Don’t get me wrong. Apple removing audio jack was the biggest facepalm in smartphone history. And you can thank it for not being able to make an upgrade without sacrificing audio jack (and SD card too :/). But USB-C is getting standardized everywhere now (laptops, smartphones, etc.). What makes USB-C earphones not worth the switch?
There’s just exactly no upsides.
Among other things, a USB-C connector is less stable than a 3.5mm jack, and can twist the cable since the connector cannot spin.
Sure, it can do a lot of things, but there’s no reason to break an existing standard if the proposed successor is inherently worse.
I was looking for someone to mention the connection itself. To add to that the connector is a lot more delicate since it’s some
4024 pins vs 3 or 4.AND if my one USB-C port wears out from use, now I need a whole ass new phone now as opposed to “oh damn, well the phone still works without headphones, I’ll suffer for a bit until I can comfortably replace it.”
This is actually something I had once considered too. It’s not that they want to downgrade the port itself, it’s also that they want to downgrade the AMOUNT of it. I went looking for phones with two ports (I was also curious about using a phone as a data bus) and I could literally find none.
This is why when it comes time to decide on a compromise, Bluetooth (and its audio issues) wins out versus anything with ports. Because it’s a solution that doesn’t throw away options with it.
“maybe i should get a DAC for the time beeing”
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At least this would ONLY break my shitty DAC with flimsy cable and not the headphones.
I guess you could try something like this
Downsides of usb-c headphones:
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Bluetooth security risk surface, exposes your phone to more attacks. (Nobody has mentioned this yet)
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Most/all phones have a single usb-c port. Charging and using headphones difficult
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Usb-c port placement is awkwardly on bottom of phone while must headphone jacks are on top of the phone. Plugging in your headphones on the bottom of the phone with a dongle is awkward.
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The entire process of using a usb-c dongle or using Bluetooth headphones makes the entire system more complicated. KISS (keep it simple). The more complexity there is that can go wrong, the worse the experience. If I’m taking a important conference call, I want my audio to just work.
Not directly related: the whole point of removing the headphone jack was to sell airpods. First apple, then android, and even fair phone. Each time the jack is removed to push sales of the branded Bluetooth ear buds. It’s a user hostile move.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/apple-airpods-success
The excuse may be to save money, Space, water rating, but the reason is increased sales.
I personally still use a pixel 5A which had a headphone jack only because it’s the B tier phone for markets where people are less likely to also buy the airpods.
This is a good example of the general enshitificstion of a service. Make part of the experience worse to drive sales or engagement with another part of the service. Just like Reddit, just like Twitter… It’s user hostile. It means the marketplace is failing
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Oh interesting. What model? How do you like the location? Ever use the headphones with your phone in your pocket?
Not the person you answered, but I have the same location. Samsung M51 (7000mAh battery ftw). I put my phone into my left front pocket facing downward anyway, since that’s the direction of my hand, so it’s natural, so the headphone jack faces the right direction. I like this location better than on the top side.
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Loved my Pixel 5a until it died randomly over night a few weeks ago
I’ve really liked my pixel 5a as well. Always thought the Google phones had the perfect balance of features, design, and cost. I even got the pixel subscription when I got the 5a because I figured Google wouldn’t drop the ball. I get to upgrade to the latest pixel in 2 months and I think I’m gonna pass on pixel 7. Think I’m going to check out the Zenphone 10 because I really like the size and design.
It’s the last pixel with headphones. Last of the line.
Usb-c port placement is awkwardly on bottom of phone while must headphone jacks are on top of the phone. Plugging in your headphones on the bottom of the phone with a dongle is awkward.
Isn’t it more awkward to have the headphone jack on the top? If the jack is on the bottom it faces up when the phone is in a pocket.
Multiple phone scenarios where headphone on top is better. Using phone on a stand, using phone propped up on something, resting phone on your chest while watching something in bed.
If android let the screen rotate upside down I suppose i wouldn’t care about top or bottom anymore.
So you put you phone upside down in pocket?
You don’t? When you hold a phone and then put it in your pocket it will naturally be going in top first.
Nope i don’t. When my hand goes down, i kind of like hold phone in the middle with two fingers and it will stay upright when i put the phone into pockets
Right, fair enough. For me, and I would assume most people, we hold our phones upright when using them, and then put them down in our pocket without re-arranging the phone in our hand, ending up with the phone top down and with the screen against our body.
Nope i don’t. When my hand goes down, i kind of like hold phone in the middle with two fingers and it will stay upright when i put the phone into pockets. Plus i know many people dping this
how is using bluetooth headset making it more complicated…
All other points are valid.
Bluetooth complication over a wired headset:
- Battery charge levels
- Radio interference
- Bluetooth time sharing with other devices
- Bluetooth devices getting stolen by another device while in use (ever had two phones paired to one headset?)
- Bluetooth microphone audio quality levels are not great
I’M MINDING MY OWN BUSINESS CRANKIN MY HOG WHEN MY BT HEADPHONES DIE AND THE WHOLE HOUSE HEARS PORN BLARE OUT MY PHONE SPEAKERS.
I’M A PERSON WITH NEEDS TOO MOM! DEAL WITH IT!!!
- Damn I miss r/THE_PACK
except most device stop any media when the headphones are disconeted.
- A delay between the time you turn it on and the time it connects. Sometimes they will not connect and you need to go to settings.
- When using headset with more than 1 device, it will connect to the wrong one. And the number of slots is limited.
- Anecdotal,but in a big airport if i kept my phone lower than chest-height, audio was choppy because of interference.
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I am not an audiophile or anything but for these oems a headphone jack inclusion is probably pennys and wired is just superior sound, it’s madness.
That said I use Bluetooth headphones mostly myself but that doesn’t change the fact its inferior sound, something extra to charge and can add quite a bit of lag when playing games or other media.
Its a step backwards just to make a few pennys profit on a hundreds of pounds device. I think everyone should have the option to choose what they prefer.
USB C dongles have potential to be higher quality than your built in-jack if quality is the main concern
Now tell me how many of them actually are. This is just OEMs trying to save literal pennies across 100s of devices by externalizing the cost of a cheap DAC to their customers.
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As people have mentioned, it’s not about saving $, it’s about saving space inside the device which is highly valuable
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Lots of dongles are quite high quality. Apples even sounds good, and Moondrop makes a higher-end audiophile one that’s better than basically any built-in jack. There’s a pretty big market for good USB C dongles (less so for Lightning).
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if you care a lot about audio quality, you might know that the companies always tried to save $$ but using pretty mediocre DAC’s internally
And all of those dongles work even if you keep the headphones jack. Bluetooth headphones work if you keep the headphone jack.
No one is saying don’t have USB-C on the phone, or that it doesn’t do some things well, we’re saying don’t take away our options.
Again, my point 1. was the space the headphone jack takes up.
Apple is going as far as to remove the sim-card slot in iPhones lol
While it’s true that some space is saved, that’s just the messaging Apple wants to push. The real reason is to sell AirPods.
Apple also wanted to make non-removable batteries standard to make devices thinner. They did and it was a huge marketing success that had the tiny side effect of planned obsolescence (oopsie).
I’m not saying we can never progress, but what Apple says and what Apple does are often two completely different things. Their engineers will grind incredible hours to meet a silly goal that management gave them of making something 0.2mm thinner. They can keep a headphone jack or a sim slot if they actually wanted to. They don’t want to.
Well batteries and headphone jacks seem pretty different. You can add a dongle for like $10. Having Apple replace your battery is prob 10x that.
I do 1/2 agree about the AirPods thing but, I’m not convinced the internal space isn’t one of the primary reasons
Apple are the last ones you can accuse of planned obsolescence in the phone world. They support their phones for 6+ years. They will replace your battery for cheap as chips.
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Could you recommend one for lightning?
I’ve heard good things about the Apple ones?
I have the official Apple Lightning-Aux for my AKG K361 and Grado SR60x. It has definitely adequate audio, no complaints.
I use the Apple USB C-Aux I use for when I use any headphones with my gaming PC (usually Koss Portapros). Also definitely adequate.
My impression with either one is - except for physical durability concerns, if either adapter can power what you’re plugging into it they’re awesome. If you need more power or physical controls or weird connection formats that’s where they start to not be great.
The Apple one isn’t very durable but the sound quality is just as good as built-in jacks were. Not as much selection for Lightning :/
- USB headphones require new drivers constantly.
- USB headphones are likely to use proprietary apps for basic features like noise cancellation.
- Audio jacks use significantly less power/processing compared to USB.
- Audio jacks do not hog usb bus lanes, which may or may not be an issue for mobile, but on PC it is.
- USB headphones are in general significantly lower quality, because studio equipment uses 3.5mm or other standard jacks (XLR for microphones for example) as they cause the lowest interference.
- USB introduces overhead latency which is a no-go for production use.
because studio equipment uses 3.5mm or other standard jacks (XLR for microphones for example) as they cause the lowest interference.
Digital signaling is not susceptible to interference like analog signaling. Comparing three analog connectors to a digital signal is a false comparison. With a digital signal unless the interference is large enough to sway the voltage to the wrong side of the threshold it doesn’t matter as it will still register a one or a zero. Analog signaling on the other hand is very susceptible to interference unless you use balanced connections which uses wave interference to remove the added noise.
This a good argument for any form of digital audio transmission, except headphones. Headphones exist to covert some signal into sound waves for the ears. This a a intrinsically analog process. At some point the digital must become audio for the ears.
The issues people have throwing away the classic transducer standard to sell rechargable airpods is valid. If phones had two USBC ports (top and bottom) it would help a bit, but it’s clear the real intention of dropping the headphone port was to sell airpods.
Love this comment! I remember reading about CD players when they were cutting edge. As kids, we were constantly frustrated with and fighting noise and hiss. I instantly understood the advantages of digital, game changing.
In the world of USB Headphones and Microphones, this is unfortunately false. 3.5mm jacks in general don’t get any interference from nearby cables/electronics, but USB cables do. This causes a bunch of noise and other issues that are annoying to fix, mostly requiring gear that allows taking the bad USB cable out, and replacing it with one that has shielding. (edit: this came out way too confident, take it with huge grain of salt)
https://www.yoctopuce.com/EN/article/usb-cables-shielding-matters-as-well
IF YOU DO actually work in professional studio environments and know what you’re talking about (it’s different to just knowing the physics of it), I’m obliged to listen more, because that’s the one field where shit goes wank.
This were relevant if you tried to listen to your headphones 10m away from your DAC.
The devices that you describe are incompatible with a standard that has been mature for 50 years.
The 3.5mm jack is everywhere, it is the standard. USB C is incredibly recent.
Put it this way, if you were to walk into a store and pick up any given electronic product with audio output, would you expect it to have an audio jack, or a USB C connector?
In your drawer full of random electric cables, how many have 3.5mm plugs in them vs usb a, micro, mini, or some propriety plug? And how many could you plug into a device and just…work?
So why do you accept devices that don’t have this standard?? It is beyond me.
The 3.5mm jack is everywhere, it is the standard.
Just got a 1981 Sony EQ off eBay, made in Japan, all that! How the hell would I ever adapt USB-C?! I’ve got fittings in the drawer for all things 1/8", didn’t even research what I needed to get this thing integrated with my stereo. Also, it has another gold standard, the 3/4" jack! I can cobble something together for free. Oh! I can also roll my own 1/8" jacks and wiring, certainly can’t “create” a USB-C connector.
OP is stuck thinking digital applications. 1/8" is perfect for analog use cases. USB-C is excellent for charging and data transfer. Very different use cases.
(Disclaimer: I’m no sort of audiophile. Just and old guy with vintage gear, going with what works.)
The fact that there is more than one “standard” for USB-C audio is enough to hate it.
Analog 3.5mm just works with everything. No dongles, no drivers, no “unsupported device”, no batteries.
It. Just. Works.
Uses more power and it creates thermal strain on a single point-of-failure port if you want to both charge and listen to music with a poxy dongle.
All this “innovation” does is create more e-waste.
At least on the Fairphone you can trivially swap out the USB-C port when it breaks. And using it for audio moves that from an if to a when, in particular on a phone designed to be used for at least 5 years.
But that’s okay, since you can swap it out. On any other phone: Fuck USB-C audio! The port is fragile enough as it is.
I’m still rocking my OG Note 8, granted this thing is a tank, I’ve never had to replace the port c charger. (But I also have an aux port) However! Any time i feel like m port is finally dying, it really just needs to be cleaned. Get a little toothpick an try cleaning before you ever replace, 9 times out of 10 it’s just got some gunk or something lodged in there.
I can’t charge my phone and listen to stuff at the same time, and my headphone jack headphones work with every device but a new phone. Don’t know why I would want to throw that convenience away all because Apple/every other manufacturer decided we should get rid of headphone jacks.
Lol I charge it either wirelessly or use a splitter. I have never had a problem using usbc or Bluetooth. I have a tablet with audio jack and I never use it. I also have connected my phone to a USB hub and used gaming headsets and other peripherals.
I always hear this argument, but seriously how often is this a problem?
I plug my phone in in the car and when I go to bed at night. Neither time of which I would be listening to music
you are aware that other people live different lives to you, and do things differently right? I listen to music to fall asleep, and I plug my phone into my car via the 3.5mm jack to listen to music. You ask how often it would be a problem? It would be a problem every single day
Many people listen to music and podcasts while driving cars.
Typically through the car speakers though
I can’t tell which side of the argument your response is supposed to fall on…
Yes, people typically listen through their car speakers. Good job. Gold star.
But not all cars have Bluetooth connectivity. There’s still a lot of people who drive vehicles that have to rely on 3.5mm connections (either directly, or with cassette or even CD adapters!). Or maybe their car supports Bluetooth audio, but they prefer the higher fidelity audio that a 3.5mm interface provides vs Bluetooth.Maybe I’m missing something here. But this response holds no water.
I don’t deny that there are a significant number of people that still use the 3.5mm jack when driving
But I believe that the majority of people do not.
Gaming.
Games typically need low latency audio, so Bluetooth is out. Games can also burn through battery, so you want to plug in after a while.
And how many games that require perfect audio latency did you play on your phone in the last weeks?
I play a fair bit of Bullet Echo. Having 100+ ms of latency with Bluetooth headphones is a pain. It burns through my battery pretty quickly, so I often end up plugging in my phone.
It isn’t a big deal - but being able to charge and headphone would be nice.
Planes, overnight flights is a great example where this becomes a problem
But once again, how often is this a problem? I would say the majority of people are not in overnight flights that often
There is a huge part of the world wide population that uses their phones constantly and need to constantly charge the phone. As an example think of a parking lot attendent sitting in a booth, nothing to do but play on the phone all day…
I’m daily commuting via train. There are USB chargers everywhere in the cars, so this is pretty significant. And don’t tell me to buy another wireless gadget I have to charge before I go - or some USB buds that won’t work with my other devices, since USB-C is just a plug, not a Standard.
And you need to carry the charging case, and a 2nd usb cable
I relax in my bed and listen to music or watch stuff, and I’d like to charge my phone while I’m close to the socket
There’s no reason to switch.
50 year old headphones are still basically fine except for the port changing.
*better
When companies began to drop the audio jack I was annoyed, but I figured I could just buy a converter. Which would be great if there were a universal standard for connecting audio through a USB C. There isn’t. There aren’t even just two competing approaches. There are all kinds of different setups that sometimes vary even within a single brand.
I found multiple adapter that said it supported my phone brand. It didn’t work. I looked deeper and found some advice on adapters that would work with more recent phone. I bought one based on that and it worked, sort of. The audio quality was not great and it would occasionally just cut out for a second. My third try got me an adapter that work reliably, but the audio quality is still mediocre. My best headphones are all analog, but I have to use Bluetooth with my phone because it provides better audio.
The physical issues, particularly the connectors, guarantees that USB C will never work as well. The lack of standards for implementing it make finding compatible hardware a nightmare. And if you manage to get everything else figured out you end up with the kind of sound you can hear from an audio jack using a $5 set of earbuds. It provides no benefits to the user, only to the manufacturer.
Let’s invert the question: what makes it worth the switch? If I’m going to change something, you have to prove why it’s worth, not me proving why I shouldn’t.
I fucking hate the whiny answer of “but my/most existing headphones had an aux so I don’t like USB-C.”
The biggest factor for me is that it simply makes it impossible to charge your phone and use wired headphones at the same time without a special splitter adaptor… Which itself is impossible to roll up with your headphones.
It’s designed to be such an inconvenience to the point that you’re actually just incentivized to buy wireless headphones. And since it was Apple, that of course meant their very expensive Airpods.
That said, I happily use wireless Bose headphones now anyway, but I did have to ditch my audio technicas for that reason.
I fucking hate the whiny answer of “but my/most existing headphones had an aux so I don’t like USB-C.”
Except, you know, it’s a statement of fact and wired headphones can easily last 50 years with no reason to even consider replacing them. We’re past the point where there’s meaningful improvement to quality over time.
Plus basically every other piece of audio equipment has a headphone jack, and there’s no reason they should start being manufactured with USB-C ports with all the added complexity, when all they need to do is send audio.
It’s designed to be such an inconvenience to the point that you’re actually just incentivized to buy wireless headphones.
That business model becoming the norm is exactly why I hardly buy anything new these days. I’ll thrift, upcycle, reuse, hand-me-down, bargain for, get at the discount shop, commission from a local artisan, wait for the price to come down, and/or pick up from-the-curb items absolutely every time it’s possible. Simply avoiding these festering boils on the asscrack of our economy that are big businesses has become a daunting chore of its own… ‘He typed, into his smart phone’ I know, I know; I’m a dramatic bitch, but still.
A usbc dongle with charge passthrough is like 3 bucks on Ali. I have like 5 of them around my house so every time I lose one another will likely turn up when I search
If you ever find one that can be rolled up compactly and is a single wire, I’ll buy one for each of my friends.
I fucking hate the whiny answer of “but my/most existing headphones had an aux so I don’t like USB-C.”
If you own audio technicas i would expect you to think the same.
I have multiple dozens of headphones that have a normal headphone plug.
I can charge my phone while I listen to headphones without carrying multiple adapters.
We can maybe talk once we get more than 1 USB c connector on a phone. Maybe.
It seems like you are assuming that the only device that I want to use headphones with is my phone.
I’m a musician. I’ve got tons of audio equipment I’ve accumulated over decades, most of which use a typical analog headphone jack. So if I fully switched to USB-C or Bluetooth headphones, I would need to get a powered adapter of some kind that would then digitize what likely would have been a purely analog signal up until that point, just so it can be re-converted back to analog.
Or I could have sperate headphones just for my phone. Which seems silly.
So I took the 3rd option: got a phone with a headphone jack. The Xperia still has a micro SD card too.
Also I have dabbled in soldering circuits and doing basic repairs. I can easily replace most analog jacks and repair most cables. USB C… It’s possible, and I will try to learn to work with it eventually, but it’s always going to be more annoying to work with because it has many more, smaller pins.
Everyone’s favourite old headphones not having a USB cable is likely to be the main reason.
