-inch, a centimeter for phones. Anything thinner than that is just competitive BS for its own sake. -- Christian R. Conrad Same old username (as above), but now on iki.fi (Yeah, yeah, it redirects to the same old GMail... But just in case I ever want to change.) |
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Yeahbut...
Mass costs money. Making the phones the minimum size to do the job makes sense from an efficiency point of view. And carrying around a < 3# laptop is much more pleasant than one that weighs 5+#. But, agreed, it shouldn't be the primary driver for new hardware. Where are our 10 GHz desktop CPUs?!?! Cheers, Scott. |
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But, a sharp-edged 1.83kg laptop vs a 2.02 kg rounder one is a wash... Or a win for the heavier one.
And to the extent that the added mass is more battery, many of us are prepared to pay for it. To the extent that it is just more (because bigger) housing, I'd guess that's (more than?) offset by expense saved from not having to design everything else to fit into that last smidgeon more-cramped space. So, nope, I don't believe there's really much -- if any -- genuine valid technical reason for it; it's probably all or almost all about the bullshit "mine is thinner than yours!" bragging rights. -- Christian R. Conrad Same old username (as above), but now on iki.fi (Yeah, yeah, it redirects to the same old GMail... But just in case I ever want to change.) |
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Heh.
My work laptop is a Dell Latitude E7470. About 1.4kg. Many ports (3x USB, HDMI, MiniDP, SD). Long battery. 1080p screen. Neat little docking station. Nice keyboard. Pretty sweet. And no sharp edges. |
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Re: Yeahbut...
The real "thin" bullshit is that applied to the iMac. A desktop computer. It was already too thin. It could be made fully serviceable from the back by making it 25mm or so thicker and getting rid of that dumb-ass taper, and no-one would care. It would not impact its usability or aesthetics in any negative way. You wouldn't even know, when you were sat in front of it. |
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Boy, you don't understand Mac users
It's not what it looks like to me when I'm sitting in front of it. It's what I look like to everyone else when they're looking at me using it. -- Drew |
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Such cynicism in one so...
...oh, wait :) |
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Yeah, but I *thought* of it long before that.
;-) |
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Did you think of it before smartphones?
What was that one that pre-dates the iPhone ... I think it was Motorola, super-thin, everyone was copying it. Heh, goes to show how long things last. It was the phone with the most buzz for several years, now I can't even remember the name or find it in an image search. -- Drew |
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Razr?
That whole trend was lampooned in Zoolander: Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson. |
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J loved her StarTac flip phone.
Small, decent battery life (and easy to change batteries). I think she had about 4 of them before she got her first iPhone. The only real problem with it as a phone was that the flexible printed wires connecting the two halves would eventually fail. Cheers, Scott. |
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Yup, Razr
This just keeps getting better. I saw that when I was searching, but I remembered it being much thinner than that. So a phone that looks kind of chunky today, when it was new I thought it was too thin. -- Drew |
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I had a keychain phone
Not quite that small, but close. Same exact design. |
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Motorola RAZR, 2003.
ETA: 130 million of the things sold. |
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Re: The Essential apparently has a solution to this problem.
Well that's 100% bullshit, because Samsung fitted a headphone jack and removable storage into a thinner, lighter, waterproofer phone with a better, bigger screen and a bigger battery than the Essential. The Essential is a vanity project. It's made of nice materials, but other than that, it's objectively somewhat crappier than the competition. |
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Geez, I just noticed this
Presumably they could also get together with other manufacturers and simply create a new wired headphone connection that wasn't so voluminous. No. Uh uh. Go die in a fire no. It's not just that I want a headphone jack. I want a headphone jack that works with all the peripherals I already own. -- Drew |
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Heh.
Why should we be constrained by a (slightly modified) connector that was invented in 1878? It doesn't make sense. Time marches on. You still using your punched paper tape reader? >;-p Cheers, Scott. |
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Too true!
It's just like all my gloves, they're based on a design that's probably at least as old as the headphone jack! It's high time we redesign gloves. -- Drew |
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Evolution didn't "design" the headphone jack...
There's no reason why someone couldn't come up with something like the magnetically-affixed MagSafe power adapter on MacBook Pros (which Apple, naturally, is phasing out) for audio. In fact, someone tried something like it on Kickstarter. The audio connection can be external, maximizing the internal volume. Yeah, network effects and all the rest, but there are good reasons for the 3.5 mm phone jack to die. Cheers, Scott. ("Who never-the-less will be considering its presence or absence on the next phone he gets.") |
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Apple patent blocked Magsafe-like connectors for years
I'll admit, that's one I'd switch for. Just thinner though? Nope. As for gloves, the point is they have to fit the hands I already have. Whether those hands are a good design or not doesn't change that. -- Drew |
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*Good* reasons? Do tell.
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Heh. You know the reasons.
People just disagree on the ranking. Cheers, Scott. |
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No, I don't.
Every alternative seems worse to me. Wireless needs charging (inconvenience, limited useable time, yet more batteries that are shitty for the environment) and compromises audio quality (no wireless solution is lossless). Other plugs are proprietary, so my existing stuff doesn't work. What is better than the 3.5mm jack, and how is it better? |
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Licensing aside, something like Magsafe
It's sufficiently better that I'd buy adapters. -- Drew |
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Yeah, but that's not a thing, is it?
It's just something that'd be cool if someone made it. |
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You said "better", not "available"
I'll conceded, though, that "available" is a pretty valuable feature. -- Drew |
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We won't be using 3.5 mm jacks in 50 years.
I'm willing to bet that something else will replace it. Audio isn't that tough a problem. Nyquist limit, etc., etc. Let's say we do 5x that for the audio purists - 100 kHz. That's slow - very slow. In- BlueTooth bandwidth keeps expanding. Wireless audio is going to keep improving. Yeah, batteries are a problem, but batteries are getting better (slowly). [edit:] Also too, wireless power transfer is a thing, but TANSTAAFL. But even with the many benefits of wired connections, it's silly (IMHO) to believe that it's going to stay via 3.5 mm connections for the next 50-100 years. There are better ways to do it: 1) ways that don't take up so much space inside the phone. 2) ways that are more reliable (MagSafe - Apple's patents won't last forever, or could be licensed (but is a real problem)) 3) ways that enable additional functionality (e.g. power and audio and video via one smaller connection - e.g. a MagSafe Thunderbolt X) for VR, audio, brain-wave monitoring and tweaking, insulin monitoring and delivery, bill payments, etc., etc. I'll ask you the same thing I asked Drew - you still using your paper tape reader? Remember when Ethernet used huge ~ DB-25 connectors and taps into ~ 1/2" diameter coax? Sometimes it is indeed too expensive and too painful to change from existing standards. But 3.5 mm audio jacks aren't in that category, IMHO. Similar arguments were made against replacing micro-USB. My $0.02. Cheers, Scott. (Who expects BlueTooth will eventually get good enough that it won't matter (to all but the top 1% of audiophiles) if the 3.5 mm jack is gone, but that the 3.5 mm jack will also be supplanted by something better.) |
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Micro-USB is a bad comparison
The 3.5 mm jack has several advantages over micro-USB: * Omni-directional insertion. (Yes, along an axis, you pedant.) * Graceful degradation among various formats - mono, stereo, with and without mic. * Sturdy. * Can be made (reasonably) water-tight. ... and let's not forget ... * Ubiquitous as fuck. Micro-USB was only announce in January 2007, and became the most widely used by December 2010, though Apple users have been on Lightning since 2012. So there was maybe a 2 year window for micro-USB dominance. That's not ubiquitous. -- Drew |
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Everything in that post is a bad comparison
You forgot another feature: 3.5mm jack headphones can be DAB/FM radio antennae. |
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Will second the snark re phrase, "good reasons" ;^>
A nice exercise/snap-quiz? on .. umm, critical-thinking? Methinks that Drook's glove example is more al punte than any of those [tacit] good-reasons to which you allude.. How could you "improve" The Glove? That mini-plug/jack combo resembles an likely even more ubiquitous "electrical connector" ... present in Every locale which has a land-line TELEPHONE installed: Recall? when that simple-bent-wires-based connector was brand New? [I. Do.] You had bare-wires + screwdrivers in awkward places ... Before. Some thought: it doesn't look expensively-Advanced-enough! to fill so important a task as Likely.. being utterly ignored/never 'cleaned' nor otherwise fussed-with ... for n-Decades of malignant-neglect: this vital connection 'twixt You --> and All-those-phone-numbers. Ever had to replace one of these?/never mind the matching cords mangled in hundreds of ways. I submit that both minuscule-Items are in same Class with another most-clever engineering solution: to a consideration of mechanical "exactness" exemplified by the film-moving pawl!** within the--then the World's least costly/while well-performing--8mm movie camera: the Kodak™ Brownie. ** this was a fav teaching example (about the concepts of "redundant constraints" of the ilk,) 3-points determine a plane; a 3-legged stool is unconditionally stable on any uneven floor yet most stools have 4-legs. (My Mech. Drawing Instructor had brains/fingers in a huge variety of such conundrums as well as audio and other disciplines.) In the Brownie case, the problem was to achieve accuracy of parallel-placement of 2 metal sheets which supported the axle on which this pawl oscillated. Error produced unacceptable film damage! The Swiss used precision machining of all parts and expensive tiny ball bearings. Kodak folk realized that very-precise 'balls' (as in -bearings) were dirt cheap; further: 3 accurate dimples could be pressed into simple flat plates such that the balls exactly determined their parallel-separation. Precision at lowest-cost. I deem that this was: Thinking-outside-the-Box long before that became #1 tiresome cliche. Similarly then.. the UBIQUITY of the topic's entirely adequate connector--the wealthy may even flash the sucker with Aurum if they share Trump's obsession--demonstrates its decades of successful use, despite all the abuse we can anticipate. tl;dr *nix fans? It DOESN'T NEED replacing. Its RECORD speaks volumes for its suitability AS USED. aka just FIX your fucking-fone-Pipe-dreams, Timmy! [ n + a jillion new transistors] complexifies a SIMPLE and adequate thing. (As mentioned, it's shape could be made tinier wherever it's worth a trade-off: the likelier Klutz-damage/to save a mm or two.) These tinier versions + their adaptors have been around also, since ~Day 1. I have some pairs, plug/jack in a nearby drawer. Carrion Sometimes it manifests as ... The Muntz™ Tee Vee of way-back* ... so much like: going-all wireless just 'cause you-sorta-Can. * Mad Man Muntz liked to cut out various resistors/caps engineered-in, to see how many nickels he could save: if it seemed, just-then, still to be "working". (What about when the vac. tubes 'aged'?) Illogic/ but via subtraction rather than Here: addition of more xsistor junctions to fail. Gratuitously. Rest case. :-) Ed: P.S. Appending Peter's pretty complete list, there's More implicit in this "non-Wired tack". Timmy-boy's brain-storm is another bad-step kinda like "MP-3" and its variants: mostly Ignoring that part of the phrase of "High-fidelity". (As transistors "replaced" real acoustical Instruments.) I note the progressive dumbing-down of all the intricacies of achieving the Best-possible music reproduction: since ..the ascent of 'pop-music' featuring thousands of sound-alike 'tunes', so many of which could be derived from a soap-opera jingle: today's equivalent of older-pop-fare with jingles like, A-you're adorable. B-you're so beautiful etc, ad nauseum. This direction was NOT replacing the work of generations (since pre-stereo) of refining as much of the measurable distortion out of classical/orchestral Reproduction: as could be discovered by the likes of Edgar Villchur, Henry Kloss (of KLH et al) ..not to ignore the Brits and other icons of audio experimentation-to-some-Purpose. Not. even. Trying. Since transistorized formula-music has gone (like medicine?) for the mass-Profits, [just make-it-LOUD] "fidelity" is not even in the vocabulary now, as so many of the sounds don't exist save for a machine-generator. Timmy-boy's latest evidence of this mindset is perfectly illustrated by the presumption that Blue-tooth is about as 'fidelitous?' a sound quality as any (gear-head?) really 'needs', this Millennium. Imagine-THAT. Natch: I fucking-Demur. If I want to HEAR the Elgar cello concerto/Jacqueline duPre: It can only happen on the LInn-Sondek LP-12 + associated gear within the chain: not via some Blue- E.-German-Trabant-grade "..tooth" of any other colour. Y'know? THAT-all is assuredly Drumpf-grade devolution q.e.d. To the Next-'Generation'-if-there-Is-One: Y.P.B. |
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Waterproofing would have made the jack even bigger.
I think the space thing is a real thing, and getting it out of the way early meant that Tuesday's buzz was all about the X and not about the jack. It didn't matter whether they needed the space in the 7 or not; it was all about prepping the way for the X. They might have wanted wireless charging in the 7 and couldn't get there in time as well, so they ended up with the stupid dongle problem. The other devices have headphone jacks because 1) they're a lot larger than a phone and 2) the TRRS jack is the least of their worries in waterproofing a laptop and 3) no one cares about a waterproof Apple TV. I can't remember the last time I used headphones on my phone. I use my laptop to listen to music at work and I use Bluetooth or a Lightning cable in the car. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson. |
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You must not run
I absolutely don't want wireless headphones when I'm running. They're heavier, and I already have trouble with them falling out. The thing I'll keep going back to on this is how they can't fit it in a thin phone without giving up battery life. Hey guys! Try making the fucking thing a little thicker! -- Drew |
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Nope.
Why would I want to do that? Besides, just use the damn dongle. I'm not sure why it's so offensive. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson. |
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Just to make sure I understand ...
You don't run, and you don't listen to music (or anything else, apparently) from your phone. So people who do run, or take the train, or use headphones while eating lunch, or the thousand other use cases where people use headphones with their phones, should just suck it up and use the thing that's convenient for you? ;-) -- Drew |
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No.
100% this is my own experience. I'm just stating that *I* don't care. YMMV. My comments sprang mainly from a conversation I had on Google+ where a rabid TRSSer was challenging people to name ONE thing that was made better with a jack, so I responded essentially that it was a zero net change for me as far as I was concerned, but if it gave the manufacturers more room to work with for stuff like AR or made it easier to waterproof then I counted that as a positive. I listen to music from my phone all the time using Bluetooth or the Lightning cable. That said, I don't see the problem with the dongle per se if you do want to use headphones. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson. |
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Recommendation != opinion
Besides, just use the damn dongle. -- Drew |
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In my opinion, the dongle should suffice.
Sufficient? Sheesh. :-) Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson. |
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Reviews indicate it's a piece of crap.
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That's another matter for sure.
But not an argument against the design change per se. :-) Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson. |
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(Un-believably?) that's an Apple Inc. blog and..
My sample tiptoe through the 16 PAGES of DISSES-mostly: gave >90% a flat ONE (or LESS if they could) * And..AND.. one would think that the über-Trendy denizens of the Big Saucer-shaped House in Cupertino WOULD be in their $ all jes a-runnin-around-like-Topsy in that Big-saucer, to-stay-slim n'stuff, All The Time, ergo: Experiencing first-hand the (apparent) Unreliability of their Over-priced dongle-thing: ALREADY!! without even seeing this overwhelming [-] feedback (if any Apple-droid ever peeks in there?) Wouldn'cha Think? (As por moi.. were I to sleuth-out the necessary decent-DACs + conversion-App as seem to exist,) for extracting truly HIGH-fidelity reproduction of 'KDFC'-web Classical material: I too would USE my i6S PHONE JACK appropriately (and likely care at some point too: that this is ALSO a MIC-input,) as might become useful if I wanted to get KDFC where ... no FM-signal survives AND also thus use a DECENT mic! for just phone usage. Because Fidelity rocks. Period. Jeez, I wonder what the science~iggerant masses do? when confronting this small-clusterfuck, also see the Consternation which a casual/CAREless 'decision' by Timmy-boy: does to their Own sensibilities? Should be fun to see IF the Gigantic-Phone-$$$ guys shall ever parse adequately the Pissed-off-ishness in just these 16 pages on their own site. We so Spoiled-geek-types :-0 Ed: oTpy |
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Here ya go.
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That's called the "Somali Hands-free" in Finland, if you do it with a phone in stead.
Like this, but seen mainly in the Helsinki Metro. Dunno if they still are, but the Somalis at least used to be the largest group here to wear veils like that, hence the name. Also, wrapping it that way around seems a lot better for breathing. -- Christian R. Conrad Same old username (as above), but now on iki.fi (Yeah, yeah, it redirects to the same old GMail... But just in case I ever want to change.) |
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Indeed! Breathing is good.
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