8 ms·

USB-C and Lightning headphones aren't great news for everyone

45 points by edward 10y ago

Fej 10y ago
The Moto Z looks like an awesome phone. The lack of a headphone jack is a complete and utter deal-breaker. I'm not carrying a dongle around so I can use my headphones. (A quality dongle will need to have some size and heft; see the Schiit Fulla. It can't even run off of Micro USB power alone as it stands, though it does work with some phones with some work.)
- mattvot 10y ago
  I think the point is that this is a step towards consumers purchasing headphones with a digital usb/lightning/whatever connector, not to carry around an adaptor. I guess we'll see in time whether the idea takes off.
  - jschwartzi 10y ago
    Since it doesn't actually solve any problem that any consumer actually has, I predict that it's going to go away in about 2021 and the 3.5mm jack will stick around. Personally I don't care about USB-C because it doesn't actually solve any problems for me. At least when we went to Micro-USB my device chargers became interchangeable and I didn't have to go home to charge my phone anymore. I have USB-C on my laptop at work, and so far I'm pretty unimpressed with it. I'd much rather just have a second DisplayPort.
kogepathic 10y ago
I understand why manufacturers are keen to get rid of the 3.5mm jack. Phones are constantly getting thinner, and the jack isn't. It's also another part on the BOM that manufacturers have to allocate PCB space for and pay money for the jack. But here's the thing. 3.5mm jacks are analogue, and they're everywhere. They're out dated by modern standards, but overall they just work. If the industry actually cares about thickness, they'll put a 2.5mm jack on the phone, or cut the 3.5mm jack in half (this was talked about a few years ago, but I haven't seen any production phones implementing this). As the article points out, the phone still needs a DAC and an amplifier to, you know, be a phone. Phones will typically have an earpiece speaker and a loud speaker, so you still need a DAC and amp to power those. So, apart from reducing the port count (cheaper BOM, yay!) and making phones thinner, what is this really about? It's about DRM. As soon as headphones are digital, manufacturers can start locking down headphones. Oh, you want HiFi audio? Well, the iPhone 9AB is only HiFi certified with Beatz(TM) headphones, so those fancy Bose headphones you bought for $500 last year, yeah, those are gonna give you ear-bud quality music.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  Connectors are the #1 failure point in any electronics design. Substituting one connector for another isn't going to be an improvement in this respect but I can see why getting rid of a connector by itself could be a good thing (and then they'd need a wireless replacement, none of the bluetooth headsets I've used were good enough for day-to-day or prolonged use).
  - snovv_crash 10y ago
    I've never had a 3.5mm jack fail me. The wires die, the PCB dies, but the connectors live forever.
    - plorg 10y ago
      I've given up using the 3.5mm jack in situations where there might be stress on the plug (e.g. when you have your phone in your pocket). I've destroyed so many sets of headphones (or, in my case, replaced the cord on so many headphones) that it's just not worth it. But there are situations in which I do use the 3.5mm jack, e.g. in my car. In any case, it seems to me that co-locating the audio port with the USB port has another potential downside. If you destroy the 3.5mm headphone port you can still use and charge the phone (and use bluetooth headphones, for example). But if you destroy the USB port because your headphone cable torques in badly you have maybe 15 hours of life left in your phone before it's completely useless.
    - hashkb 10y ago
      And they are easy and inexpensive to fix and replace.
    - rhinoceraptor 10y ago
      They do wear out if you're plugging and unplugging it several times a day for several years.
    - goda90 10y ago
      Counter-example: I did have issues with my old Samsung Galaxy S3's 3.5mm jack. Luckily the sound board was a relatively cheap and replaceable part and I only had to shave a little bit of plastic off to make it fit in my specific model :)
cesarb 10y ago
Doesn't the USB-C standard already have a well-defined way of connecting an analog headphone, using only a passive adapter? Download the standard and scroll to the end, it's an appendix. IIRC, it can even be used while charging, with the correct passive adapter. The question then only becomes, is the phone's DAC connected to the USB-C connector, or did the manufacturer omit it to save a few traces in the board? Did anyone test that Moto-Z with a passive USB-C to 3.5mm socket adapter, to see what happens?
- unwind 10y ago
  Assuming you mean the sideband pins, the article says that Intel is working on a standard to let those pins be used for analog audio. If there's no standard way to communicate that "yeah, the sideband pins are now analog audio out from the host", I don't think you can buld USB-compliant accessories that assume that. This would mean that the adapter (and/or low-cost headphones, I guess) would still need to include a CPU that can speak USB to negotiate with the host about the sideband pins, would be my assumption. A bit like how max current (used to) work.
  - gman99 10y ago
    > the article says that Intel is working on a standard to let those pins be used for analog audio In that case, the article is wrong because the USB 3.1 spec already supports analog audio via the Audio Adapter Accessory Mode. Whether this phone supports this mode is unclear, but it's part of the existing spec explicitly to allow passive USB-C to 3.5mm adapters Official spec: http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/ http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/ page 166 of the USB-C spec: http://www.those.ch/designtechnik/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/USB-Type-C-Specification-Release-1.0.pdf http://www.those.ch/designtechnik/wp-content/uploads/2014/08...
amelius 10y ago
One downside to the 3.5mm jack is that you hear a glitch whenever you plug-in or unplug a device. It would be nice if they could fix that.
- robbiep 10y ago
  Surely that's gotta be the least gripey gripe possible
- kalleboo 10y ago
  I'm expecting with a digital connection, you'll instead have a long delay when it negotiates, and then if you have any lint in your port you can look forward to it disconnecting when you jostle the cable with a "this accessory is not supported by apple" error message like with chargers
  - elcapitan 10y ago
    Or you buy cheap ransomware earphones and hear a "to unlock your iPhone, please pay $xxx dollars to..".
- neverminder 10y ago
  Another downside is that when phone is in the pocket with headphones connected it is quite easy to accidentally yank it out - the jack turning around in the socket doesn't help the situation. I have USB Type-C devices for over a year now and so far the sockets are rock solid unlike micro USB used to be.
kylecordes 10y ago
It's hard to see the upside of this, from a phone buyer end-user point of view. By looking at a USB C and 3.5mm jack next to each other for a moment, it is obvious this will enable only a minuscule additional thinning of devices. But at what cost? Most likely: Significantly more expensive headphones for at least the next several years and possibly longer. If I were a headphone manufacturer I would be thrilled by this development. As a headphone buyer, less so. In most cases we will give up being able to charge and listen at the same time, unless willing to add an additional external dongle. Meanwhile manufacturers will continue their, uh, curious belief that cell phone battery capacities are anywhere near good enough.
- Eric_WVGG 10y ago
  It's not minuscule at all. The 3.5mm jack is deeper than even the old dock connectors, and with a device as small as a phone every bit of space counts.
joesmo 10y ago
Having a single non-standard, unsupported (usb c) port for everything isn't progress, it's regress. No one wants this, especially for headphones but Apple and another clueless follower are pushing it anyway because they have the clout and they think people will buy it. Sounds like FireWire to me. That was an amazing success. Or thunderbolt. Or thunderbolt 2. Yeah I think it's clear by now Apple has an abysmal track record with such changes. Throw in something any knowledgeable consumer is against like removing the headphone jack and now you have a recipe for disaster. I hope so, not because I like others' pain but because this change, along with others, marks an anti consumer shift in policy. No longer does Apple even care what the consumer wants because it has the zombie sheep factor of millions of clueless idiots who will buy products that are clearly not in their best interests and require extra investment for no reason. Then again, Apple is hardly alone in such markets.
- mpitt 10y ago
  > non-standard Check again. "The USB Type-C Specification 1.0 was published by the USB Implementers Forum and was finalized in August 2014." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Type-C https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Type-C)
  - nix0n 10y ago
    USB Type C is a de jure standard only: the de facto standards are 3.5mm TRSS for analog audio and Micro-USB for charging and PC connections.
- Hondor 10y ago
  That's always been Apple's advantage. Trying to serve everybody's needs is what Windows was for a long time. Apple has a history of breaking compatibility and screwing over the few holdouts of the old products. I think that freedom is what allows them to design things that people really like. Now they have "zombie sheep", they can do even better without being forced to follow the market.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
  > Apple has an abysmal track record with such changes Really? Apple went all-USB, people complained. USB mice and keyboard became the standard. Apple dropped the floppy drive, people complained. No floppy drive became the standard. Apple dropped the CD drive, people complained. No CD drive (on laptops) became the standard. Apple dropped full-size display connectors, people complained. This, too, became the standard on laptops.
tzs 10y ago
> And here's the problem: The DAC and amp inside that $50 pair of digital headphones are not going to be of the same quality as those in a $500 pair. Nor will the sound they output be afforded the same time and effort. Instead of trusting in your phone's DAC and amp to output decent-quality audio at decent volumes, you'll now be contending with the choices of a company that has had to cut corners to put out headphones on a tight budget. This sounds like a good reason for the change rather than an argument against it. Audio performance is determined by the quality of the DAC, the amp, the speakers, and the enclosure. If the DAC and amp are part of the headphones, then all factors affecting audio performance are independent of the phone. You can decide what level of audio performance you want and then buy headphones that provide that performance. Also, many people use the same set of headphones with multiple devices. When I'm buying devices I consider how they fit in with my other devices. If I have a higher end tablet I might buy a lower end phone because many of the things I would have done on the phone had I only had a phone will be done on the tablet. Device makers tend to put the better DACs and amps in the higher end devices, and so under the current approach if I want the best audio on all my devices, all of them have to be higher end devices (and I have to get expensive headphones too).
- dingaling 10y ago
  > You can decide what level of audio performance you want and then buy headphones that provide that performance. That's a great point. And for people like me who don't use audio on their phones ( other than the occasional voice call ) it means I'm not paying for other people's use-cases.
rcarmo 10y ago
I've been using a SonyEricsson MW600 Bluetooth adapter for my headphones for a couple of years - it pairs with up to three devices, the audio quality is pretty good (audiophile colleagues tried it with their hideously expensive headphones and said it was "surprisingly decent"), the battery lasts me around a week depending on use, and it charges via a standard micro-USB connector. Love it so much that when the tieclip-style clip broke, I ordered a new clip off eBay instead (Sony has a couple of successors to it, but I'll pass until this one completely dies on me). I think this is a more interesting solution than changing physical connectors.
UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
I don't want a thinner phone. Cellphone thinness reached the "good enough" stage a very long time ago. Then all making them thinner did was start to make compromises for that thinness. For one example, while components and software continue to get more and more power efficient, they're removing more raw battery capacity within the phone so they can shave 1mm. No 3.5mm is a deal breaker for me. I don't want to have to remember to charge my headphones, or add extra weight to my IEMs, plus now I cannot charge and listen at the same time (or use the port for anything else). All this move will result in is more people sitting on public transport blasting audio through the front speakers because their headphones died or they cannot afford $100 IEMs or $150 headphones. I think it will be extremely telling if the iPhone continues to ship with free IEMs, if not then that is proof enough that even Apple cannot make the economics work. Overall this is a horrible step backwards.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  > Cellphone thinness reached the "good enough" stage a very long time ago. Then all making them thinner did was start to make compromises for that thinness 100% agree. Instead of my phone being 1.5mm thicker, I'm carrying around a huge silicon case with a battery and a bunch of circuitry included. Although I'm sure that's all based on studies that 85% of users don't need more battery life on 90% of the days out of the year, and 96% of users when confronted with a prototype phone that was 0.5mm thicker replied "oooh I would buy this". The tyranny of the market. That said... > No 3.5mm is a deal breaker for me I switched to using bluetooth headphones in 2006 (was that really a decade ago?), so the disappearance of the 3.5mm jack in particular doesn't affect me at all.
jjuel 10y ago
I must be one of the few who is actually not against this move. I am all for not having a 3.5mm anymore. I really see no need. Things should start becoming more wireless. Heck get rid of the usb-c/lightning and just use wireless charging.
zaroth 10y ago
I assume the switch away from 3.5mm will come along with the elimination of the physical home button (replaced with a purely force-touch version) and the extension of the screen to more fully cover the full face of the phone. I do hope they put a lightning connector on both ends. That way we're not losing a port but at least trading it for something which is arguably better. I frequently could use a top-side power port, e.g when the phone is sitting in a cup-holder showing GPS but needs a charge, and the app won't rotate 180'. For backward compatibility, could the lightning port drive an analog output that would just require an analog adaptor to allow connecting existing headphones?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mordant 10y ago
The elephant in the room is Bluetooth - Bluetooth 5.0 spec is coming out this week, I think. And there are the codecs like AptX, etc. I'm shocked at how good the sound quality is on my Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Bluetooth headphones. If anyone had told me that I could get that kind of dynamic range and nuance in the audio over Bluetooth, I wouldn't have believed him. And that's with Bluetooth 4.x.

45 points by edward 10y ago

Fej 10y ago

The Moto Z looks like an awesome phone. The lack of a headphone jack is a complete and utter deal-breaker. I'm not carrying a dongle around so I can use my headphones. (A quality dongle will need to have some size and heft; see the Schiit Fulla. It can't even run off of Micro USB power alone as it stands, though it does work with some phones with some work.)

mattvot 10y ago
I think the point is that this is a step towards consumers purchasing headphones with a digital usb/lightning/whatever connector, not to carry around an adaptor. I guess we'll see in time whether the idea takes off.
- jschwartzi 10y ago
  Since it doesn't actually solve any problem that any consumer actually has, I predict that it's going to go away in about 2021 and the 3.5mm jack will stick around. Personally I don't care about USB-C because it doesn't actually solve any problems for me. At least when we went to Micro-USB my device chargers became interchangeable and I didn't have to go home to charge my phone anymore. I have USB-C on my laptop at work, and so far I'm pretty unimpressed with it. I'd much rather just have a second DisplayPort.

kogepathic 10y ago

I understand why manufacturers are keen to get rid of the 3.5mm jack. Phones are constantly getting thinner, and the jack isn't. It's also another part on the BOM that manufacturers have to allocate PCB space for and pay money for the jack. But here's the thing. 3.5mm jacks are analogue, and they're everywhere. They're out dated by modern standards, but overall they just work. If the industry actually cares about thickness, they'll put a 2.5mm jack on the phone, or cut the 3.5mm jack in half (this was talked about a few years ago, but I haven't seen any production phones implementing this). As the article points out, the phone still needs a DAC and an amplifier to, you know, be a phone. Phones will typically have an earpiece speaker and a loud speaker, so you still need a DAC and amp to power those. So, apart from reducing the port count (cheaper BOM, yay!) and making phones thinner, what is this really about? It's about DRM. As soon as headphones are digital, manufacturers can start locking down headphones. Oh, you want HiFi audio? Well, the iPhone 9AB is only HiFi certified with Beatz(TM) headphones, so those fancy Bose headphones you bought for $500 last year, yeah, those are gonna give you ear-bud quality music.

jacquesm 10y ago
Connectors are the #1 failure point in any electronics design. Substituting one connector for another isn't going to be an improvement in this respect but I can see why getting rid of a connector by itself could be a good thing (and then they'd need a wireless replacement, none of the bluetooth headsets I've used were good enough for day-to-day or prolonged use).
- snovv_crash 10y ago
  I've never had a 3.5mm jack fail me. The wires die, the PCB dies, but the connectors live forever.
  - plorg 10y ago
    I've given up using the 3.5mm jack in situations where there might be stress on the plug (e.g. when you have your phone in your pocket). I've destroyed so many sets of headphones (or, in my case, replaced the cord on so many headphones) that it's just not worth it. But there are situations in which I do use the 3.5mm jack, e.g. in my car. In any case, it seems to me that co-locating the audio port with the USB port has another potential downside. If you destroy the 3.5mm headphone port you can still use and charge the phone (and use bluetooth headphones, for example). But if you destroy the USB port because your headphone cable torques in badly you have maybe 15 hours of life left in your phone before it's completely useless.
  - hashkb 10y ago
    And they are easy and inexpensive to fix and replace.
  - rhinoceraptor 10y ago
    They do wear out if you're plugging and unplugging it several times a day for several years.
  - goda90 10y ago
    Counter-example: I did have issues with my old Samsung Galaxy S3's 3.5mm jack. Luckily the sound board was a relatively cheap and replaceable part and I only had to shave a little bit of plastic off to make it fit in my specific model :)

cesarb 10y ago

Doesn't the USB-C standard already have a well-defined way of connecting an analog headphone, using only a passive adapter? Download the standard and scroll to the end, it's an appendix. IIRC, it can even be used while charging, with the correct passive adapter. The question then only becomes, is the phone's DAC connected to the USB-C connector, or did the manufacturer omit it to save a few traces in the board? Did anyone test that Moto-Z with a passive USB-C to 3.5mm socket adapter, to see what happens?

unwind 10y ago
Assuming you mean the sideband pins, the article says that Intel is working on a standard to let those pins be used for analog audio. If there's no standard way to communicate that "yeah, the sideband pins are now analog audio out from the host", I don't think you can buld USB-compliant accessories that assume that. This would mean that the adapter (and/or low-cost headphones, I guess) would still need to include a CPU that can speak USB to negotiate with the host about the sideband pins, would be my assumption. A bit like how max current (used to) work.
- gman99 10y ago
  > the article says that Intel is working on a standard to let those pins be used for analog audio In that case, the article is wrong because the USB 3.1 spec already supports analog audio via the Audio Adapter Accessory Mode. Whether this phone supports this mode is unclear, but it's part of the existing spec explicitly to allow passive USB-C to 3.5mm adapters Official spec: http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/ http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/ page 166 of the USB-C spec: http://www.those.ch/designtechnik/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/USB-Type-C-Specification-Release-1.0.pdf http://www.those.ch/designtechnik/wp-content/uploads/2014/08...

amelius 10y ago

One downside to the 3.5mm jack is that you hear a glitch whenever you plug-in or unplug a device. It would be nice if they could fix that.

robbiep 10y ago
Surely that's gotta be the least gripey gripe possible
kalleboo 10y ago
I'm expecting with a digital connection, you'll instead have a long delay when it negotiates, and then if you have any lint in your port you can look forward to it disconnecting when you jostle the cable with a "this accessory is not supported by apple" error message like with chargers
- elcapitan 10y ago
  Or you buy cheap ransomware earphones and hear a "to unlock your iPhone, please pay $xxx dollars to..".
neverminder 10y ago
Another downside is that when phone is in the pocket with headphones connected it is quite easy to accidentally yank it out - the jack turning around in the socket doesn't help the situation. I have USB Type-C devices for over a year now and so far the sockets are rock solid unlike micro USB used to be.

kylecordes 10y ago

It's hard to see the upside of this, from a phone buyer end-user point of view. By looking at a USB C and 3.5mm jack next to each other for a moment, it is obvious this will enable only a minuscule additional thinning of devices. But at what cost? Most likely: Significantly more expensive headphones for at least the next several years and possibly longer. If I were a headphone manufacturer I would be thrilled by this development. As a headphone buyer, less so. In most cases we will give up being able to charge and listen at the same time, unless willing to add an additional external dongle. Meanwhile manufacturers will continue their, uh, curious belief that cell phone battery capacities are anywhere near good enough.

Eric_WVGG 10y ago
It's not minuscule at all. The 3.5mm jack is deeper than even the old dock connectors, and with a device as small as a phone every bit of space counts.

joesmo 10y ago

Having a single non-standard, unsupported (usb c) port for everything isn't progress, it's regress. No one wants this, especially for headphones but Apple and another clueless follower are pushing it anyway because they have the clout and they think people will buy it. Sounds like FireWire to me. That was an amazing success. Or thunderbolt. Or thunderbolt 2. Yeah I think it's clear by now Apple has an abysmal track record with such changes. Throw in something any knowledgeable consumer is against like removing the headphone jack and now you have a recipe for disaster. I hope so, not because I like others' pain but because this change, along with others, marks an anti consumer shift in policy. No longer does Apple even care what the consumer wants because it has the zombie sheep factor of millions of clueless idiots who will buy products that are clearly not in their best interests and require extra investment for no reason. Then again, Apple is hardly alone in such markets.

mpitt 10y ago
> non-standard Check again. "The USB Type-C Specification 1.0 was published by the USB Implementers Forum and was finalized in August 2014." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Type-C https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Type-C)
- nix0n 10y ago
  USB Type C is a de jure standard only: the de facto standards are 3.5mm TRSS for analog audio and Micro-USB for charging and PC connections.
Hondor 10y ago
That's always been Apple's advantage. Trying to serve everybody's needs is what Windows was for a long time. Apple has a history of breaking compatibility and screwing over the few holdouts of the old products. I think that freedom is what allows them to design things that people really like. Now they have "zombie sheep", they can do even better without being forced to follow the market.
TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
> Apple has an abysmal track record with such changes Really? Apple went all-USB, people complained. USB mice and keyboard became the standard. Apple dropped the floppy drive, people complained. No floppy drive became the standard. Apple dropped the CD drive, people complained. No CD drive (on laptops) became the standard. Apple dropped full-size display connectors, people complained. This, too, became the standard on laptops.

tzs 10y ago

> And here's the problem: The DAC and amp inside that $50 pair of digital headphones are not going to be of the same quality as those in a $500 pair. Nor will the sound they output be afforded the same time and effort. Instead of trusting in your phone's DAC and amp to output decent-quality audio at decent volumes, you'll now be contending with the choices of a company that has had to cut corners to put out headphones on a tight budget. This sounds like a good reason for the change rather than an argument against it. Audio performance is determined by the quality of the DAC, the amp, the speakers, and the enclosure. If the DAC and amp are part of the headphones, then all factors affecting audio performance are independent of the phone. You can decide what level of audio performance you want and then buy headphones that provide that performance. Also, many people use the same set of headphones with multiple devices. When I'm buying devices I consider how they fit in with my other devices. If I have a higher end tablet I might buy a lower end phone because many of the things I would have done on the phone had I only had a phone will be done on the tablet. Device makers tend to put the better DACs and amps in the higher end devices, and so under the current approach if I want the best audio on all my devices, all of them have to be higher end devices (and I have to get expensive headphones too).

dingaling 10y ago
> You can decide what level of audio performance you want and then buy headphones that provide that performance. That's a great point. And for people like me who don't use audio on their phones ( other than the occasional voice call ) it means I'm not paying for other people's use-cases.

rcarmo 10y ago

I've been using a SonyEricsson MW600 Bluetooth adapter for my headphones for a couple of years - it pairs with up to three devices, the audio quality is pretty good (audiophile colleagues tried it with their hideously expensive headphones and said it was "surprisingly decent"), the battery lasts me around a week depending on use, and it charges via a standard micro-USB connector. Love it so much that when the tieclip-style clip broke, I ordered a new clip off eBay instead (Sony has a couple of successors to it, but I'll pass until this one completely dies on me). I think this is a more interesting solution than changing physical connectors.

UnoriginalGuy 10y ago

I don't want a thinner phone. Cellphone thinness reached the "good enough" stage a very long time ago. Then all making them thinner did was start to make compromises for that thinness. For one example, while components and software continue to get more and more power efficient, they're removing more raw battery capacity within the phone so they can shave 1mm. No 3.5mm is a deal breaker for me. I don't want to have to remember to charge my headphones, or add extra weight to my IEMs, plus now I cannot charge and listen at the same time (or use the port for anything else). All this move will result in is more people sitting on public transport blasting audio through the front speakers because their headphones died or they cannot afford $100 IEMs or $150 headphones. I think it will be extremely telling if the iPhone continues to ship with free IEMs, if not then that is proof enough that even Apple cannot make the economics work. Overall this is a horrible step backwards.

kalleboo 10y ago
> Cellphone thinness reached the "good enough" stage a very long time ago. Then all making them thinner did was start to make compromises for that thinness 100% agree. Instead of my phone being 1.5mm thicker, I'm carrying around a huge silicon case with a battery and a bunch of circuitry included. Although I'm sure that's all based on studies that 85% of users don't need more battery life on 90% of the days out of the year, and 96% of users when confronted with a prototype phone that was 0.5mm thicker replied "oooh I would buy this". The tyranny of the market. That said... > No 3.5mm is a deal breaker for me I switched to using bluetooth headphones in 2006 (was that really a decade ago?), so the disappearance of the 3.5mm jack in particular doesn't affect me at all.

jjuel 10y ago

I must be one of the few who is actually not against this move. I am all for not having a 3.5mm anymore. I really see no need. Things should start becoming more wireless. Heck get rid of the usb-c/lightning and just use wireless charging.

zaroth 10y ago

I assume the switch away from 3.5mm will come along with the elimination of the physical home button (replaced with a purely force-touch version) and the extension of the screen to more fully cover the full face of the phone. I do hope they put a lightning connector on both ends. That way we're not losing a port but at least trading it for something which is arguably better. I frequently could use a top-side power port, e.g when the phone is sitting in a cup-holder showing GPS but needs a charge, and the app won't rotate 180'. For backward compatibility, could the lightning port drive an analog output that would just require an analog adaptor to allow connecting existing headphones?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

mordant 10y ago

The elephant in the room is Bluetooth - Bluetooth 5.0 spec is coming out this week, I think. And there are the codecs like AptX, etc. I'm shocked at how good the sound quality is on my Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Bluetooth headphones. If anyone had told me that I could get that kind of dynamic range and nuance in the audio over Bluetooth, I wouldn't have believed him. And that's with Bluetooth 4.x.