this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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Maybe I am in the minority but I’ll never need an aux jack again and I see it as another point of failure for water damage.
A lot of people use the headphone jack still. Bluetooth will never be as good as direct connection. Some people don't own cars with all that Bluetooth bullshit, or just prefer to use the jack since it is lossless audio. People want to charge and listen to music at the same time.
This is why I'm still using my LG v60, it had the best headphone jack and dac at the time and probably still does looking at everything else currently on the market.
I personally don't use the headphone jack at all, but I still want it back for people like yourself. Also, being ok with the headphone jack removal led to removing the sd card slot, then the charger from the box. Next they'll be removing the charging cable and send us just a fucking phone. They've boiled us very slowly in their pot
Oh you mean like google did? I was pretty surprised and disgusted they didn't include a charging cable with my pixel 7. All I got was a 6 inch data transfer cable.
Are you serious? Just a 6" cable? Wow.
Yup. I'm using the chargers from my old phone
That's why I'm holding off on phones until this one stops. Then I'll go buy the same exact phone from eBay. I'm done with these assholes.
I'm still rocking the v60 also. LG started packing a world class DAC into their smartphones back with the LG v35 and kept it going all the way to their pinnacle (the v60). The v35, the v60, and everything in between had audio superiority that still hasn't been beaten by other modern flagships.
I'm going to be inconsolable when my v60 finally needs replacing.
V50 user here (didn't get V60 cause of the larger size) I broke my phone a few months ago, filtered GSMarena for a replacement that'd fullfil my criteria, and Sony Xperias were the the best of the few options that it spat out. Ended up just fixing the V50 for $100, I too will probably hold onto this until it actually breaks.
I really hate that cars seem to drop a built in music solution in favor of smartphones. Give me a good radio and a cd player or sdcard slot over any smartphone connectivity and I'm happy.
Ahh like I get the argument but it is technology progressing, lots of cars didn't have cd players when the world moved from tapes. The infrastructure responds to demand.
Removing useful features to make people spend more money on something else you're selling isn't "technology progressing", it's capitalism at work. It's corporations milking their users. The whole removal of the headphone jack started by apple to make their users buy their airpods. More money, my friend. More money.
It’s not to spend more money, there’s a real increase in value Bluetooth provides to most people. Yes there are edge cases, but when you can get a a blue tooth headset for $5-20 it’s not really cost prohibitive any more.
Remember when the singe piece Bluetooth mics were like $100 when Bluetooth first started hitting mainstream phones? Many people didn’t think it was worth $100 to use an unwired headset for phone calls.
Well now, that phone is also your entire music collection, your cable box and much more. Being untethered makes a lot more sense.
In addition, easily Bluetooth destroyed device batteries, now it’s more power and you can just leave it running all the time in your phone.
It IS to spend more money. Does apple or Samsung sell you Bluetooth headphones for $5 - $20? Nope, those cheap ones are a side effect of the removal of the jack and the instruction of Bluetooth airpods. And it's a good side effect, btw. I do agree with you that Bluetooth headsets are much better than wired in terms of convenience and not being tethered to your phone, but there are way more use cases of the jack than just for headphones. There are professionals who would never ever use Bluetooth over wired that got fucked over and had to use converters and shit. I do see your point.
I think also, the removal of the port allowed for better engineering around the screen and better waterproofing and thinner devices.
I think with the EU mandating phones use USB-C, it might push apple into to drop port charging all together. You may see MagSafe only charging iPhones in the EU or everywhere soon.
Just because it's more modern doesn't mean it's a 1:1 replacement.
Wired is cheaper, and it has better quality, but it can also be annoying if you're doing sports.
It's the same for HD and SSD. I still prefer HD to store multimedia and backups, despite being slower and older than SSD.
There is no reason for them not to coexist.
There is still significant lag for bluetooth audio on both ios and android platforms. It's doesn't really impact calling, and it doesn't really impact watching video content (because they figured out how to measure that latency in real time and inject artificial delay into the video stream so that audio and video sync). But what they haven't figured out yet is the answer for bluetooth audio for gaming. When gaming, you can't arbitrarily delay the video feed so that it lines up with audio, so the bluetooth audio experience is complete dogshit for any gaming scenario. If you game, you have to use the physical cable or the constant audio lag will drive you mad.
Also, there used to be (still are) a fair number of accessories designed to work through the aux port. Examples: mobile credit card readers that connect through aux jack (like square/paypal) that are used heavily by small vendors (especially for shows/events); also things like selfie sticks that use a cable plugged into the aux jack connected to a length of wire running inside the selfie stick to a button on the end of it.
The market is starting to come up with wireless versions of these things, but the modern wireless versions now require unique ios and android versions of them when the aux-jack solution used to be platform independent.
Also, the audio quality of an aux jack is an order of magnitude superior to anything that can be piped through bluetooth....still.
I very much appreciate devices still throwing traditional aux jacks onto mobile devices. Ideally, there will be a wireless technical solution that eventually is superior, but that technology is definitely not bluetooth and we're still waiting for it to be invented and hit consumer availability.
Would love to read more about the Bluetooth lag. Does it affect Bluetooth dac's like the fiio btr5 as well?
Almost all of those are pretty niche problems though. Which explains why they just aren't a high priority for manufacturers.