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I think the argument that is made is that it's stopping phones becoming thinner - which looking at the size of the jack on my Nexus 5X, I can believe. However,
by elthran 10y ago
I think the argument that is made is that it's stopping phones becoming thinner - which looking at the size of the jack on my Nexus 5X, I can believe.
However, personally, I'll live with a thicker phone if it means I can have a larger capacity battery, let alone a 3.5mm jack
- TheGirondin 10y agoPhones have gotten thin enough. I would rather have more battery capacity and more drop/screen durability.
- maccard 10y agoActions speak louder than words. People continue to say they want more durable phones and longer battery life, but continue to buy thinner and shinier phones.
- SeanBoocock 10y agoI'd be interested to hear and read about examples of this being tested in the market. Have consumers been presented with a choice between phone thinness and battery life on the otherwise same phone hardware?
- trowawee 10y agohttp://www.wired.com/2012/04/why-is-htc-choosing-phone-thinness-over-battery-life/ http://www.wired.com/2012/04/why-is-htc-choosing-phone-thinn... > According to Kilburn, HTC’s consumer research shows people prefer thin smartphones — between 8 mm and 10 mm thick — as opposed to thicker devices with longer battery life. One data point, but that's what HTC's claiming their customer research shows, and Apple's trends suggest their internal data points the same way.
- CaptSpify 10y agoMaybe I missed it in the article, but it's interesting to me that people aren't give 2 versions of the same device to choose from. That's like saying people prefer the color blue, because they keep buying blue Accords over red Civics. There's clearly more than the one option going into the choice here.
- dingaling 10y ago> between 8 mm and 10 mm thick That's not particularly thin, both Vivo and Oppo have models under 5mm. The former even managed to keep the 3.5 jack in the 4.75mm X5.
- prodmerc 10y agoWell, look at the RAZR Maxx - people still went for the slightly thinner RAZR with half the battery capacity...
- Grishnakh 10y agoSounds like a good point, however, what was the price differential between the two? If the double-capacity version cost twice as much, then obviously not many people are going to buy it. I think it'd be interesting to have an experiment where some flagship phone (like the Galaxy S*) is sold in two versions, one with double the battery life but a little thicker (and cases for both sizes are available), at the exact same price, to see which one people really prefer. Personally, I'd certainly go for the double-capacity version, but considering how popular iPhones are, I'm under no illusion that my tastes represent the mainstream.
- marcosdumay 10y agoWhen I last brought a Motorolla phone, the Maxx was a bit more than double the price of the similar, but thinner one I brought.
- Grishnakh 10y agoYeah, that would explain why the thinner one sold better. It's not because people value thin, it's because people value saving money.
- TheGirondin 10y agoAnd then they buy a thick phone case to put it in.
- bsimpson 10y agoFrom the same rant: > As an aside, whatever the merits of this decision, it’s not about device thinness. The iPhone 6 is the thinnest iPhone to date at 6.9mm. The iPod Touch has a headphone jack and is just 6.1mm thick. The iPod Nano: 5.4mm. The analog headphone jack is more costly in terms of depth than thickness.
- creshal 10y agoThe whole discussion is based on the dishonest claim that it's either 3.5mm or no analog. We already have a standardized 2.5mm jack to replace the 3.5mm one in space-constrained environments (just like 6.35mm is still around for hifi setups). Why is everyone pretending we need to ditch analog audio completely for smaller phones when we can just start using 2.5mm (again!)?
- gambiting 10y agoI feel like it's very prophetic that we already had 2.5mm jacks on phones and everyone I spoke to(me included) hated them because you had to use an adapter for your normal headphones. It doesn't matter if your phone has a 2.5mm jack, usb-c, lightning or any other connector - as long as it's not the most common standard on the market it's going to be disliked.
- trowawee 10y ago> as long as it's not the most common standard on the market it's going to be disliked. Eh. Apple's done this before, as Gruber points out, and they basically won. Nobody at this point (at least, that I hear) complains about Lightning cables. Ditching the 3.5mm jack might be a bad idea, but Apple does have a track record of doing this, which is probably why they think they can get away with it now.
- pyre 10y agoWhat did Lightning cables usurp that was as ubiquitous as the 3.5mm audio jack?
- dragonwriter 10y ago> Nobody at this point (at least, that I hear) complains about Lightning cables. Lightning was a proprietary Apple connector that replaced the older proprietary 30-pin Apple connector. Not at all comparable to removing the 3.5mm jack.
- thirdsun 10y agoIf we do that we might as well use a lightning to 3.5 jack-adapter since audio equipment and headphones with 2.5 jack are very rare. I'm all for keeping the jack output, but using a 2.5 one doesn't solve the problem.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoAny hole in the phone case compromises reliability. Water, dirt, static electricity. Holes are hated by hardware designers. In Apple's case with their stress on look and feel I'm surprised the designers haven't been able to ditch the headphone jack years ago, simply based on "it looks better without the hole".
- smt88 10y agoI've owned a few dozen phones for work and personal use, including some old flip phones. All of them had headphone jacks, and none of them failed due to the headphone jack. I've never even heard of a headphone jack being the point of failure. Along those lines, I've had several waterproof phones with headphone jacks (and no rubber covers, either).
- unwiredben 10y agoI worked on several of the Palm smartphones. The original Pre was notorious for having the headphone jack fail, and some of their older Treo devices also often had jack failures. This wouldn't kill the phone, but did really affect its usability. Palm tried to remove the jack with their ultrasmall Veer phone which had audio routed over a magnetic connector. You had to use an adapter to plug in headphones and it blocked off the power connector. The Veer was barely launched before HP pulled the "plug" on the product line, alas.
- ju-st 10y agoThe thickest feature on most phones is the camera