I think I'm in the minority, but I haven't really missed the headphone jack in my iPhone 11. I have the Echo earbuds, and those have been good to great for my use cases.
This continues to feel a bit like the 3.5 floppy and CD-ROM removals from the Mac: a lot of people hated it, until it was a nonissue.
You don't miss it until you do. When you are trying to join a meeting and your bluetooth headset absolutely refuses to work (and yes, even the fancy Airpods Pro do that occasionally), you wish you had the ability to just plug in an old-fashioned, analog headset. Which you can pull easily, with no fuss, from many devices, including computers and gaming consoles. Quick, no pairing required. No battery issues.
Analog headphones are also very cheap(good if you are not in a rich country), and will always be cheaper than bluetooth headphones, as there is minimal hardware required. You can quickly pick one up even from a shady street seller and you know it will work(longevity might suffer, but again, cheap).
The only problem with the headphone jack is that it is a very old standard. It's big connector, and takes significant real state inside a phone.
The 2020 iPhone SE is much bigger than the 2016 iPhone SE and almost 50 % heavier. This argument seems invalid to me.
While I got the Airpods Pro when they launched and loved them at first, the battery degradation and seemingly worse ANC performance has really irked me given their price. I've also tried using cheaper wireless earbuds, but their connectivity can be spotty. I know it's not the worst issue, but I do miss being able to take a pair of wired earbuds and use them freely between my laptop and phone and not have to worry about their battery lives.
I think bluetooth receivers are the way to go. you get the wireless aspect for the most part and can change track/volume without having to take out your phone.
you can use it any headphones or earbuds you have
with the fiio one I own, you can charge it while using it so you are never caught if you are near a power source or have an external battery chargers. and if not then at least you can quickly switch to being directly plugged in
there's also a much better chance that I will be able to replace the battery at some point in the future. with bt headphones, they are so small that it would be almost impossible to take it apart successfully
It was basically a forced upgrade to bluetooth headphones. I bought some bluetooth over-ear ANC headphones like two weeks later and it really hasn't annoyed me at all since.
The larger problem with modern phones is the form factor.
These days, I charge my wireless headphones once a week. When I turn them on, they are connected before I have opened the music app. The connection is stable. When I stop playing sound on my phone and start sound on my laptop, they automatically switch to that. Their microphone is perfectly fine for calling people.
But I have hundreds of dollars invested in good-quality wired headphones, plus wired earbuds, and I want to be able to use those with my phone without needing to re-spend that money. Plus, regardless of quality of the product, I'm occasionally a forgetful human. I've actually run out of juice mid-workout with my wireless set. Instead of not having music for the rest of my workout (I like music!), I simply walked over to my bag, pulled out my wired earbuds, and finished up.
Not having the ability to do that is a deal-breaker for me on a phone, and it's not something that can be fixed by improving the Bluetooth tech. While this is obviously anecdotal, I don't imagine I'm the only person who feels this way.
The dongle is small enough to leave attached to your headphones and costs $9. It would be wasteful to include one with the phone, as most would be unused. Clearly you'd prefer a built-in jack, but you have a cheapish option to add this ability.
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMX62AM/A/lightning-to-35...
After getting an iPhone XS from work - replacing my iPhone 5 - I found that I would actually just leave the adapter on my headset. If I ever used the headset for anything else I would take it off but immediately replug it after being done.
My conclusion is that it's been waaaaay less of an issue that I honestly expected it to be.
Why not just swap in a wireless cable?
Some issues I've noticed:
- My tv (flagship LG OLED) always has trouble connecting to the headphones. I usually have to turn them off and then back on again at least once. Macbook and iPhone rarely have trouble connecting. Connecting on Windows has always worked so far.
- When I'm connected to both my Windows laptop and my phone, in a skype conference on the laptop and get a call on my phone, the skype conference is automatically terminated. FOR ALL PARTICIPANTS. That's insane.
- To make the previous point even worse: except for the ringtone, the audio from incoming calls never even goes to the bluetooth headphones. The audio from outgoing calls does, however. This is all on an iPhone SE.
- Sometimes when I listen to music, or watch a video on a Windows machine, my bluetooth headphones will just pause the playback every couple of seconds. This only happens on Windows.
- If your headphones are connected to multiple devices, you have absolutely zero control over what is happening. You might be listening to music on your phone, but some notification from your computer will interrupt your playback even though the computer is set to silent.
I could go on and on and I've only been using bluetooth headphones for a month. There is a LOT of polish missing here. That being said, this could be a great technology and it's not too far off at the moment. There certainly are some advantages over wired headphones as well.
It’s gone, it’s never coming back. To that end, once iPhone goes USB-C it’ll accelerate this majority non-issue.
I'll give you it's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but having lived through all there events professionally, I can tell you that's not how it was perceived at the time. At least, not around my offices :-)
How, in any way, is that "much less convenient"?
The phone MUST create analog audio signals, to drive its own speaker. Denying customers a connector to access it is petty and offensive. Compounding that offense is requiring every listening device to now incorporate redundant D/A converters. Contrary to apologists saying that this enables better quality, it in fact results in wholly unpredictable quality.
Not to mention that your ears will ALWAYS require analog audio. So do billions of amplification devices around the world.
There's no excuse.
Yes. Write a check. Mail the check. Done.
Too late.
but it seems very backward in many ways.
In America we have both checks and online banking. It seems very backwards to have only one method of doing things.
A single point of failure is a hallmark of a bad system.
The online payments feature I've seen in mobile banking is just a website front-end on printing a physical check and putting it in the mail.
I don't know how to get it. I use proprietary apps for that.
The Red iPhone is signaling and that's the whole premise of Product Red. The charity appeals to vane people who feel the need to show off and exploits them for good.
You're projecting right now. So hard.
So you can buy a space grey iPhone from Apple and support Product Red? This I was not aware of.
But I appreciate that you're willing to read through an entire thread and then take my last comment completely out of context for your "witty" response.
Yes you can purchase any Apple device you want AND donate to the charity. You can also forgo the device and just donate to the charity, but we weren't talking about either of those scenarios.
Yes there are some occasions where it doesn't work well (when you're trying to unlock the phone without looking at it properly) but there are also many occasions where it works much better. Most of the time my phone now unlocks so smoothly that I don't even realise it was locked. So on balance I think FaceID would actually be a plus.
I wouldn’t argue that Apple drop FaceID, but at least put the fingerprint censor back, so we can choose between ToucID or FaceID. I believe that many would choose TouchID.
Touch ID is much more convenient and reliable in my opinion.
FaceID introduced a huge swath of new failure modes while simultaneously reducing security. Not acceptable.
- not working with gloves on
- not working when too hot (sweat) or too cold (?)
- changing your grip to get a good print placement
Found the opposite, it actually worked far worse than I expected. I can no longer use my phone in bed without having to hold it right up to my face because the tech only works one way up.
Found the rest of the innovations it brought underwhelming, like it can tell when I look away for 10 seconds to dim the screen but it doesn't undim it when I look back or the utterly confusing logic for showing me full notifications or not. The amount of times I've had to unlock my phone just to check through notifications is crazy.
My iPhone 11 consistently feels like a downgrade in user experience from my 7, even the camera everyone raves so much about doesn't seem that much better to justify how much of the case it now takes up.
But why would gloves cause trouble with FaceID? Apart from the fact that you probably shouldn't touch your phone with your gloved hand to begin with.
They cause trouble with TouchID. That's the comparison.
TouchID is still almost always better than FaceID. Unless you don't have a thumb, I suppose.
Yes, I'd be leaning towards trading my SE in for this except for the headphone jack which I use a lot. Now I'll have to wait and see if iOS 14 supports my phone.
Otherwise this looks like a solid improvement. $400 is the north end of what I'm willing to pay before I look at refurbs and last year's model.
It's really frustrating. I use my phone to listen to music at work, and while I'm far from being an audiophile, things like a tinny high end are still annoying. Where Apple has spent so much time marketing to creatives, you'd think they would pay more attention to something like this. My impression, though, is that they're so caught up with the cash cow that is AirPods and wireless Beats headphones that they just don't care anymore.
In any case, thanks for sharing. These test results are definitely reassuring.
It may be that you’re used to hearing certain artefacts from other sources (eg you get totally different harmonics near the upper limit of a valve amp compared to a solid state one), or that the headphones could not be driven at a sufficiently high voltage. But the dac in the dongle is either the same as or better than all the dacs in iPhones with 3.5mm jacks so having a headphone jack wouldn’t help there.
Seems to me you can assume that’s about to end.
I can live with all that cons... EXCEPT for size! It's too big...
The lightning+3.5mm bodge jacks retain the functionality at a reduction in usability, but just about work for a non-premium product.
An SE case with an upgraded processor would have been perfectly good.
All I'm saying is, lots of people who are going on and on about the headphone jack are upset out of principle, even though it won't actually degrade their user experience to a meaningful degree. I'm not saying it was the right decision, necessarily, but I'm saying you'll have a better time if you just accept it and move forward. It really isn't that bad.
Edit: Personally I only ever charge at night, and only ever use headphones when I'm walking around/driving somewhere. I guess battery life varies, but I also suspect that a lot of people are eagerly charging at every opportunity, even if they'd last the day without doing so. My XS lasts two days on a charge, usually.
Aside from headphones? March 15th, the last time I took a train (been at home due to covid since then)
> And when was the last time you needed to charge it and listen to music at the same time?
Last night, when I was watching futurama in bed
Now when it comes to both cases, the answer would again be March 15th, when I had my phone plugged into my laptop providing limited connectivity, my headphones plugged into my phone listening to (offline) spotify. I then unplugged my headphones from the phone and plugged into my laptop to listen to a short video, then back into my phone to continue to listening to music.
This is possible with a lightning+3.5mm jack dongle, but it's not as nice an experience as with the superior iphone of yesteryear.
With some Bluetooth headphones you could just listen to both devices at the same time without plugging / switching anything. It also has upsides.
I don't deny there are benefits of bluetooth, but there are benefits from a 3.5mm jack too.
A £50 mixer takes these inputs (almost all from 3.5mm sources) and brings them all together via a reliable tactile interface.
On the road of course I only tend to have to choose between 2 sources, so perhaps beats can approach the utility of a 3.5mm audio cable.
If a phone would have to cater to all these edge cases we'd still have serial ports on them.
As I say, I can live with a dongle for 3.5mm or serial (despite it being a regression), it's just another straw.
The certainty and simplicity of an audio jack is not valueless though, no matter how many people on HN say it is.
Nobody is saying that audio jacks are valueless in general, just that it's reasonable for a mass market device where it has value for a small % of people to not have it.
Your comment is such a first-world response.
I hear a lot about the inconvenience of wired headphones, but as a daily user of wired headphones, that's not something I experience. And it certainly doesn't outweigh the costs (financial and environmental) of switching to Apple's disposable wireless headphones.
I was annoyed when Apple initially got rid of the headphone jack but I've been without it for quite some time now and it's not really a bother. Even if you have to charge while having the wired headphones in, there is a dongle for that. I suppose if that's a very frequent use case, I can see the annoyance.
My last iPhone that had the headphone jack required frequent cleaning of the jack or else it would get clogged with accumulated dust and make the speaker very quiet.
The downsides of "AirPods Pro"
1) They go in my ear, which is uncomfortable
2) They need charging
3) They presumably are trivial to lose
4) They cost about 50 times as much as hook earphones.
> Watching a show in bed, you won’t have cables tangling up
I don't have cables tangling up.
> You won’t be frustrated with trying to listen to music while charging your phone on a train
I'm not, because I have a jack on my phone and I don't use bluetooth and thus suffer from deciding which host they should be connected to at any given time
[0] https://www.teknistore.com/en/on-ear-and-over-ear-headphones...
That doesn't happen to my £5 ear phone because it's connected to my phone, which itself is connected to the mains.
Not music, but phone calls. Working remotely means I spend a lot more time on the phone, and only recently I was frustrated by the fact that I could not charge my phone and use headphones on a call at the same time.
More importantly, though, removing the headphone jack is just plain stupid. Why should I support stupidity with my hard-earned money?
Plugged in, with music. For as many hours each day as the power banks would allow.
Any time I get on a flight longer than 3 hours or so
When I've been using my phone a lot during the day but want to listen to music while I do dishes before bed
Connecting a portable music player to car radios tended to go
* 3.5mm cassttee input
* FM transmitter input (for cars with CD, not cassette)
* 3.5mm aux input
Power was a 12V cigarette lighter.
During all of this the output from the mp3 lpayer was a 3.5mm device.
It was only relatively recently (say in the last 7 years) that most cars started getting USB and bluetooth sockets that took audio connections. Even then there are issues - my 2016 skoda's airplay doesn't play music properly - it frequently skips, I have to use bluetooth to get skipless sound, which means not using maps.
Having USB audio input as standard was even more recently than that - I hired a newish car about 3 years ago which had nothing by a 3.5mm input and 12V jack.
Even in newer cars, it's the same kind of choice reduction you see on phones, though. With a jack you can choose whether you want wired or wireless audio; without a jack you're still with wireless all the time, even when wired would be more convenient.
However I think use cases like air travel or just hanging out at home with a low battery are less rare. These can be partially mitigated w/ wireless charging, but when I use a wireless battery pack on a flight my phone and tablet don't do a great job actually staying in place, and necessities lowering the tray which is annoying
It's been a while, because I dropped my adapter down somewhere in the center console of my car, past the hand brake, so it's gone. I've been burning CDs instead. A CD burner only costs about as much as 3 of those adapters and the media's dirt cheap.
[EDIT] before that, daily.
On planes - although I guess it will be a while before I go on a flight again.
Well, I listen to audiobooks while walking in the Scottish mountains and 10+ hour days are possible and when running multiple apps (OS maps, Endomondo, Audible) I do need to charge and use my phone at the same time (I have a dual lightning/headphone adapter that supports charging and listening at the same time).
https://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/
And I've been watching these videos to stay (relatively) sane these last few weeks:
Prior to the last 8 weeks? Not very often.
Over the next 8 weeks? I expect every day still.
Over the next year or two? 40% chance that it'll still be happening regularly.
Every single moment of "oh, I'll just plug my phone into the AUX... oh. right." is not "out of principle". It's made especially stark when contrasted with other devices: right now I'm 3.5mm'd into a 2019 MacBook for Zoom; I can trivially replug into the iPad next to me, but if I want to do the same with the equivalent era iPhone, I have to walk out of the room, root through a bag for the adapter, or go find the AirPods (hoping they're charged), probably re-select them as the output, while accepting the loss in quality from the old-school cans.
It's not some hypothetical: it's literally decades of habit and muscle memory, throwing away a simple and universal technology that worked insanely well. I can forgive this sort of short-term sacrifice for a transition to a better world: floppy for USB, HDMI for USB-C. One can debate whether the loss is necessary, but usually once we're on the other side, the new standard is inherently superior across every metric.
This is not the case for wired to wireless audio. Though I love the AirPods, they still have batteries, which still run down (short term, and long term). It's always more of a hassle to swap bluetooth connections than just replugging cables. If I want to not share my audio with the world, I can be 1000% sure of that by plugging in a cable, as opposed to the ephemeral "is my computer paired right now, and if so to what?", which could change at any moment when signal is lost or a battery dies. Sure, there's dongles, which is yet another piece of tech junk to juggle and find and lose, and which never seem to be around when you actually need it.
Imagine you went to your bookshelf to grab something to read, only to discover that your curated and beloved collection has all been pulped, and a Kindle with their contents is now in its place. Bezos enthusiastically tells you how much better the Kindle is, and how brave he is for "upgrading" you. That is how we feel. It's one thing to decide to make this sort of transition yourself; when a massive corporation does it on your behalf, "for your own good", yeah, we're gonna get peeved.
What exactly is the benefit to not having a 3.5mm jack?
However, a wireless cigarette lighter adapter that supports Bluetooth is much more convenient either way.
For me personally, Bluetooth headphones in general and AirPods Pro in particular are much more convenient - especially going back and forth between my cellular watch when I am jogging or in the gym (pre-Covid),my phone, my iPad, my laptop, and my AppleTV. Besides cords get tangled, yanked out, caught on things, etc.
You're free to use Bluetooth headphones even if you have a headphone jack; being able to use them doesn't seem like a "benefit" of not having the jack.
People have been complaining about Apple getting rid of things since the original iMac got rid of the 3-1/2 drive. High end android phones from Google and Samsung got rid of the headphone jack also.
I've yet to see anything that makes the removal of a 3.5mm jack seem comparable. You couldn't use DVI or HDMI without replacing the port, which isn't the case with Bluetooth (which you can use regardless of having a 3.5mm jack or not).
A more apt comparison in my eyes seems like wireless mice/keyboards. They don't have cords so they're significantly nicer for cable management, look better on your desk, have longer reach, and probably have other benefits (as well as their own set of tradeoffs like latency, battery, etc). You can use them now or you can use wired versions... but just imagine if a company started selling computers where you could _only_ use wireless keyboard/mice unless you bought USB dongles. Sure, you could just buy the dongles and deal with the loss of choice/convenience, but... why would you want to?
You mean like the one port MacBook that once you plugged it in for power you had to use wireless accessories, the current MacBook Air and 13” MacBook Pro that only has two ports - but once you plug in power and a monitor you don’t have any ports left?
Anecdotally, it seems like each HN thread about new macbooks also has plenty of comments from people complaining about the lack of ports and/or wishing for more. I don't see a lot of people saying the equivalent of, "Apple's never gonna bring those ports back, get over it and get used to it."
But that is patently untrue.
1. I used to have a bunch of cheap, working headsets everywhere - laptop backpack, car, office, home. That whole use case and convenience is GONE.
2. If I was somewhere and needed to take a concall, I could just borrow anybody's headset. No longer the case.
3. Instead of having a good pair of headphones for 2 decades, I now have to buy new bluetooth headphones with unreplaceable battery and aging standards every few years, and worry about charging them etc.
My life has been so much worse since my employer switched to iPhone, that I wrote to my boss, project manager, practice lead, and in the end CFO. And not because "I'm one of those people" - I spend 3-6hrs a day on calls, and life just sucks now. (for those who think Airpods are "fine for calls" - yes. For YOU. Not for other 20 people on the call who have to hear everything happening in 5 miles radius of you. And heaven help us if multiple Airpods join the call!)
So even if we say life got worse for - whatever: 10%, 5%, 1% of population - how has it gotten BETTER for you guys that don't happen to have a need for a jack? The phone is not smaller, it doesn't have a better battery life, etc.
I just don't see the argument here other than "I don't need it, so nobody should have it".
I've now spent several hundred dollars on the best-reviewed, bluetooth headset for my conference calls, and it's nowhere near as good, or convenient, as my $29.99 wired headsets.
Yes we shouldn't have to, yes it's a step backwards, yes it's not as good, but I suspect it would save you a lot of problems.
Don't let perfect (a phone company making a phone with a standard cabled audio interface) be the enemy of good (a solution for your problem).
It now becomes either something I have to carry around with me always; or buy one for each 3.5mm headset I've stashed.
Add the poor reliability and performance, and we come back to your point:
"Yes we shouldn't have to, yes it's a step backwards, yes it's not as good"
Exactly. So I will absolutely do whatever I can to make my life easier - but I also refuse to pretend this does not make my life needlessly harder - once again, for no obvious gain for those who defend the decision.
Phone jack is inherently different than all the Firewire/Zip drive items. There are literally thousands of technologies, interfaces and standards that live and die like fireflies. But the phone jack is a century old and still works perfectly well, and we have replaced it WITH the technology of the day - who thinks their $300 Bluetooth Bose will work 20 years from now? Or seemlessly plug in to each device they use?
"I've now spent several hundred dollars on the best-reviewed, bluetooth headset for my conference calls, and it's nowhere near as good, or convenient, as my $29.99 wired headsets"
You could buy 50 3.5mm+lightning dongles for several hundred dollars, and stick them on the end of each headset, which sounds more convenient than messing around with bluetooth.
I was thinking of the terrible headsets that some collegues use -- they have USB-A plugs on the end, for laptops. Not sure what they do if they want to join a call from their phone (say out walking). My 3.5mm tip+ring+ring+sheild headphones works on laptops and phones, seems far superior to their single-use devices. But western economy is built around selling you something new every 2-4 years, so needs obsoleting.
I'm doing it right now... I do it multiple times every day... And if I wasn't at home due to Covid I'd be doing so even more often.
You just can't charge and listen to music at the same time...
My significant other got some bluetooth for xmas. (A nice bose since she is wildly anti apple, im not totally clear on why) She was into them for about a month.
With cabled audio it is sort of unavoidable to miss that never having to charge, pair, unpair, removing phone pairing history (example rental car retaining contact info), just plugging in is so clean, reliable. Honestly in the case of BT vs 3.5 jack i believe we invented in reverse order.
She has since stopped using the >$100 Bose and prefers a 20 sony earbud where one of the two ear buds is actually totally smashed (i drove over it, sadly. Shes a total catch.
So the missing audio jack is my only barrier to new iphone SE entry. I wonder whether anyone has considered some pcb+3d printing a slim fitting adapter which might extend the length of a phone but then provide the existing port and add a 3.5. In other words Is there any attempt at integrating the usb c Or lightning to 3.5 adapter into a clean little clip on / case thing.
Re rental car Bluetooth cleanup issues https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2016/08/what-your-phone-te...
And to be clear im not anti bluetooth at all. It just seems to be a not yet rightly set up system for security and convenience, naturally.
My SE broke recently and I had to switch to iPhone 8 (They stopped selling SE by then in India). I am able to manage but the form factor is no where as comfortable as the old SE.
>> Price point is, admittedly, fantastic
True for the developed nations but still on the higher side for India and South East Asia. If they could price it at 299 in India it will sell like hot cakes here but iPhone always misses the bus here in India.
The mean income of the 90th percentile in India in 2004 was about 113 USD a month.[1] In the next 4 years the GDP has increased ~4x. [2]
Now even if we assume (I don't have data from a study on this) the 90th percentile income doubled, it leaves them with 226 USD a month.
I can say from personal experience that is a modest assumption. My own salary has increased 40x in this time period. If you consider my friends (a sample space of 30) whose salary I keep track, the average increase is around 20x.
Now it is very reasonable (as the phone has become a very personal "being") to assume that someone in this income will spend a month of their salary on their phone.
Now that is a market size of 120 million people and increasing.
On a personal note, I run a operations company of ~40 people and their average salary is ~300 USD a month and everyone has a phone that costs more than 200USD.
So I think it's reasonable to assume Apple is still missing the bus.
[1] https://ihds.umd.edu/sites/default/files/publications/pdf-fi...
[2] https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
Just market segmentation? I'm not an Apple expert, but it does not seem like something they do.
Either way, I'm going to upgrade as the 1st gen SE camera is showing its age. Everything else about the 1st gen is still good enough for me.
As someone frequently getting pinky finger injuries from holding my phone, I feel you.
Popsockets are a solution, but an annoying one that changes the form factor my phone and doubles as a potent trigger for fidgeting.
Still changes the form factor, but without the fidgeting problem. The case makes it easy to pop the phone in and out if you need the original form factor.
I was thinking the same till I bought an iPhone 11. The tiny adapter for 10 bucks is not that much of a hassle. I have one in my backpack and one at my workplace. I also bought a wireless charger. All that is not expensive compared to the phone itself.
+1
This is critical for me.
Another option is to get a battery replacement kit from iFixit.[1] I did that and it doubled my SE's battery life.
1. https://www.ifixit.com/Store/iPhone/iPhone-SE-Replacement-Ba...
The battery page in settings, under Battery Health should tell your capacity and other info. for me a new battery fixed everything... and batteries aren't usually covered under warranty as far as I know in general but Apple replaced it for me. FedEx Overnighted it to their repair center in California, and then back. So only without a phone for a few days. Kinda like a brand new phone just by changing the battery.
I know the OS itself prompted me to get a repair. Got a popup when restarting about a unexpected shutdown. So maybe that helped with the replacement process.
However, that’s just an opinion. What’s indisputable is that FaceID enables removal of the Home button, which is also a massive positive in and of itself.
Every iPhone I’ve ever owned that had a Home button ultimately had the first thing to fail be the Home button. Not always a complete failure, but at least a partial failure that would make the phone highly annoying to operate.
Besides the Home button wearing out, it also limits the screen size. A full screen is better in every way. In particular by giving significantly more space for the keyboard to be shown without taking up most of the available vertical space.
And so having a biometric unlock which is (arguably) better is really just 1/3rd of the benefit of FaceID. You get a more durable phone, a phone easier to waterproof, and a more usable phone with a better aspect ratio.
That said, the lack of FaceID on the new SE is extremely disappointing to me. I gather they just couldn’t make the margins work at $399.
* If you use wired headphones on your phone, a dongle is just a few inches of cable
* Most who use wired headphones accept the quality and comfort of apple earpods that plug into the lightning port
* Most people in general who use their phones for audio use bluetooth.
Note: I am using the metric of average American consumer, not other countries.
Those are observations. My personal opinion is that you cannot get much smaller in display size than the 2020 SE without reducing UI functionality or having a pen. I am not sure 2020 apps would function well for any significant number of users with an iPhone SE 2016 form factor.
Also remember, this may be a good market for them to get into, but Apple is doing this so they can use existing parts and processes. This is not a top down design of a compact phone.
---
PS: My personal "Why did you do that" is removing fingerprint. They should have moved it to the back, if they cared about borderless display. Face recognition depends on lighting, and me looking at my phone.
Thats the biggest thing for me.
I got my first iphone when they were around this price. Nowadays I have a hard time spending ~1k on a new phone, so I end up shopping used.
Granted it’s my personal preference to buy the handset outright, I’m happy to see a hardware refresh on a more budget friendly option for a new iphone.
I do, however, agree whole-heartedly about the form factor. The iPhone 5 was the perfect form-factor to me and I miss it terribly.
I hated not having the headphone jack for a long time. But AirPods (which I do love) have taken care of that problem.
The one thing about small phones is that you can operate the phone one handed. The iPhone 6-8 and the SE's design is pretty much at the limit that you could operate the phone one handed.
Not going to lose sleep over the color schemes because I will be buying a case for it anyway. That's how my current SE has lasted so long!
Don't forget you can still use the lighting to 3.5mm adapter. It's no longer included free but at least it's available. Cost around $9.
Sorry, friend, but this ship has sailed. No point calling unacceptable what is now unavoidable.
Edit: here is an example of the sort of low-rent, repetitive thread that such things lead to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22886052. Would you please stop feeding this here? It's the sort of thing this site is explicitly not for.
I'd like to have a phone with a better screen and a nicer camera, and I'd even be willing to pay a lot of money for one, but those features just aren't worth the loss of my headphone jack.
The one thing I could see being worth my headphone jack is a folding screen, but it seems like we're still a ways away from those being durable enough. (And if some company does ever decide to put a headphone jack in a folding phone, that's the one I'll buy.)
If I need to power the phone at the same time, I have a USB-C -> headphone and USB-C dongle. I keep that one in the car. It cost about 5 bucks.
Can you not do this with Apple kit?
I can't keep the adapter plugged into my headphones indefinitely, because then I wouldn't be able to connect them to my other devices (multiple computers, etc).
Or, if you want good headphones, then just let in the missionaries who've been telling you to accept Bluetooth as your Lord and Savior. (There are some really good Bluetooth headphones nowadays—studio-monitor quality audio, enough battery life to get through a working day, and <$200. I refused Bluetooth until headphones surpassed this bar, but they eventually did, about two years ago.)
I just don't want to carry two sets of headphones around with me. Currently, I keep my single pair in my back pocket, so I have them with me everywhere and I can use them with everything.
To be sure, the world would not end if I had to carry around two sets of headphones instead of one. But then, I don't need a faster phone either! New phones today are only adding marginal improvements, and the absence of a headphone jack is a bigger inconvenience by comparison.
Re: Bluetooth, the problem is that switching devices is still finicky. If you only use Apple products the Airpods do a good job at switching devices, but I sometimes use PCs. Also, I lose headphones frequently, and Bluetooth headphones are still expensive.
Many people just leave the Lightning earbuds plugged into their iPhone and wind them around the phone, putting the whole assembly into their pocket. (I've damaged enough cables of expensive devices that I've developed a tic against doing that, but in the case of the iPhone earbuds, it seems to be exactly what they're designed to do, judging by the extra plasticizer in the cable shielding that's not necessary for comfortable wearing and makes them degrade faster under UV.)
> and Bluetooth headphones are still expensive.
Have you checked Amazon lately? There are (high-quality!) $30 wireless earbuds from reputable brands.
So my MacBook Air for instance (the 11 inch model, small enough to comfortably carry under my arm and use on the subway) doesn't really have a place to store headphones. And permanently wrapping headphones around my phone would get annoying quickly.
Again, these are nitpicks and there are ways I could adapt. But it would be inconvenient. I have a headphone jack, and it works.
> Have you checked Amazon lately?
I have not. The main problem really is switching between devices. And to a lesser extent, the Nintendo Switch's lack of Bluetooth audio support.
FWIW, most bluetooth headphones also offer 3.5mm corded options. Just use the bluetooth when necessary/convenient, and the cord the rest of the time.
Edit: Oh, but then I totally forgot in this whole discussion—if it's Bluetooth I'll also have to remember to charge my damn things! Bleh. Still would like to see an example though!
Typically on sale for $250. 30-hour battery life.
You won't find this (that I know of) with earbud types.
> You won't find this (that I know of) with earbud types.
Ah, yeah, that's why I hadn't seen this. Can't really put headphones like these in my back pocket!
IIRC, they make a slimline adapter that you can stick to your Switch that gives it Bluetooth support. If you've got it jailbroken, you can also just enable it in software.
IIRC Nintendo gave their reason for not enabling it by default as not wanting to interfere with the controllers.
Plus, it's still much easier to plug in the cable than go through the pairing dance.
That's exactly what I'm doing. I'm already not buying iPhones. The only reason I'd ever mention it anymore is when I see comments like this.
> You might as well give up on the headphone jack bud.
There's no reason to give up on headphone jacks.
> Finally, it has to be pointed out that people who complain about this omission underestimate how much internal space a headphone jack wastes in a phone.
I can't be underestimating it if I'm not estimating it. Some phones have jacks. Some don't. I buy the ones with jacks. I don't notice a difference in size.
Headphone jacks are not necessarily considered a premium feature by all phone users.
They are by some, as is evident, but that view cannot be taken for granted — even here at HN.
Neither is a large screen, indeed I consider large portable electronics to be decidedly non-premium.
A premium feature is something I'm willing to spend money on - a phone the physical dimentions of a traditional SE, with a 3.5mm jack, dual sim cards, a modern processor, and a decent amount of storage.
Others may have other views on what premium is.
why is this downvoted? these are facts. i just presented some examples from other manufacturers.
You're not wrong, but seriously, what is wrong with the world?
Surprised there are people out there feeling this way. Join us here in the year 2020.
While you think it's unacceptable the rest of the world has moved on a long time ago.
Why would anyone accept the worst sound quality the market has to offer?
For the price of the AirPods you can get wired ear-buds or over-ears which literally provides you with 10x the sound fidelity and listening experience.
And they all require that good ole’ standards-compliant jack.
When it comes to audio, I’ll only take the best. And the AirPods aren’t even in that competition. Peasant indeed, eh?
This whining over the headphone jack is getting old. Inconvenient? For some. Unacceptable? Only to a tiny fringe faction. Get over yourself.
The removal of the headphone jack was something seen as treasonous for Apple to do at first, but then they will then tell you to purchase wireless earphones instead. Making it impossible to listen to music without being discovered via bluetooth trackers / scanners.
If those aren't problems for you, then it seems to be a reasonable buy for other customers who bought older phones. But if it were me, I would buy one in a year and a half when the price eventually drops further.
But you're a current user... so clearly you accepted it. And as long as you do (accept it, keep buying phones without headphone jacks) why would anyone change? The message you are sending (in the only way they care about $$$) is that you do in fact accept phones without headphone jacks.
Just reading what you're writing...
There is still no replacement.
Sorry, you can't have IP67 water resistance with that 3.5mm headphone jack.
Edit: a lot of folks proved me wrong. I feel that I need to clarify: Apple's design goal is to make it thiner, more integrated, less components more battery space and unified input/output interface, all that combined with water resistance, is not practical. All the 3.5mm examples I am seeing doesn't attempt to make it thin and light albeit water resistant.
There are some water-resistant phones with a headphone jack and an IP68 rating even. The LG V30 for example is a beast. Semi-regular usage on rainy days works without any issues. Even using it as a flashlight it survived 30min of pouring rain. I had to wait for the USB-C port to dry up to charge it after getting home, but it still survived without any damage whatsoever.
Other phones that are both water-resistant and have a jack [1]:
* Pixel 3a
* Galaxy S10
* Huawei P30
* and a lot more
If I remember correctly, Apple tried to justify its removal due to its size and water-resistance. I wonder when (not if) Apple will remove the power plug due to "water-resistance" and insist on using Qi charging (even though it has worse efficiency[2]) and cloud services instead of transferring data via cable.
[1]: https://www.androidauthority.com/phones-with-headphone-jack-...
[2]: https://www.wirelesspowerconsortium.com/data/downloadables/1...
I am very frustrated as the SE is really getting to end of life. I have bought 3 of them in the past month from various eBay sellers with good feedback. One fake, one had a badly degraded battery, and the other went into a reset loop after a couple weeks. There's not much out there. Apple's privacy is second to none, usability is very good (though if they introduce one more type of swiping I'm going to go mad. What's next, Force Swiping?), but the hardware is getting extremely inconvenient. Even my buddy who has large hands complains that the phone is too big and heavy.
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMX62AM/A/lightning-to-35...
And they come with free lightning headphones in the box.
Yes, it's another thing you can lose, but in practice I don't think it's really a problem -- certainly not the issue that would decide a phone for me, since rarely are all other specs equal.
Pros:
* Feature set in terms of processor, camera, etc., is exactly what I want
* Continued presence of Touch ID is a huge plus, I don't like Face ID
* Price point is, admittedly, fantastic
Cons:
* Lack of headphone jack is still unacceptable
* Form factor is, candidly, still too big for my tiny hands
* Color schemes aren't as nice as the SE's (can I contribute to COVID-19 research without getting a bright red phone?)
I will be considering this phone, but skeptically. Would be ideal for me to be able to physically hold one before buying, but not sure that'll be possible (maybe I can borrow somebody's iPhone 8).