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Everyone gets to feel their own feelings, but there's just so much that doesn't resonate with me here... > I can’t use my Bluetooth earbuds while they’re charg

Everyone gets to feel their own feelings, but there's just so much that doesn't resonate with me here... > I can’t use my Bluetooth earbuds while they’re charging. Many bluetooth headphones have battery life measuring in tens of hours. And every set I've used, long life or otherwise, recharge to 80% in a handful of minutes. I agree that an airpod's miniscule battery life is appalling, but you can stand to pull them out of your ears for five minutes every four hours, and you can charge them one at a time so you never need to stop listening, and my Bose QC35IIs still get more than an entire day of playtime after multiple years of recharge cycles. > In a critical-care facility, it’s hard enough to find one free mains socket to connect a charger to, let alone two. I haven't used a single-port USB charger in a decade. All of my chargers have multiple ports on them. GaN tech makes them very compact even at high power output. > Sound quality is better. Maybe in the abstract, but for most people this isn't meaningfully true in any way that actually matters to them. And if you're listening to "comedy shows and audiobooks" it definitely doesn't matter. Speech has an extremely limited useful frequency range, and those tracks are typically extremely compressed without any ill effect. > The headphone jack is a “just works” kind of technology... Nothing is ever fully a "just works" kind of technology. Things only just work until they stop working. The 3.5mm jack wore out after a year or so on every device I've ever owned that experienced plug/unplug cycles a few times per day because of accumulated minuscule amounts of force over time. This is more likely for devices like phones which are ultracompact and go in your pocket. Google for variations of "3.5mm port broken" or "loose audio jack" some time and you'll see that this is a common problem. The wires themselves also wear out from repeated flexing over time, even with strain relief. I had a pair of Shure E2c years ago that stopped working if I didn't hold a bend in the non-replaceable cable at a particular spot with a rubber band. > Ordinary wired earbuds can be small enough to wear whilst sleeping. I’ve never seen Bluetooth earbuds that are. Then you didn't really look IMO. Bluetooth headsets for sleeping is a whole cottage industry now. Anecdotally, I personally sleep fine in honking large Bose QC35 IIs, but that obviously depends on sleep position.

D13Fd 2y ago
Completely agreed. Beyond that , the cost of adding a headphone jack is not the price of the physical component. It’s the fact that it forces the phone to be bulkier in one dimension or another. There is less space for other components.
- nucleardog 2y ago
  > It’s the fact that it forces the phone to be bulkier in one dimension or another. It’s also often repeated that it’s harder to make waterproof. Don’t know how true it is, but given practically everything I own supports Bluetooth… I’d take the waterproofing over the jack in an instant, even just for a small improvement.
baal80spam 2y ago
Now that you mention it, it reminds me that the 3.5mm headphone cable plug almost always had problems after a few months of use (or more - if carried in a pocket or in a bag). The wires inside the jack were getting damaged. This is something that wireless headphones "fixed" completely.

D13Fd 2y ago

Completely agreed. Beyond that , the cost of adding a headphone jack is not the price of the physical component. It’s the fact that it forces the phone to be bulkier in one dimension or another. There is less space for other components.

nucleardog 2y ago
> It’s the fact that it forces the phone to be bulkier in one dimension or another. It’s also often repeated that it’s harder to make waterproof. Don’t know how true it is, but given practically everything I own supports Bluetooth… I’d take the waterproofing over the jack in an instant, even just for a small improvement.

baal80spam 2y ago

Now that you mention it, it reminds me that the 3.5mm headphone cable plug almost always had problems after a few months of use (or more - if carried in a pocket or in a bag). The wires inside the jack were getting damaged. This is something that wireless headphones "fixed" completely.