I bet it's not particularly true that most bluetooth headphones support wired analog audio. It may have been a few years ago, not now that the most prominent use case is phones.

Yeah, I've five sets of bluetooth headphones around my house and only one has a wired port.

Nice ones tend to, but most others don't seem to anymore.

Don't buy a headphone jackless phone. I haven't and won't ever. I will stop using a phone before I use a jackless one.

The problem is, that it's hard to find an otherwise good phone with a jack. Want good photos, lots of storage, fast cpu, and a good screen? You need a flagship phone. Want security updates for stuff like this now? You're either stuck with Pixel phones or Samsung galaxy S? ones (or iphones)... pixel doesnt have one anymore, galaxy s20 is rumored it wont have one, and iphones don't have one.

If you want a good camera the pixel 3a is there.

The Galaxy s10 hit the critics like a storm. It got pretty rave reviews. I'm on an s9 and I guess that'll be my next phone whenever this one dies.

I was wanting a phone with a headphone jack but the only one that fit my needs was an LG handset that cost $900 and wasn't supported by ATT. The Galaxy Note crisis and general dissatisfaction with a previous Galaxy ruled out any of Samsung's phones for me. On the other hand the OnePlus 7 Pro was only $499 with everything else I needed in a phone - except a headphone jack.

Maybe I hadn't looked hard enough. But my thought at the time was for my needs I'd have to spend $400 more for a headphone jack on a phone I might not be able to use with my carrier.

I ended up getting the 7 Pro and use a dual headphone/charging adapter. I hate it and wonder what the market has come to if they feel we should put up with this. But that's the tradeoff I chose.

My dream phone is one without the rounded corners or curved screen, an SD card slot, a decent camera (at least Pixel XL quality) and a headphone jack.

I should also mention it's a miserable feeling to think that a standard as hideously broken as Bluetooth is here to stay because it's won out the short distance wireless connection space and there's no going back and retrofitting the billions of smartphones that will be forever fitted with Bluetooth until they're thrown out.

Moto G8 Plus, better camera, bigger battery, better screen resolution, sd slot, under $400 these days.

I solved the camera problem by buying a good dslr. Sure I don't always have it on me and then have to do with my substandard phone but the pictures I do take with the dslr are the ones worth printing and will be the ones I'll still look at when I'm old. The phone camera is more for updates and showing friends and family funny but disposable stuff.

It's a compromise i'd prefer not to be forced to make but it's the best solution atm imo.

dslrs are obsolete. There's almost no point anymore.

Actually I bought a mirrorless Fujifilm xt-2 but that's beside the point.

Xiaomi Note series have FM radio, 3.5mm jack, infrared (make do remote control), 4 lenses (macro, telephoto, and wide angle), and comes at around €225 for 128GB/6GB one. There is no android security update recently, and the current is Nov 2019. But they regularly send security updates unlike other Chinese brands.

I've been looking to get the new galaxy a51 when it comes out in a week or so as a good mid-range phone, and they've removed the jack on the new a-series phones as well.

Pretty soon it will just be one or off brands and the occasional weird model that have them (if it's not already to that point).

I can think of one phone with a great camera and a headphone jack: the Pixel 3a

samsung s10e is the only phone that checks all those boxes and its also the only "small" phone too. I always said I would never buy a phone without a headphone jack or a notch but i made an exception for the s10e since its a punch hole and spent really take away much screen space.

but the way things are going I can't see a phone like this ever being made again. so ill be using this for the foreseeable future and will probably have to start using a custom rom in a few years

Nokia also gets prompt Android updates. No headphone jack on flagship models though.

the 'a' branch of Pixel still have a headphone jack

Are there phones with no external ports only use wireless charging? I don't have any problems with usbc wired headset or adapters.

Times are changing. Get with it, or get left behind.

I haven’t missed the jack for a single day.

I miss the jack every single day.

Recently the wire of my regular ear buds gave up (as they do) and, since I had gotten some BT ones, I decided to use them. They're Jabra Elite Sport, which got good reviews from what I can recall.

They're dropping out like crazy. It's seldom to get an entire minute of music without a small dropout. The area around the bus stop at work is particularly bad, with sound drops every few seconds until I get away from that area.

I upgraded the firmware and it got a bit better, but still pretty poor. If I hold the phone in my hands and keep still it's usually ok, but as soon as it goes into my pocket, all bets are off.

I don't miss the cable tangle, but I miss being able to enjoy music.

Crazy. I paid $25CAD for cheap Chinese-brand behind-the-ears headset (Suicen AX-698) and dropouts are very rare for me. Happens occasionally - usually when I'm on the road and a truck goes by - I assume some of those have very chatty RF devices. But still, generally very rare. When I'm at the gym working out they never cut for me.

Frustrating reality of modern purchasing - buying the "expensive" one often gives you something not substantially better than the cheap Chinese junk.

Generally the expensive ones are using the same components as the cheap ones and simply upcharging you, that’s why.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/7/20943377/chinese-hi-fi-au...

That said, I’m happy with my AirPods and Beats, which are on the expensive side. The custom Bluetooth chip is certainly more seamless than regular Bluetooth.

I'm fat and so when my belly covers my phone in my pocket, like when I'm leaning over, my Bluetooth cuts out. Shit sucks lol.

>They're Jabra Elite Sport, which got good reviews from what I can recall.

>They're dropping out like crazy. It's seldom to get an entire minute of music without a small dropout. The area around the bus stop at work is particularly bad, with sound drops every few seconds until I get away from that area.

I would suggest reaching out to Jabra, as the symptoms suggest a faulty pair. Furthermore, these buds came with an extended 3-year warranty, albeit it was for failure as a direct result of perspiration.

I use mine the with an iPhone, and also tested them with an older Android phone with Bluetooth 4.0. The firmware is on release 5.6.0 (6th November 2019). Although, my pair doesn't suffer from the same issues as yours. However, I have had some issues with the battery life e.g. Jabra Sport app and real world usage does not tally and the battery life of the buds also deteriorates by 10% or more, by just sitting in the charging case, if not used daily.

I am probably adding to the pile of fanboyist Apple blah blah but I honestly think my AirPods are the single best tech purchase I have made in the last 5 years. They took away so much hassle and work exactly like I would expect.

AirPods are one fine product for daily casual use. Obviously they aren't going to meet an audiophiles demand at $150 but AirPods Pro might even be enough in that case.

My AirPods drop out at the rate of once a month or something. When it happens it's a quick fix and they have been nothing but convenient otherwise.

Would never use wired headphones again unless I am trying to analyze a Beethoven piece.

I seriously doubt the audio quality of AirPods Pro are any good from an audiophile perspective. I have no way to test without buying them but I have heard both the new macbook pro 16 laptop speakers and the Sony WH-1000XM3 noise cancelling headphones described an incredible sounding by the same people who say Airpods Pro sound amazing. I happen to own both and.... the MBP sounds like my grammas alarm clock radio at best (I'd give it a 2.5/10) and the Sonys are maybe a 7/10. They are decent but way too boomy and the Q in the EQ controls provided in the app don't provide enough granularity to fix it. I feel like we've really devalued certain words in the past decade or so. Everyone speaks like they work for marketing now.

> I feel like we've really devalued certain words in the past decade or so.

For sure.

> Everyone speaks like they work for marketing now.

Maybe we're so inundated that we've internalized it? A semi-related thing I've noticed: when people talk about movies now, it's never "oh I liked it, it was neat" or "it was sappy." Everybody talks about the cinematography this, the character arcs that, did you see that tracking shot??

It's weird to see the "inside baseball" aspects of movies/music/storytelling/etc creep into random conversations.

Hm, I just cant get used how airpods look like while people are wearing them. Like they would stick cigarettes into their ears. Anyway, I prefer over the ear headsets, they just sound better (currently at Sennheiser Momentum, sometimes on cable, sonetimes on BT).

Have you compared with other BT headphones?

Because in general, BT headphones are great and I understand that people love them. But Airpods are not among the better ones in my experience. They drop out more than my other BT headphones, and the fact that they have no volume control is just unbelievably stupid to me.

I have my $20 wired Sony buds drop out about once every never.

My wired buds pop out if I do anything more than sit still while listening with them. Any other activity I'm bound to accidentally karate chop the cord out of my ears. Or they catch on something. It's quite a bad experience.

I didn't think BT headphones were worth anything until I tried them. They are surprisingly liberating for someone active like me.

Mine will drop out when I drop my phone.

I got the non sport ones due to the great reviews and they suck. I would recommend AirPods, even for android.

For the same price I’d recommend buying he latest $30 ones every year for the next 4-5 years. You’ll get better battery life, eventually Bluetooth 5.2 with lowest latency (sends directly instead of rebroadcasting to the other ear), and probably at least one Bluetooth revision beyond that adding true stereo support during microphone use.

If we’re talking AirPods Pro you could buy new $30 ones each year for the next 8 years, but atm nothing out there seems to compete with transparency mode while still having the fit of a silicon tip and no sealed in feeling/internal pressure noises.

For me I'm not going to spend a lot on any until the latencies are good enough for gaming, along with stereo while using the mic, and will stick to the cheaper ones until then.

Have the same-ish, and it's pretty interesting. I think the BT communication is from phone to the right earbud, then something else (likely on 2.4GHz too) from right to left earbud.

When I switch on the office lights, enter the lift, open the fridge door (light again) and similar things, the left drops out briefly (on the order of 100ms).

Yeah, when I walk through the theft detector at one of my regular grocery stores, my left earbud falls out as I pass through the magnetic field produced by the detector.

It makes some analog radio noises when they fade out and back in, so clearly something entirely different from BT.

The right earbud plays music as normal through it all.

Maybe try a different set. My AirPods haven't dropped connection a single time I've used them. They connect immediately, and to drop the cliche, just work.

Well yeah I've been thinking about it. But shelling out for some with decent sound only to find that they also suck would really be a bummer, so I'm tempted to just go back to wired.

When I lived in Moscow, there was a bit just outside of my metro station, a radius about 10 metres, where my bluetooth headphones would just stop working. Absolutely bizarre.

The problem is bluetooth is in year 26 or so of alpha testing and wires are extremely reliable. For example, HTC appears to be unable to ship a working bluetooth stack.

Thanks for the heads-up that these have a firmware update available. I bought them because reviews suggested they were the best earbuds available other than AirPods and I've had all the same problems you describe, it's awful.

The firmware update did improve things a lot, they were not really usable before, but the result is still sub-par for me at least :(

I don't miss it as well, though that's because I refuse to buy anything that doesn't expose analog out. The 3.5 jack is certainly not the best engineered piece of hardware and is prone to failure, but that should be rather a motivation to produce a better one than an excuse to remove it.

How do you deal with the latency in games?

BT latency is annoying enough when listening to media. I'm used to pressing the pause button and having the audio stop promptly, with no perceptible delay. The video desync (if applicable) can also be very annoying.

That's odd, I have literally never experienced that before. What kind of setup are you using? I just tried it now, thinking maybe I just never really paid attention to any play/pause delay when listening to music or watching videos. Nope, it's pretty much instant as far as I can tell. I'm using the AirPods Pro and had Gen 1 AirPods before that -- can't recall ever having that problem in the past 3 years.

Not GP. It really depends on the device in my experience. My Denon system has seconds of lag over Bluetooth, enough to even make the volume slider on the phone annoying to use. On the other hand, my wireless headphones from Sony have as far as I can tell zero discernable lag. Both used from the same Android phone.

Could be the codec they are using. AptX LL is the best for latency as far as I know, but not all headphones support it, and you have to go into developer options to change it.

The Denon system might be using LDAC which is higher quality, but sacrificing latency.

Latency is why I'll never "upgrade." I have a pair of Bluetooth earbuds in my gym bag but my backpack has wired earbuds because sometimes I produce music on my laptop. Doing so with Bluetooth latency might not be impossible but it'll be the closest thing to it.

And since I don't wanna carry two pairs of headphones around my phone needs to have a headphone jack.

I do play (fast) games and don't perceive any latency. However, the number of devices I can connect to my dongle is two; when I add a third, the audio starts to crack.

Serious question: do people play mobile games where a slight latency would matter at all? Or are you talking about the overall immersion that goes missing?

Oh, just immersion. Thing on screen blows up, half a second later you hear it blow up is really offputting.

I think it depends on what games are your playing. For rhythm games, headphone jack is a must.

As someone who only ocassionally uses audio from my phone, the big problem is airplane movies.

Playing the movie is going to use enough battery that I'd like to be plugged in. The dongles are easy to lose. I don't have a set of bluetooth headphones that I use regularly, so I got a pair at the airport, but i need to remember to charge them, and they also don't last for the whole movie. Also, everybody using bluetooth probably contributes to the janky streaming in flight.

The removal is fine if you generally buy high-end equipment. However, my phone still has one because I have a cheap phone and I don't know what I'd do without the headphone jack. I can use wireless earbuds (which are admittedly nice) for most of the day, but they die and I like having a physical connection. This is especially true of, say, long flights. I also like having a backup pair, but backup pairs of bluetooth earbuds are very pricey.

Not I. I stopped using it well before the iPhone did away with it. I’m deeply suspicious of any hole that pierces my device’s carapace.

I quickly realized the value of the headphone jack the last time I had to turn my device to Airplane mode and realized I couldn't listen to any music on the plane using my wireless earbuds.

Fortunately, my aging GS8+ still has a headphone jack, and I had a pair of analog headphones in my travel bag.

You can put a device into airplane mode and still turn on BT.

I don’t know about GS8+ but older devices don’t let you turn Bluetooth on while in airplane mode.

I used to have an S2, S3, S4 and S6 before my S9 and (as far as I can recall) it's always been possible to turn Bluetooth on while in airplane mode.

UPDATE: confirmed by later comments in https://androidforums.com/threads/turning-on-bluetooth-in-fl...

Older device: 2013 Moto X, Android 5.1. Lets you turn on WiFi, Bluetooth, whatever, with airplane mode on.

That kinda defeats the purpose of airplane mode, doesn't it?

Nope Bluetooth is ok during a flight.. from the FAA: > Passengers will eventually be able to read e-books, play games, and watch videos on their devices during all phases of flight, with very limited exceptions. Electronic items, books and magazines, must be held or put in the seat back pocket during the actual takeoff and landing roll. Cell phones should be in airplane mode or with cellular service disabled – i.e., no signal bars displayed—and cannot be used for voice communications based on FCC regulations that prohibit any airborne calls using cell phones. If your air carrier provides Wi-Fi service during flight, you may use those services. You can also continue to use short-range Bluetooth accessories, like wireless keyboards. https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsI...

Airplane mode has two reasons. One reason is because at one point your cell radio risked doing unpleasant things to cellular ground stations, and another reason being that the FAA wanted you to pay attention to your safety demonstration.

Bluetooth was allowed on planes quite some years ago.

Another reason to turn on airplane mode – or at least disable mobile – is that your phone will keep searching for a network tower when it's out of reach, which will drain battery quite a bit faster.

I thought I’d be using the adapter but my Apple headphones that come with an iphone are collecting dust for like two years now since I got AirPods. Not going back, couldn’t care less about headphone jack. Now I wish charging port was gone too now just to push the industry even further.

Phones already support wireless charging. Why remove wired charging because you don't use it? It is harder to use a phone while it is on a wireless charger vs use a wired charger.

There are enough external peripherals (external microphones, HDMI output, etc.) that are useful that I hope they don't get rid of the lightning port for quite a while.

I’m also still using those SCSI interfaces and keeping a 5¼ floppy drive in case I need to copy something over from punched cards.

Don't go dissing that KSR-35 teletype with the paper tape option :) That's how I talked to my 6502 dev board - way better then membrane keyboard!

Even if I had a jack, I still need bluetooth for my smartwatch.

I can’t cite it but wasn’t there some requirement coming from music industry back in 2010s to remove all analog outputs from devices?

When did the "music industry" start formally steering commercial audio PHY standards?

Characteristic impedance alone is all over the map, Apple apparently couldn't align its 3.5mm jack pinout with the rest of de facto industry, and form factor is just one of many inherent market differentiators.

Why? For DRM?

I remember it was called “the analog hole” that enables piracy, that was going to be closed by a future date, back somewhere between 2005-2015.

My fuzzy recollection is that the "analog hole" stuff was mostly pushed by Hollywood with respect to getting around encryption on DVD and streaming video (as opposed to music, where similar encryption schemes were foiled in the market by CD and MP3 already being good enough, if not outright superior to the "modern" formats), and that with the advent of HD content they eventually settled for analog outputs being limited to SD resolution.

Wait until they find out that audio can be reproduced with little or no generational loss, because there is always an analog signal (since that's the point of audio).

Actually they've already found out that streaming and subscription slaughters piracy unlike stringent regulations which promotes illegal activities

The only way to truly stop piracy is obviously to disallow all devices from playing any audio at all.