The 19th Century plug that's still being used • Hacker News Board

Re: The 19th Century plug that's still being used

#131

Post by duaneb » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 2:59 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #107

duaneb wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only people I know who don't use headphones are both teenagers and reviled by the people around them. If what you claim is the case, public transport would be a wasteland of pop music and clash of clans sound effects. I highly suspect your friends aren't representative in the least of the general population.

I use the phone's internal speakers to play music in the car. I would use the audio jack for that, except that cars no longer seem to come with any way of accepting an audio cable. My car from 2002 had a tape player, and I was happy using an audio cable with a casette tape adapter on the other end. A car from 2015 just can't do it. :( I also use the phone's internal speakers for playing the notification sound. (And,…

To be sure, I use it too! But almost never in public; I still use the headphone jack daily.

Re: The 19th Century plug that's still being used

#132

Post by duaneb » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 2:59 PM UTC

ygra wrote: post #116

lmm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? How is it harder to disconnect a phone on bluetooth than to unplug a cable?

I recently had the joy of having to delete a paired device in a car before I could add a new one. For some reason you could only have three devices paired.

Agreed; this is a normal part of renting.

Re: The 19th Century plug that's still being used

#133

Post by zwily » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 3:07 PM UTC

dublinben wrote: post #61

userbinator wrote: post #47

Note that there is a 2.5mm variant of the connector, which I'm surprised hasn't gotten more common as a result of the whole thinness trend.

The reason why this obvious option isn't part of the discussion is because thinness is just the smokescreen. The real reason Apple et. al. want to move towards digital connections for headphones is DRM. They want to control the entire signal chain of their valuable (Beats = $3b) music content.

I'll believe you if they don't provide a simple analog adapter.

Re: The 19th Century plug that's still being used

#134

Post by IshKebab » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 4:26 PM UTC

tombrossman wrote: post #14

Animats wrote: post #6

How is USB-C working out as a connector, from the ruggedness standpoint? It has a huge number of pins (24) in a small space. How many insertion cycles can it survive in the real world? Is connector wearout going to limit phone life?

Looks like the spec is 10,000 cycles: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8377/usb-typec-connector-speci... That's over 13 cycles/day for two years. Probably fine for most users. Edit: The official spec is only available via a zipped folder of PDFs, here's the particulars to save readers the effort. 5.7.1.3 Durability or Insertion/Extraction Cycles (EIA 364-09) The durability ratings listed in Table 5-16 are specified for…

So the same as micro-USB... which is not very good in my experience. No-way near 10,000 cycles anyway. Something like half of my cables fail within 1000 cycles.

Re: The 19th Century plug that's still being used

#135

Post by jeffbush » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 5:04 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #115

jeffbush wrote: post #83

While working on mobile phones, I've found a number of problems with the TRS style jack. One is they trap lint internally, which can often result in the internal switch that detects insertion permanently thinking there is a headphone in it (Google "phone thinks headphones are in"). The external speaker is usually muted when a jack is inserted, so when this happens, the phone doesn't make any sounds. Lint is very diff…

The inline remote on on my galaxy's wired headphones lets me double tap to skip forward, triple tap to skip back.

It's mainly a problem with phone calls: user is on a call, decides to unplug headset, call ends (if you didn't have delay). An edge case, to be sure.

Re: The 19th Century plug that's still being used

#136

Post by jeffbush » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 5:09 PM UTC

stouset wrote: post #100

deathanatos wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One is they trap lint internally, I've owned my current phone for ~4 years, and the first port to stop working — due to lint — was the USB port, not the audio port. > Lint is very difficult to remove from the outside the connector. Removing lint from a 3.5mm audio port is going to be vastly easier than removing it from a USB port (which is completely possible). The entrance is much wider, and you don't have to worr…

Lightning wouldn't be any more difficult than an audio jack — I'm not sure why you think it would be. Agreed that USB would be a nightmare, but thankfully that's not really a plausible scenario for an iPhone.

The lightning port is fairly shallow and the pins are flush with the perimeter. I've found it pretty easy to clean out in my experience.

Re: The 19th Century plug that's still being used

#137

Post by tunap » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 5:12 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #118

thaumasiotes wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the phone's internal speakers to play music in the car. I would use the audio jack for that, except that cars no longer seem to come with any way of accepting an audio cable. My car from 2002 had a tape player, and I was happy using an audio cable with a casette tape adapter on the other end. A car from 2015 just can't do it. :( I also use the phone's internal speakers for playing the notification sound. (And,…

Micro FM transmitters. Plug into the 3.5mm jack, power from the cigarette / accessory adapter. Usually a choice of frequencies to broadcast on which can be picked up over your car's FM receiver. Quite frequently found at highway truck stops, though almost certainly other electronics stores as well.

And suffer from interference and low volume; has been my experience.

Wireless is convenient.

Wired is reliable.

YMMV.

Re: The 19th Century plug that's still being used

#138

Post by tonmoy » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 8:12 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #121

tonmoy wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To use a 3.5mm jack headset you need to add power amplifiers inside the phone, do proper impedance matching and hope that noise in the path does not corrupt the data. But sending power and digital data solves all these problems, the wires don't need to be as well made either!

You've simply moved all those pieces outside the phone, increased headphone cost, and decreased modularity via dedicated Bluetooth pairing.

But the noise susceptible analog signal does not have to travel a long path, digital signal does. As such the power amplifiers do not have to be as power consuming/over designed. Moreover, you can do other stuff with the headset like taking multiple button inputs without additional wires.

Re: The 19th Century plug that's still being used

#139

Post by semi-extrinsic » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 9:14 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #118

thaumasiotes wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the phone's internal speakers to play music in the car. I would use the audio jack for that, except that cars no longer seem to come with any way of accepting an audio cable. My car from 2002 had a tape player, and I was happy using an audio cable with a casette tape adapter on the other end. A car from 2015 just can't do it. :( I also use the phone's internal speakers for playing the notification sound. (And,…

Micro FM transmitters. Plug into the 3.5mm jack, power from the cigarette / accessory adapter. Usually a choice of frequencies to broadcast on which can be picked up over your car's FM receiver. Quite frequently found at highway truck stops, though almost certainly other electronics stores as well.

Plus, they're crap. Seriously. I bought one of the more expensive ones, with auto channel scanning, still crap. Made me go back to burning CDs until I put an aftermarket stereo with 3.5 mm jack in. Fortunately that's a near-universal feature these days.

Re: The 19th Century plug that's still being used

#140

Post by 1anh2kqowg » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 1:39 AM UTC

grive wrote: post #110

1anh2kqowg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least for most headphones with some kind of band, there is a lot of room for a battery.

It's always possible to add a battery. That's not the problem. The problem is that we have a passive device, headphones, that works well and are a stable and mature tech, that will become crap. I dont want to charger yet another device in my daily routine. I won't, actually, and will steer away from any phone that requires active headphones to work.

I have a phone with a headphone jack, and I'm using Bluetooth headphones for hours every day. The headphone battery lasts a lot longer than the phone. In the past few years even audiophile brands have been releasing blueooth models and they are getting good.

I'm not saying I agree with getting rid of the headphone jack. The amount of utility it provides is pretty high relative to the volume it takes up.