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To be more precise than "they don't work because Apple is terrible," the two competing pinout standards are CTIA (previously meaning Cellular Telephone Industri

To be more precise than "they don't work because Apple is terrible," the two competing pinout standards are CTIA (previously meaning Cellular Telephone Industries Association) and OMTP (Open Mobile Terminal Platform). According to Wikipedia, the OMTP devices include: * old Nokia (and also Lumia starting from the 2nd gen) * old Samsung (2012 Chromebooks) * old Sony Ericsson (2010 and 2011 Xperias) * Sony (PlayStation Vita) * OnePlus One * Xbox One controller with head phone jack * iPhone sold in China and CTIA devices include: * Apple * HTC * LG * Blackberry * latest Nokia (including 1st gen Lumia as well as later models) * latest Samsung * Jolla * Sony (Dualshock 4) * Microsoft (including Surface and Xbox One controller with chat adapter) * most Android phones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_connector_(audio)#TRRS_standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_connector_(audio)#TRRS_s... I haven't personally tested most of those, but IIRC when I had a Surface Pro the iPhone TRRS earbuds worked fine with it.

stonogo 10y ago
CTIA is a post-facto 'standardization' of what used to be known as 'AHJ,' which came about once companies needed a name for 'Apple-compatible' without actually naming Apple. CTIA is primarily a lobbying organization, and their past hits include laws that made it easier for the US government to surveil email and an attempt to get the US government to shut off TV broadcasting entirely. OMTP was an actual standard from a real-life standards body -- the same one that brought us micro-USB across all non-Apple phones. We lost functionality when we lost OMTP; imagine a world where you had dedicated buttons for track forward and back. Having been involved in the design phase of devices that supported each standard, I miss OMTP.
- comex 10y ago
  > We lost functionality when we lost OMTP; imagine a world where you had dedicated buttons for track forward and back. There's one argument, albeit small, for killing the headphone jack. USB HID has included track control keycodes since forever, so USB earphones should be able to control playback by appearing as a HID device... I think... Of course, there too Apple is off doing their own thing with Lightning.
  - stonogo 10y ago
    You can indeed -- and Nokia was producing such devices in the mid-2000s. There are even some models of Nokia phone that did not have a headphone jack; they had a micro-USB port that was used for both charging the phone and attaching headphones. Sound familiar? The peak of that approach was the Nokia WH-501, which consisted of a micro-USB connector at one end and a clip on the other, which had several audio controls. IIRC: volume up/down, call answer/hangup, mute toggle, track forward, and track back. It came with a regular set of 3.5mm earbuds, but of course you could use whatever headset you wanted, as the mic was built into the clip. At the time I remember someone had written a linux driver for this device, which worked quite well. So, ten years ago, we had a cross-platform standards-based headset with audio controls and reconfigurable earpieces. Like I said, a lot has been lost in the recent past.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      From an European point of view, the mobile world was set back a decade (if not more) by the tech media's fawning over Apple and Google's entry. This in large part because they built products for the US market, and it was lagging the rest of the world massively.
      - kuschku 10y ago
        It’s not just the phone market. Almost always when a US company enters a global market, it leads to a massive setback for the rest of the world. Think about credit cards – Europe has been slowly migrating to VISA and MasterCards with their insane fees, away from the old EuroCheque and EC Card system (which had lower fees, and better safety). At the same time, every German company in the EU leads to worse results for the countries that are yet even more advanced, say, the Netherlands (Net Neutrality comes to mind).
        rocqua 10y ago
        As a dutchman, I kinda envy Germany. I feel they handle quite a few things better. Regarding net-neutrality, T-mobile is currently actively zero-rating music in the Netherlands.
- nl 10y ago
  imagine a world where you had dedicated buttons for track forward and back This is standardized in Bluetooth headphones (although I'm not sure what Apple has done with their new AirBuds or whatever they are called).
  - throwanem 10y ago
    AirPods, and as far as I know they don't support direct volume control; they certainly have no buttons, and much has been made of the claim that they only offer volume control via Siri. On the other hand, a cheap Bluetooth media playback remote works fine, and a decent one can run for months on a coin cell. I've been using one with a variety of Bluetooth earbuds during my commute, since that'a a lot more convenient than digging out my phone when I'm bundled up for winter temperatures. At this point I wouldn't even want wireless earbuds with a wired control. What would be the point?
    - nl 10y ago
      Why do you need a separate bluetooth remote? All my bluetooth headphones (3x bud types from different manufactures and one on-ear set) have remotes built into them.
      - jon-wood 10y ago
        Sony have a range of what are essentially Bluetooth 3.5mm jack's with some controls and a small display on them. They come with some headphones but will also work with anything else. They're fantastic, my only qualm is that I'm forever losing them!
      - throwanem 10y ago
        Because I'm wearing a balaclava, a beanie, a coat hood, and gloves. Poking at tiny buttons on a thing that's in my earhole isn't really on the menu.
        coldtea 10y ago
        >a balaclava, a beanie, a coat hood, and gloves I think parent asked why the average person needs them, not about why outliers in the arctic circle would.
KeytarHero 10y ago
That only covers the mic/ground pinout, though. As far as the remote buttons working goes, assuming the info in the post is correct, it is Apple not wanting to play fair: > Additionally, Apple has patents on their TRRS connection- in fact on the resistances (the actual ohm resistance in-line on the controls- not to get scientific or anything) so that the headphones are designed to work only with Apple products
- sern 10y ago
  I think a better reason than "not wanting to play fair" is that the Apple implementation preserves the correct operation of the mic even while the remote is being pressed. Apple does it using a custom chip within the remote that superimposes an ultrasonic tone on the mic signal which can be cleanly filtered out, whereas resistor-based signalling works by shorting the mic signal to ground which either mutes or attenuates the mic (depending on the specific button and resistance involved).
  - kelnos 10y ago
    Patenting something like that is basically the definition of "not wanting to play fair": to make a compatible device, you have to indulge Apple's rent-seeking. Patents on standards tend to cause more standards to spring up, which overall increases both consumer confusion (wait, is this one compatible with my device?) and costs for manufacturers (either by requiring extra hardware to detect what it's plugged into, or extra SKUs that hurt economies of scale). I'm certainly not an "all patents are bad" kind of person, but this one is definitely a bad patent that Apple filed for anti-competitive purposes that ends up hurting everyone but them.
    - disgusting_guy 10y ago
      I disagree - a simple solution exists, which means you cannot use the mic and a button at the same time. Apple invested time and money to solve this problem in a non-trivial way; it seems perfectly reasonable to me that headset manufacturers wanting to use Apple's solution should pay royalties
skykooler 10y ago
So that's why my Jolla doesn't work with my old Nokia headphones. I was wondering, considering they were the same engineers.
anonymfus 10y ago
Actually most Lumias support both standards. Also USB-C devices with alternate mode for analog USB-C-to-3.5mm adaptors must support both standards (because reversing connector swaps these contacts).
- digi_owl 10y ago
  The more i learn about USB-C the more i feel that something went badly wrong during its development...
  - coldtea 10y ago
    Yes, god forbid they tried to make it as universal and as flexible as possible.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      Tried perhaps, but missed the goal massively. The thing is not reversible in the mechanical sense, it just fakes it by having the various devices argue among each other what way is "up". This so that rather than having two connectors for each wire, there is two full sets of wires. On top of this OEMs can mix and match speeds, connectors and power delivery as they see fit. So a C port is not guaranteed to deliver 3.1 speeds or support for Power Delivery voltages. The whole thing is a confused accident waiting to happen.
      - spronkey 10y ago
        Amen to that. Fast forward a year or two and many consumers will be more confused than ever.

stonogo 10y ago

CTIA is a post-facto 'standardization' of what used to be known as 'AHJ,' which came about once companies needed a name for 'Apple-compatible' without actually naming Apple. CTIA is primarily a lobbying organization, and their past hits include laws that made it easier for the US government to surveil email and an attempt to get the US government to shut off TV broadcasting entirely. OMTP was an actual standard from a real-life standards body -- the same one that brought us micro-USB across all non-Apple phones. We lost functionality when we lost OMTP; imagine a world where you had dedicated buttons for track forward and back. Having been involved in the design phase of devices that supported each standard, I miss OMTP.

comex 10y ago
> We lost functionality when we lost OMTP; imagine a world where you had dedicated buttons for track forward and back. There's one argument, albeit small, for killing the headphone jack. USB HID has included track control keycodes since forever, so USB earphones should be able to control playback by appearing as a HID device... I think... Of course, there too Apple is off doing their own thing with Lightning.
- stonogo 10y ago
  You can indeed -- and Nokia was producing such devices in the mid-2000s. There are even some models of Nokia phone that did not have a headphone jack; they had a micro-USB port that was used for both charging the phone and attaching headphones. Sound familiar? The peak of that approach was the Nokia WH-501, which consisted of a micro-USB connector at one end and a clip on the other, which had several audio controls. IIRC: volume up/down, call answer/hangup, mute toggle, track forward, and track back. It came with a regular set of 3.5mm earbuds, but of course you could use whatever headset you wanted, as the mic was built into the clip. At the time I remember someone had written a linux driver for this device, which worked quite well. So, ten years ago, we had a cross-platform standards-based headset with audio controls and reconfigurable earpieces. Like I said, a lot has been lost in the recent past.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    From an European point of view, the mobile world was set back a decade (if not more) by the tech media's fawning over Apple and Google's entry. This in large part because they built products for the US market, and it was lagging the rest of the world massively.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      It’s not just the phone market. Almost always when a US company enters a global market, it leads to a massive setback for the rest of the world. Think about credit cards – Europe has been slowly migrating to VISA and MasterCards with their insane fees, away from the old EuroCheque and EC Card system (which had lower fees, and better safety). At the same time, every German company in the EU leads to worse results for the countries that are yet even more advanced, say, the Netherlands (Net Neutrality comes to mind).
      - rocqua 10y ago
        As a dutchman, I kinda envy Germany. I feel they handle quite a few things better. Regarding net-neutrality, T-mobile is currently actively zero-rating music in the Netherlands.
nl 10y ago
imagine a world where you had dedicated buttons for track forward and back This is standardized in Bluetooth headphones (although I'm not sure what Apple has done with their new AirBuds or whatever they are called).
- throwanem 10y ago
  AirPods, and as far as I know they don't support direct volume control; they certainly have no buttons, and much has been made of the claim that they only offer volume control via Siri. On the other hand, a cheap Bluetooth media playback remote works fine, and a decent one can run for months on a coin cell. I've been using one with a variety of Bluetooth earbuds during my commute, since that'a a lot more convenient than digging out my phone when I'm bundled up for winter temperatures. At this point I wouldn't even want wireless earbuds with a wired control. What would be the point?
  - nl 10y ago
    Why do you need a separate bluetooth remote? All my bluetooth headphones (3x bud types from different manufactures and one on-ear set) have remotes built into them.
    - jon-wood 10y ago
      Sony have a range of what are essentially Bluetooth 3.5mm jack's with some controls and a small display on them. They come with some headphones but will also work with anything else. They're fantastic, my only qualm is that I'm forever losing them!
    - throwanem 10y ago
      Because I'm wearing a balaclava, a beanie, a coat hood, and gloves. Poking at tiny buttons on a thing that's in my earhole isn't really on the menu.
      - coldtea 10y ago
        >a balaclava, a beanie, a coat hood, and gloves I think parent asked why the average person needs them, not about why outliers in the arctic circle would.

KeytarHero 10y ago

That only covers the mic/ground pinout, though. As far as the remote buttons working goes, assuming the info in the post is correct, it is Apple not wanting to play fair: > Additionally, Apple has patents on their TRRS connection- in fact on the resistances (the actual ohm resistance in-line on the controls- not to get scientific or anything) so that the headphones are designed to work only with Apple products

sern 10y ago
I think a better reason than "not wanting to play fair" is that the Apple implementation preserves the correct operation of the mic even while the remote is being pressed. Apple does it using a custom chip within the remote that superimposes an ultrasonic tone on the mic signal which can be cleanly filtered out, whereas resistor-based signalling works by shorting the mic signal to ground which either mutes or attenuates the mic (depending on the specific button and resistance involved).
- kelnos 10y ago
  Patenting something like that is basically the definition of "not wanting to play fair": to make a compatible device, you have to indulge Apple's rent-seeking. Patents on standards tend to cause more standards to spring up, which overall increases both consumer confusion (wait, is this one compatible with my device?) and costs for manufacturers (either by requiring extra hardware to detect what it's plugged into, or extra SKUs that hurt economies of scale). I'm certainly not an "all patents are bad" kind of person, but this one is definitely a bad patent that Apple filed for anti-competitive purposes that ends up hurting everyone but them.
  - disgusting_guy 10y ago
    I disagree - a simple solution exists, which means you cannot use the mic and a button at the same time. Apple invested time and money to solve this problem in a non-trivial way; it seems perfectly reasonable to me that headset manufacturers wanting to use Apple's solution should pay royalties

skykooler 10y ago

So that's why my Jolla doesn't work with my old Nokia headphones. I was wondering, considering they were the same engineers.

anonymfus 10y ago

Actually most Lumias support both standards. Also USB-C devices with alternate mode for analog USB-C-to-3.5mm adaptors must support both standards (because reversing connector swaps these contacts).

digi_owl 10y ago
The more i learn about USB-C the more i feel that something went badly wrong during its development...
- coldtea 10y ago
  Yes, god forbid they tried to make it as universal and as flexible as possible.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    Tried perhaps, but missed the goal massively. The thing is not reversible in the mechanical sense, it just fakes it by having the various devices argue among each other what way is "up". This so that rather than having two connectors for each wire, there is two full sets of wires. On top of this OEMs can mix and match speeds, connectors and power delivery as they see fit. So a C port is not guaranteed to deliver 3.1 speeds or support for Power Delivery voltages. The whole thing is a confused accident waiting to happen.
    - spronkey 10y ago
      Amen to that. Fast forward a year or two and many consumers will be more confused than ever.