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Yeah do people really use their headphone jack? Most everyone that I know in my circle uses bluetooth headphones now. Some of them are quite good...maybe not au

Yeah do people really use their headphone jack? Most everyone that I know in my circle uses bluetooth headphones now. Some of them are quite good...maybe not audiophile level, but if I wanted to be an audiophile, I would listen on a proper AV receiver with an amp.

jefftk 6y ago
Bluetooth headphones for calls add substantial latency. I don't care about audio quality, but latency, often 1/3s round trip, makes turn taking in calls much harder.
rurp 6y ago
The main reasons I like a headphone jack are: 1) My car stereo doesn't have Bluetooth. 2) Very few earbuds fit my ears comfortably. After a lot of experimenting I've found a couple wired models that do fit my ears fine. Given the cost and limited selection of wireless earbuds, finding a good pair will be a chore, if I even can. 3) Once in a while having two ports is handy. There are probably dongle solutions to 1 and 3, and maybe I can find some that fit my ears well. But that all sounds like way more hassle than just not buying phones that have been designed to exclude some pretty basic functionality.
- boring_twenties 6y ago
  > 1) My car stereo doesn't have Bluetooth. This you can fix easily with a $30 dongle that stays in a car, some of them will power on and start playing from where you left off when power is applied (i.e., when you start the car, provided you leave it plugged in). I don't use Bluetooth headphones, but for the car, it's perfect.
libraryatnight 6y ago
So, pre-covid, when I used headphones more, I used the jack a lot because I'm just awful at keeping devices charged. I also have saved many a social music situation when someone was having bluetooth pairing issues and I just busted out my aux cable, plugged and and blammo the party has music. I'm an IT guy, could I have fixed the bluetooth pairing? Probably. But not quicker than just plugging in. So we're out there, THERE ARE DOZENS OF US! :)
d0gbread 6y ago
Travel is another reason. I use my bluetooth noise cancelling Sony headphones but being able to just plug in with zero battery use feels like magic. 13 hour flight, airports, etc... fewer dongles, fewer things to charge, etc.
- bigiain 6y ago
  There is very little more frustrating to me than getting 9 hours into a 13 hour flight, and having the batteries in my noise canceller run flat. Airliners are _loud_... (I have an inexpensive set of cabled noise cancelling earphones that run off a single AAA battery, which always gets packed in my carryon...)
- slowmotiony 6y ago
  That's a weird example since the model you mentioned still uses battery when you plug it in via cable. Otherwise noise canceling wouldn't work.
boring_twenties 6y ago
Yeah but with Bluetooth headphones you are paying the same price as audiophile headphones, but getting mediocre quality. A couple of phones did have a decent dac/amp combo built in (HTC 10, and some LG phones), FWIW.
- ck425 6y ago
  My HTC 10 died a couple of months back. I actually replaced it with a Pixel 3a (and Dragonfly Black) Loved that phone, the default audio was fantastic.
  - boring_twenties 6y ago
    Yeah, I too used the HTC M8 and then 10, because of the audio. Since then I have been using the NextDrive SpectraX. I highly recommend it, it sounds even better than the HTC 10, and now I can use (almost) whatever phone I want. edit: Oops, I missed that you specified you were already using a DragonFly. Is that not as good as the HTC 10 was? I would have thought it'd be better...
    - ck425 6y ago
      It was, lost it last weekend unfortunately. Replaced it with a Speaka, which so far is basically a slightly better dragonfly black for half the price. I still appreciate a good headphone jack though. The usb-c connectors aren't always reliable and ignoring inline controls. A phone with a solid DAC & amp would be best. Unfortunately it seems only LG make those these days and their Android skin is horrible.
      - boring_twenties 6y ago
        I too, enjoyed having it builtin with the HTC 10, but having basically zero choice in phones became a serious problem. One thing with the 10 was that security updates were basically nonexistent. You got one or two major OS updates, but nothing in between, and nothing after. Lots of phones have this problem, but then again some don't. Worse than that, the Oreo update completely broke my phone. I went from 2-3 days of battery life with my typical, light usage to something like 12-16 hours with NO usage, screen completely off the entire time. Fixing that required downgrading to Nougat, which required S-OFF, which required me physically mailing my phone to a hacker group and paying around $35. And of course this left me a year or more behind in security patches. Based on the xda thread about this, it affected lots of people, but was never acknowledged or fixed. Consider yourself lucky :) The LG phones are, one would hope, not this bad. But still, my takeaway from the experience is that tethering (heh) oneself to a single model or line or phones is really, really bad. The inconvenience of the dongle is, in retrospect, only slightly annoying in comparison. And there can be significant cost savings. My Moto G6 and SpectraX together cost less than one of LG's phones, and I expect to reuse the SpectraX with my next phone as well. Buying a new DAC/AMP every 1-3 years doesn't really seem right, does it?

jefftk 6y ago

Bluetooth headphones for calls add substantial latency. I don't care about audio quality, but latency, often 1/3s round trip, makes turn taking in calls much harder.

rurp 6y ago

The main reasons I like a headphone jack are: 1) My car stereo doesn't have Bluetooth. 2) Very few earbuds fit my ears comfortably. After a lot of experimenting I've found a couple wired models that do fit my ears fine. Given the cost and limited selection of wireless earbuds, finding a good pair will be a chore, if I even can. 3) Once in a while having two ports is handy. There are probably dongle solutions to 1 and 3, and maybe I can find some that fit my ears well. But that all sounds like way more hassle than just not buying phones that have been designed to exclude some pretty basic functionality.

boring_twenties 6y ago
> 1) My car stereo doesn't have Bluetooth. This you can fix easily with a $30 dongle that stays in a car, some of them will power on and start playing from where you left off when power is applied (i.e., when you start the car, provided you leave it plugged in). I don't use Bluetooth headphones, but for the car, it's perfect.

libraryatnight 6y ago

So, pre-covid, when I used headphones more, I used the jack a lot because I'm just awful at keeping devices charged. I also have saved many a social music situation when someone was having bluetooth pairing issues and I just busted out my aux cable, plugged and and blammo the party has music. I'm an IT guy, could I have fixed the bluetooth pairing? Probably. But not quicker than just plugging in. So we're out there, THERE ARE DOZENS OF US! :)

d0gbread 6y ago

Travel is another reason. I use my bluetooth noise cancelling Sony headphones but being able to just plug in with zero battery use feels like magic. 13 hour flight, airports, etc... fewer dongles, fewer things to charge, etc.

bigiain 6y ago
There is very little more frustrating to me than getting 9 hours into a 13 hour flight, and having the batteries in my noise canceller run flat. Airliners are _loud_... (I have an inexpensive set of cabled noise cancelling earphones that run off a single AAA battery, which always gets packed in my carryon...)
slowmotiony 6y ago
That's a weird example since the model you mentioned still uses battery when you plug it in via cable. Otherwise noise canceling wouldn't work.

boring_twenties 6y ago

Yeah but with Bluetooth headphones you are paying the same price as audiophile headphones, but getting mediocre quality. A couple of phones did have a decent dac/amp combo built in (HTC 10, and some LG phones), FWIW.

ck425 6y ago
My HTC 10 died a couple of months back. I actually replaced it with a Pixel 3a (and Dragonfly Black) Loved that phone, the default audio was fantastic.
- boring_twenties 6y ago
  Yeah, I too used the HTC M8 and then 10, because of the audio. Since then I have been using the NextDrive SpectraX. I highly recommend it, it sounds even better than the HTC 10, and now I can use (almost) whatever phone I want. edit: Oops, I missed that you specified you were already using a DragonFly. Is that not as good as the HTC 10 was? I would have thought it'd be better...
  - ck425 6y ago
    It was, lost it last weekend unfortunately. Replaced it with a Speaka, which so far is basically a slightly better dragonfly black for half the price. I still appreciate a good headphone jack though. The usb-c connectors aren't always reliable and ignoring inline controls. A phone with a solid DAC & amp would be best. Unfortunately it seems only LG make those these days and their Android skin is horrible.
    - boring_twenties 6y ago
      I too, enjoyed having it builtin with the HTC 10, but having basically zero choice in phones became a serious problem. One thing with the 10 was that security updates were basically nonexistent. You got one or two major OS updates, but nothing in between, and nothing after. Lots of phones have this problem, but then again some don't. Worse than that, the Oreo update completely broke my phone. I went from 2-3 days of battery life with my typical, light usage to something like 12-16 hours with NO usage, screen completely off the entire time. Fixing that required downgrading to Nougat, which required S-OFF, which required me physically mailing my phone to a hacker group and paying around $35. And of course this left me a year or more behind in security patches. Based on the xda thread about this, it affected lots of people, but was never acknowledged or fixed. Consider yourself lucky :) The LG phones are, one would hope, not this bad. But still, my takeaway from the experience is that tethering (heh) oneself to a single model or line or phones is really, really bad. The inconvenience of the dongle is, in retrospect, only slightly annoying in comparison. And there can be significant cost savings. My Moto G6 and SpectraX together cost less than one of LG's phones, and I expect to reuse the SpectraX with my next phone as well. Buying a new DAC/AMP every 1-3 years doesn't really seem right, does it?