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So... buy an FM transmitter that has Bluetooth as an input? Or replace your head unit with one that has Bluetooth? There are plenty of solutions that exist to s

So... buy an FM transmitter that has Bluetooth as an input? Or replace your head unit with one that has Bluetooth? There are plenty of solutions that exist to solve this problem for very little money. I did this myself for less than $50 in parts on an older car I owned. Choosing a phone purely based on the outdated technology of your car is much more shortsighted in my view. At some point (which, has already happened with 3.5mm jacks largely) the world moves on. Also, Bluetooth IS the universal standard. It's in every single car that has been sold recently, and has been for years and years. Hell, I'd argue Bluetooth has been more universal in phones for longer than 3.5mm jacks. Early phones often had fully functional Bluetooth but had weird proprietary aux jacks (2.5mm, that weird Nokia plug, proprietary USB extensions, etc).

bigstrat2003 3y ago
Or, hear me out... I could buy phones which use the universal standard we have had for audio connections for 40 years. I have neither the skills nor the inclination to replace my car stereo, and I can only guess you've never used an FM transmitter if you are seriously suggesting that as an option. They suck, full stop. Meanwhile, I stick to phones which aren't designed by people so short-sighted as to think that everyone has Bluetooth available. I genuinely have no idea how you can call Bluetooth a universal standard with a straight face. It's not even close. A 3.5mm isn't truly universal (little or nothing is), but it's as close as you can get. Ditching the latter in favor of the former is absolutely asinine. Seriously man, 10 years ago is not that long in real world terms. It's a long time in the tech industry, but the rest of the world simply does not move on at that pace. As an industry, we need to pull our heads from our asses and realize that most people aren't techies living in a major city for whom anything invented more than 5 years ago is old, and anything invented more than 10 years ago is positively ancient. That simply is not how the world works.
- Kirby64 3y ago
  We must be shopping at different stores. My experience with cassette adapters (and I tried quite a few different ones, back in the day) was always muddy, bad audio quality. FM transmitters (good ones anyways) never had that problem. As for Bluetooth as a standard: what, exactly, is not a standard about the audio portion of it? You can take any device that supports Bluetooth audio output and connect it to an audio playback device (speaker, head unit, whatever) and it will just... work. Super old speaker to brand new phone? Plays audio fine. Super old phone to brand new head unit? Same thing. This isn't some 'big techy is out of touch with reality' thing. We just have alternatives that are perfectly practical for edge cases where you absolutely need that aux jack, and the vast majority of consumers have moved on years ago.

bigstrat2003 3y ago

Or, hear me out... I could buy phones which use the universal standard we have had for audio connections for 40 years. I have neither the skills nor the inclination to replace my car stereo, and I can only guess you've never used an FM transmitter if you are seriously suggesting that as an option. They suck, full stop. Meanwhile, I stick to phones which aren't designed by people so short-sighted as to think that everyone has Bluetooth available. I genuinely have no idea how you can call Bluetooth a universal standard with a straight face. It's not even close. A 3.5mm isn't truly universal (little or nothing is), but it's as close as you can get. Ditching the latter in favor of the former is absolutely asinine. Seriously man, 10 years ago is not that long in real world terms. It's a long time in the tech industry, but the rest of the world simply does not move on at that pace. As an industry, we need to pull our heads from our asses and realize that most people aren't techies living in a major city for whom anything invented more than 5 years ago is old, and anything invented more than 10 years ago is positively ancient. That simply is not how the world works.

Kirby64 3y ago
We must be shopping at different stores. My experience with cassette adapters (and I tried quite a few different ones, back in the day) was always muddy, bad audio quality. FM transmitters (good ones anyways) never had that problem. As for Bluetooth as a standard: what, exactly, is not a standard about the audio portion of it? You can take any device that supports Bluetooth audio output and connect it to an audio playback device (speaker, head unit, whatever) and it will just... work. Super old speaker to brand new phone? Plays audio fine. Super old phone to brand new head unit? Same thing. This isn't some 'big techy is out of touch with reality' thing. We just have alternatives that are perfectly practical for edge cases where you absolutely need that aux jack, and the vast majority of consumers have moved on years ago.