The woes of USB-C audio on mobile phones - and is the jack coming back?

[kabbes]

My problem isn’t headphones — I have a fantastic pair of Bluetooth headphones with a 20+ hour battery life — it’s when I want to connect the phone to somebody else’s audio device and they don’t have anything but a jack connector, which is not uncommon. I have an adapter but I never have it with me, because it’s not the kind of thing you just go around with.

 

[Don Troooomp]

I have an adapter but I never have it with me, because it’s not the kind of thing you just go around with.

Oops - I always have a mains charger, car charger, wired headphones, a C type card reader/USB OTG, and a VGA/HDMI adaptor.
If I'm working, add a bluetooth keyboard/trackpad, a small speaker, HDMI and VGA leads, and a short mains extension in case I need them.
Pen, pencil, Swiss army knife, a couple of flash drives, and a third flash on a very small C type OTG with all my work backed up on it.

I travel a lot so they're handy, and they've become habit.

 

[Don Troooomp]

Almost forgot - If I'm out working, I also carry a microphone, an appropriate cable, and a little TV style mic sign with the appropriate ID on it. It looks fine on camera, but it's just a piece of card I put through my inkjet.
Really handy for interviews.

 

[kabbes]

I, on the other hand, prefer not to go everywhere with a backpack of cables and tools.

 

[Don Troooomp]

I, on the other hand, prefer not to go everywhere with a backpack of cables and tools.

Just a waist wallet in the belt of my trousers. Invisible to all - The other stuff is in my rucksack when I travel for whatever number of days

 

[souljacker]

Oops - I always have a mains charger, car charger, wired headphones, a C type card reader/USB OTG, and a VGA/HDMI adaptor.
If I'm working, add a bluetooth keyboard/trackpad, a small speaker, HDMI and VGA leads, and a short mains extension in case I need them.
Pen, pencil, Swiss army knife, a couple of flash drives, and a third flash on a very small C type OTG with all my work backed up on it.

I travel a lot so they're handy, and they've become habit.

I travel a lot too and often have various bits of kit in my bag. But never the USB to 3.5mm jack for my pixel or the one for my iphone. Mainly because I have no idea where they are because they are tiny and only necessary 2% of the time. It's just annoying that, in that 2% of time, they are absolutely vital.

 

[kabbes]

Incredibly, if I’m round at a friend’s, I don’t tend to have a “waist wallet” (whatever that is) stuffed full of cables with me. Silly me.

 

[skyscraper101]

I just carry round a spare set of wired earbuds (my old apple ones) for the odd occasion I want to watch a movie on a plane or need to listen to a jack-only source.

Given that I carry a bag around most places, it is the most insignificant of inconveniences compared to the massive convenience of not having wires hanging from my ears and getting caught on bags, clothes, door handles. etc. and getting yanked out of my ear, or even worse, severed entirely (it has happened).

 

[Don Troooomp]

Incredibly, if I’m round at a friend’s, I don’t tend to have a “waist wallet” (whatever they is) stuffed full of cables with me. Silly me.

How strange

 

[editor]

Brilliant article.

AirPods Are a Tragedy

Apple claims that AirPods are building a “wireless future.” Many people think they're a symbol of disposable wealth. The truth is bleaker.
AirPods are a product of the past.

They're plastic, made of some combination of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, chlorine, and sulfur. They’re tungsten, tin, tantalum, lithium, and cobalt.

The particles that make up these elements were created 13.8 billion years ago, during the Big Bang. Humans extract these elements from the earth, heat them, refine them. As they work, humans breathe in airborne particles, which deposit in their lungs. The materials are shipped from places like Vietnam, South Africa, Kazakhstan, Peru, Mexico, Indonesia, and India, to factories in China. A literal city of workers creates four tiny computing chips and assembles them into a logic board. Sensors, microphones, grilles, and an antenna are glued together and packaged into a white, strange-looking plastic exoskeleton.

These are AirPods. They’re a collection of atoms born at the dawn of the universe, churned beneath the surface of the earth, and condensed in an anthropogenic parallel to the Big Crunch—a proposed version of the death of the universe where all matter shrinks and condenses together. Workers are paid unlivable wages in more than a dozen countries to make this product possible. Then it’s sold by Apple, the world’s first trillion-dollar company, for $159 USD.

For roughly 18 months, AirPods play music, or podcasts, or make phone calls. Then the lithium-ion batteries will stop holding much of a charge, and the AirPods will slowly become unusable. They can’t be repaired because they're glued together. They can’t be thrown out, or else the lithium-ion battery may start a fire in the garbage compactor. They can’t be easily recycled, because there’s no safe way to separate the lithium-ion battery from the plastic shell. Instead, the AirPods sit in your drawer forever.

Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, which does electronics teardowns and sells repair tools and parts, told Motherboard that AirPods are “evil.” According to the headphones review team at Rtings.com, AirPods are "below-average" in terms of sound quality. According to people on every social media platform, AirPods are a display of wealth.

But more than a pair of headphones, AirPods are an un-erasable product of culture and class. People in working or impoverished economic classes are responsible for the life-threatening, exhaustive, violent work of removing their parts from the ground and assembling them. Meanwhile, people in the global upper class design and purchase AirPods.

Thus, AirPods strategically glue together an ecosystem of luxury products. They are only so “convenient” because, by eliminating the headphone jack, Apple made the iPhone less user-friendly.

Destroying the mild nuisance of headphone jacks comes at two costs: One, it locks people into a system of limited, compatible, proprietary products that are inevitably going to die in a few years. And two, it creates a dilemma at the product’s end of life. If you try to recycle AirPods, a worker at a recycling plant will have to engage in the risky and mundane task of separating the glued-in lithium-ion battery from the plastic.

AirPods were destined to become e-waste from the moment they were manufactured. And AirPods become e-waste after just eighteen months, when the irreplaceable lithium ion battery dies.

“I would put this in the planned obsolescence category of products, but it’s not really planned obsolescence, it’s planned failure,” Wiens told Motherboard. “When they made these products, they knew they were only gonna last for 18 months. They didn’t put that on the outside of the box, knowing that the battery is not replaceable, and here we are.”

AirPods Are a Tragedy

 

[pesh]

It would be a brilliant article if it were accurate, Apple replace the batteries on Airpods for about $99 / £95 a pair.
they are still shit obviously.

 

[editor]

It would be a brilliant article if it were accurate, Apple replace the batteries on Airpods for about $99 / £95 a pair.
they are still shit obviously.

That's priced so ridiculously high many people will just elect to get a new pair.

AirPods no longer holding charge? Apple can replace batteries but the fees are exorbitant

 

[pesh]

apple? charging too much for something? say it isn't so.

 

[Don Troooomp]

apple? charging too much for something? say it isn't so.

Build shit that doesn't charge - then charge a lot so they charge.
Sounds like Apple.

 

[Chilli.s]

Just swatted up on repairing these, fucking impossible is the answer.

Wonder if crapple just replace rather than re-battery? Anyone had a hairpod battery replacement?

 

[Fez909]

The new Google Pixel 3a has a jack!

Google launches cheaper Pixel 3a smartphones

Looks great, tbh!

 

[Chilli.s]

It would be a brilliant article if it were accurate, Apple replace the batteries on Airpods for about $99 / £95 a pair.
they are still shit obviously.

Do they though? I'm thinking not, they just exchange them for a new set for £100. All the other points in the article linked by Editor stand as valid. The pods themselves seem to be a marvel of miniaturization, if someone can afford them.

 

[pesh]

i have no idea. i'd have thought apple would have the abilities to defeat glue but you could well be right. If i really hated sound and i wanted to look like my ears had been up all night doing ketamine i'd probably get a pair, but i don't.

 

[Don Troooomp]

Looks like the Note 10 will be short of a jack

Samsung Galaxy Note 10 could still have physical buttons

 

[editor]

Looks like the Note 10 will be short of a jack

Samsung Galaxy Note 10 could still have physical buttons

Good job there's still plenty of top notch phones with a jack, mind

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Looks like the Note 10 will be short of a jack

Samsung Galaxy Note 10 could still have physical buttons

It's not like there isn't space for one.

 

[Don Troooomp]

My Note 9 has a jack and it would have been a deal killer if it was short of one.
The 10 is too early as I generally change phones every three years, but I would really like a jack on whatever comes next.

 

[kabbes]

Why on earth do you bother changing phones every three years? What happens to them to make them useless in that short time? And what happens to the old ones when you’re done with them? My god, the waste of this society is just depressing as fuck.

 

[mauvais]

I find phones last 2-3 years. The USB port usually fails and the battery life decays significantly. I do mobile dev for a living so that probably doesn't help. Both things could be fixed but by that point technology has moved along enough to justify the upgrade.

Last time, the old phone went to the manufacturer's recycling scheme in exchange for a rebate.

 

[kabbes]

What are you doing to that poor USB port in two years??

 

[mauvais]

What are you doing to that poor USB port in two years??

Using it all the time. The phone's connected for development work as well as charging.

I don't know yet whether USB-C fares any better than its predecessor.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

I keep having good intentions of making them last 3 plus years. They very rarely do.

I do think batteries should be way easier to replace though, even if its not by a simple cover like it used to be.

 

[skyscraper101]

Using it all the time. The phone's connected for development work as well as charging.

I don't know yet whether USB-C fares any better than its predecessor.

I see a lot of magnetic solutions available these days to help prevent damage by the constant plugging in and disconnecting of USB cables - I just got one for my VR headset. I wonder why this hasn't been adopted more widely as standard in the phone world?

My macbook air has one thankfully and its a blessing given the amount of times the cable has been yanked suddenly from the charge port. I suppose wireless charging is going to be the future anyway.

 

[mauvais]

I see a lot of magnetic solutions available these days to help prevent damage by the constant plugging in and disconnecting of USB cables - I just got one for my VR headset. I wonder why this hasn't been adopted more widely as standard in the phone world?

My macbook air has one thankfully and its a blessing given the amount of times the cable has been yanked suddenly from the charge port. I suppose wireless charging is going to be the future anyway.

I have a wireless charger (in fact, two, a pad at home and a mount in the car) but never use it. It makes everything hot and generally it's less practical than a wire. But it is good to have as a fallback in case of port issues.

 

[Don Troooomp]

Why on earth do you bother changing phones every three years? What happens to them to make them useless in that short time? And what happens to the old ones when you’re done with them? My god, the waste of this society is just depressing as fuck.

I'm a heavy user and often need up to date features. The last change was done as I needed to use the phone for presentations and my old one wouldn't do it.
The last phone was less than a year old and still in perfect condition but my wife's phone was old.
My youngest got her old one, and she got mine.
No waste as all are still in use.