PotD: The headphone jack

[Kalahari Inkantation]

Has there been any benefit at all, for the end shitph*ne user, to the forceful deprecation of the headphone jack?

[ME##]

Imo it's okay if the archaic headphone jack is phased out, if it is still it's own port.  

[bluaki]

I tried playing Love Live once with bluetooth earphones and, without exaggeration, it was literally unplayable.

something about having BT audio connected confused the game to such a point that the notes were going a tiny fraction of the speed they're supposed to, so if I actually played through until the song ended it'd only hit like 20 notes and then the rest of the notes for the entire song would zoom across the screen in less than a second.

All the bluetooth stuff I've tried has pretty awful latency, so even putting aside weird bugs, BT absolutely isn't a full replacement for wired for any kind of real-time or game use-case, especially anything with sound cues. Then again, I've seen a lot of people play rhythm games at master difficulty on mute so maybe it's not that critical.

I tend to stick with bluetooth and almost never use the headphone jack on my phone (and I mostly use the built-in speakers for games since I just play at home when alone), but I still hate the idea of taking it away for seemingly no reason.

Has there been any benefit at all, for the end shitph*ne user, to the forceful deprecation of the headphone jack?

Supposedly the forced deprecation of the headphone jack was going to push forward drastic improvements in bluetooth implementations but it looks like that hasn't happened

It's actually surprising just how poorly made they've managed to make most USB headphone adapters too.

[The artist formally known]

I'd rather my iPhone 7 Plus to have a headphone jack, however the BeatsX headphones are some of my favorite headphones I've ever had. I never knew how annoying it is to have the wire from my head to my phone is until I got wireless headphones.

[Kalahari Inkantation]

Imo it's okay if the archaic headphone jack is phased out, if it is still it's own port.  

What do you mean?

I tried playing Love Live once with bluetooth earphones and, without exaggeration, it was literally unplayable.

lmao wow

Have they made any attempt to fix it? They really don't have a choice but to, phones with headphone jacks are only going to become less common.

All the bluetooth stuff I've tried has pretty awful latency, so even putting aside weird bugs, BT absolutely isn't a full replacement for wired for any kind of real-time or game use-case, especially anything with sound cues. Then again, I've seen a lot of people play rhythm games at master difficulty on mute so maybe it's not that critical.

Supposedly the forced deprecation of the headphone jack was going to push forward drastic improvements in bluetooth implementations but it looks like that hasn't happened

It's actually surprising just how poorly made they've managed to make most USB headphone adapters too.

this is by far my biggest frustration with the industry's bloody murder of the jack: both of the technologies that are meant to supplant it (bluetooth and usb audio) are objectively inferior

bluetooth is physically incapable of matching wired audio quality, induces latency, is notorious for being unstable, and perhaps worst of all, requires you to recharge your headphones

and despite all those glaring faults bluetooth headphones are an order of magnitude more expensive than wired ones

and usb audio isn't at all standardized so headphones and adapters may work on one device but malfunction or not work at all on another, and also introduces an avenue for oems and software developers to implement audio drm

it's been over two years since apple buried the headphone jack alive and these remain problems to date

and i don't see either of these sets of issues being resolved anytime soon

[strongbad]

i used to have bluetooth headphones and i loved them. lost them when i was on lsd on a bike tour and haven't had another pair since. i dont mind normal 3.5mm headphones but i prefer bluetooth and am not really that salty over phones getting rid of the headphone jack since it would just force me to use bluetooth which i would like better anyway lol

[Kalahari Inkantation]

i can definitely see the value in wireless headphones for use during physical activity but that's probably about the only time i'd prefer bluetooth headphones to wired ones

in any case, there's absolutely no valid excuse for phones not supporting both

[strongbad]

i can definitely see the value in wireless headphones for use during physical activity but that's probably about the only time i'd prefer bluetooth headphones to wired ones

in any case, there's absolutely no valid excuse for phones not supporting both

cheaper to manufacturer?

[Kalahari Inkantation]

i'm sure that's technically true but incorporating a headphone jack is probably not even 2% of the cost of designing and manufacturing a phone lol

and if cost were the issue there are plenty of other features they could cut