The big issue with USB C headphones is the lack of standardization. There's both analog and digital USB C headphones and not all of them work on every device. https://youtu.be/Ly-bSBHOSIo
I don't feel as strongly about the jack as others, but that people care at all isn't surprising; headphones are like shoes, and when you find a pair that fits, you wanna keep using them. Having worked in a headphone department of a big box store, people are sooooo picky about their headphones, it's just gonna forever be one of those things going forward.
Until someone else comes up with a better standard than the headphone jack, that is. And USB C isn't that.
As a side note, nothing is more instantly vomit inducing as an old man trying to force his old, crusty, wax saturated earbuds into my hand so I can help him find the same pair, because you know they fit so damn good he won't use anything else
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Ear3nd1lEärendil the Mariner, father of ElrondRegistered Userregular
I think it stems from this desire for phones to be 100% screen and as thin as a credit card. I would gladly take a phone that was a little thicc if I got a better battery out of it. I couldn't care less about the headphone jack, but a thicker phone would allow for that to stay as well, making everyone happy (except those who want thin phones).
I do buy the argument that it's hard to find room for the headphone jack. Designing small electronics is always a question of space vs heat vs features vs everything else, and headphone jacks are not small. It's inevitable that it's an engineering problem to fit everything you want in there as well as the jack and at some point, as a company making phones, when you make a list of priorities for what you want your new product to be, headphone jack is never going to be high on the list overall and it's only going to slip lower and lower over time.
I wonder what it is about an old input standard that makes all of you so sure it should be around forever. No other piece of day to day technology has any interest in utilizing the headphone jack. Cars don't use 3.5mm anymore, they're all USB aux cords now. PC headsets are all USB.
What are the actual downsides of USB-C headphones? There's not being able to listen while charging, which is a) niche and b) easily solved if a company wanted to just put two USB C ports in (which are smaller than a headphone jack) and there's needing new USB-C headphones, which so far are in the box of most of the expensive phones. What other downsides are there?
I have a pair of over the ear headphones that I love already. There are no good USB-c headphones because there is no USB-c audio standard. They're also almost all earbuds, which are awful and gross and never fit in my ears and they hurt. Also, the last time I used my phone to listen to music I was also charging it at the same time. It happens more often than you think, especially if you travel a lot. The adapter isn't even being included by default in new purchases for a lot of phones (including the new note is at least some regions).
They've managed to engineer it into generations of phones without issue. Hell, Apple only removed it to get more royalties from peripheral manufacturers.
I think it stems from this desire for phones to be 100% screen and as thin as a credit card. I would gladly take a phone that was a little thicc if I got a better battery out of it. I couldn't care less about the headphone jack, but a thicker phone would allow for that to stay as well, making everyone happy (except those who want thin phones).
Hell, half the reason I got the super bulky case was to get it to a more reasonable thickness
I take it you've never tried to plug your phone into the USB port of a rental car. They either work intermittently or not at all, and cars most definitely do still come with audio jacks. The same cars have notoriously shitty integrated Bluetooth. (we discuss this every generation of smartphone)
So now I have to carry a Bluetooth adapter that plugs into the audio jack if I want my phone to reliably connect in a rental car.
I do buy the argument that it's hard to find room for the headphone jack. Designing small electronics is always a question of space vs heat vs features vs everything else, and headphone jacks are not small. It's inevitable that it's an engineering problem to fit everything you want in there as well as the jack and at some point, as a company making phones, when you make a list of priorities for what you want your new product to be, headphone jack is never going to be high on the list overall and it's only going to slip lower and lower over time.
I wonder what it is about an old input standard that makes all of you so sure it should be around forever. No other piece of day to day technology has any interest in utilizing the headphone jack. Cars don't use 3.5mm anymore, they're all USB aux cords now. PC headsets are all USB.
What are the actual downsides of USB-C headphones? There's not being able to listen while charging, which is a) niche and b) easily solved if a company wanted to just put two USB C ports in (which are smaller than a headphone jack) and there's needing new USB-C headphones, which so far are in the box of most of the expensive phones. What other downsides are there?
There is no issue with removing a headphone jack if there is a legitimate reason for doing so. With Samsung they have claimed its to make the device thinner and lighter and have a larger battery for the Note 10/10+. However, the claims fall apart when you look at the S10 series all had a headphone Jack and in tear downs on the 5G model could easily fit an S Pen enclosure there (the S10 5G is almost exact in size specifications to the Note 10+). If you look at the thinner and lighter argument the Note 10+ is only 0.01 thinner than the S10 5G and 0.01 lighter on the spec sheet. For battery capacity the Note 10+ has less capacity than the S10 5G.
What’s also ironic for Samsung is that for years they have had advertising mocking competitors for removing the jack in their phones while Samsung promoted the fact they still had one as a USP. Suddenly these adverts have been wiped off Samsung official channels.
I am a headphone fiend. I have two pairs of bluetooth headphones, a good set of wired headphones, a couple sets of wired earbuds, and even the google USB-C wired headphones.
You know what works in 100% of the phones (with headphone jacks), the wired headphones. You know what works about 90% of the time? the Bluetooth headhpones. You know what might work if I do a little rain dance and pray? the USB-C headphones.
USB-C headphones might work on a phone, they might not. My favorite right now is that USB-C headphones work for audio on my Note 9, but not for taking calls.
And do not underestimate the need to charge and use headphones at the same time. My dad does this *all the time* taking conference calls for work. Or plenty of office warriors who want to listen to music all day while working but also not have a phone at 20% at the end of the day. We don't allow people to listen to streaming music on their work computers, so people do it from their phones.
the promise of USB-C for audo is great, and honestly, I listen to bluetooth headphones more than wired headphones now, but wired headphones. just. work. Hell, my Sony WH-1000MK3's have excellent battery life, but if the battery dies on me, I plug in the cable and listen wired for the rest of the day.
I take it you've never tried to plug your phone into the USB port of a rental car. They either work intermittently or not at all, and cars most definitely do still come with audio jacks. The same cars have notoriously shitty integrated Bluetooth. (we discuss this every generation of smartphone)
So now I have to carry a Bluetooth adapter that plugs into the audio jack if I want my phone to reliably connect in a rental car.
You make a good point, I usually have a 12v charger with me when I rent a car.
EDIT: I will say that almost all the Fords I have ever rented have had wonderful Bluetooth support.
Ear3nd1l on
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
I wanted to comment that the demographic who wants to listen while charging isn't niche, but rather most people who travel.
Its either listen/charge or blow $200 on noise cancelling true wireless buds (I hear the Sony ones are quite nice).
The big issue with USB C headphones is the lack of standardization. There's both analog and digital USB C headphones and not all of them work on every device. https://youtu.be/Ly-bSBHOSIo
I love the very last part of that video. Dude is absolutely right, "put the 3.5mm jack back in the damn phone"... as he clutches 3.5mm headphones plugged into the LG phone for emphasis.
The moral of the story is, when weighing up which phone to get, Samsungs, Pixels, etc, etc... don't forget LG. They're good! Honestly!
Gordon Ung is pretty damn awesome. His work at MaximumPC (magazine and podcast) helped me cut my teeth when I wanted to learn tech.
The tech journos who went through there are my short list of people who know about the industry and will give you solid insight (off the top of my head: Nathan Edwards, Dave Murphy, Florence Ion, Will Smith, and Norman Chan (both started the Tested website and do Still Untitled with Adam Savage).
LG's big problem is that A) Their UI skin suuuuuuucks and Their OS updates take forever. The hardware is fine.
I like the default UI launcher. It's not perfect, but at least it doesn't have some bullshit unremovable search bar element in it (on my phone anyway).
That being said, I changed the theme immediately and am currently using G6 UX 6.0 Black, which I like except for the annoying decision to make phone calls display solid green or red. But I'm still trying to find an Android interface I really like, and it was the same back on Nova Launcher on my PRIV. Something like half of the LG Themes available for free are OnePlus clones, which I don't want.
LG's big problem is that A) Their UI skin suuuuuuucks and Their OS updates take forever. The hardware is fine.
I really have no problem with the UI skin or launcher. I'm running default on my V30. The skin is toned down a lot on the V30 compared to what it was on the G4, but I didn't mind it then. It has a few tweaks that honestly I sorely miss on other Android phones.
The OS updates have also improved significantly, but yeah, they are still slower than I'd like. They're not terrible on security updates, I just wish they wouldn't chuck in UI tweaks and not include those in the patch notes. I don't care for them being surprises.
My phone's default samsung calendar app just gave me a reminder for an appointment for "you have just won a free iphone X," is my phone virus'd or is samsung's calendar app supposed to be adware
e: I'm seeing reports over in the SE tech thread that other android users are getting this across different calendar apps and service providers so it looks like google might have been hacked?
My phone's default samsung calendar app just gave me a reminder for an appointment for "you have just won a free iphone X," is my phone virus'd or is samsung's calendar app supposed to be adware
e: I'm seeing reports over in the SE tech thread that other android users are getting this across different calendar apps and service providers so it looks like google might have been hacked?
Not hacked, just a stupid default permission. Go to calendar.google.com, settings (gear icon), event settings. The "Automatically add invitations" setting is probably set to yes. Change it to one of the other two options (I picked No).
Barrakketh on
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
I had this happen a few times and it can be prevented by ticking some option boxes in the calendar settings. The Verge has good enough writeup of which settings to change to prevent the spam from getting through
ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
I started getting a ton of this while I was waiting for my plane at the airport on Friday. Super annoying not only that it just fucking happens because of shitty design, but adding to that bad design is that you can only disable the setting on the desktop site. WTF
The calendar thing literally only just hit me for the first time. IPhone giveaways or something.
I use LG's own calendar app on my phone, but it's effectively just a different (I'd argue nicer) front-end for Google Calendar.
Twiddled settings to hopefully prevent that spam in the future. But I've had a couple of events get added previously when I've had email confirmation of ticket purchases come through, and thought that was kinda handy. Guess that shit is abusable.
Anyone with a Pixel 3 having call quality problems?
Actually according to my wife, I've been cutting in and out lately during calls. I tried enabling Wifi calling but that hasn't seemed to make it better or worse. (on AT&T)
I never had a problem until maybe the last month or so.
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Ear3nd1lEärendil the Mariner, father of ElrondRegistered Userregular
Anyone with a Pixel 3 having call quality problems?
Actually according to my wife, I've been cutting in and out lately during calls. I tried enabling Wifi calling but that hasn't seemed to make it better or worse. (on AT&T)
I never had a problem until maybe the last month or so.
I thought it was just me. But it only seems to happen when I am at home calling over WiFi, so I'm more inclined to think it is my terrible ISP.
the bars in signal strength have almost no bearing on the actual signal. You can have 5 bars but if the rest of the 87 variables in your connection to the cell tower aren't all good than you'll have a poor signal, same thing you can have 1 bar but if you're the only one on the tower you'll have a great experience.
Since Kaspersky anti virus found it, I'd probably install it and run a scan, then delete it, if it were my phone.
Supposedly, CamScanner already got rid of the ad loader enabled this, but the trust is already lost. I used to have it on all my phones, but didn't install it on my new one a few weeks ago.. Lucky.
So after all that I'm finally testing 5G and ironically have been given a Galaxy Note 10+ 5G to test for the next few months. I think to myself "I'd like to test music streaming etc, lets purchase the USB C Headphone adaptor to test it out"
it just really depends on how the Note 10 does audio, and I haven't seen any details on that.
Basically, if the note 10 has a dac on board, than any USB-C to 3.5mm adapter will work. If the note 10 does not have a dac on board, than you need a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter with a dac built in.
To be safe, buy one that has a dac on board. that should* work no matter what.
*I say should work because while there's no reason it shouldn't, USB-C audio is still kind of the wild west because literally every phone manufacturer does it differently.
it just really depends on how the Note 10 does audio, and I haven't seen any details on that.
Basically, if the note 10 has a dac on board, than any USB-C to 3.5mm adapter will work. If the note 10 does not have a dac on board, than you need a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter with a dac built in.
To be safe, buy one that has a dac on board. that should* work no matter what.
*I say should work because while there's no reason it shouldn't, USB-C audio is still kind of the wild west because literally every phone manufacturer does it differently.
After a bit of looking it seems it needs a DAC built in adaptor.
This from a website shows just how stupid this whole USB C audio thing is and how desperate it needs proper standardisation.
We tested the Galaxy Note 10 + with the 3.5 USB C dongle provided in the box of the Samsung Galaxy tab S5e and it did not work.
the "standard" would be for everyone to build a dongle with a built in dac, then it wouldn't matter whether the phone has a dac or not, it should just work. the problem is that the dongles with dacs are more expensive than those without, so if a company is making a phone with a dac built in they're not going to make a dongle with a dac that they sell for $15 when they can make one without and sell it for $9 and then make fun of the company that has a $15 dongle because it has a dac.
Honestly, the only way to solve this once and for all would have to be the USB-IF group literally building a dac into the USB controller spec. Then every single USB controller would have a dac and none of this should matter. but, building a dac into a USB controller sounds absurd, and will probably never happen.
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I don't feel as strongly about the jack as others, but that people care at all isn't surprising; headphones are like shoes, and when you find a pair that fits, you wanna keep using them. Having worked in a headphone department of a big box store, people are sooooo picky about their headphones, it's just gonna forever be one of those things going forward.
Until someone else comes up with a better standard than the headphone jack, that is. And USB C isn't that.
I have a pair of over the ear headphones that I love already. There are no good USB-c headphones because there is no USB-c audio standard. They're also almost all earbuds, which are awful and gross and never fit in my ears and they hurt. Also, the last time I used my phone to listen to music I was also charging it at the same time. It happens more often than you think, especially if you travel a lot. The adapter isn't even being included by default in new purchases for a lot of phones (including the new note is at least some regions).
They've managed to engineer it into generations of phones without issue. Hell, Apple only removed it to get more royalties from peripheral manufacturers.
Hell, half the reason I got the super bulky case was to get it to a more reasonable thickness
So now I have to carry a Bluetooth adapter that plugs into the audio jack if I want my phone to reliably connect in a rental car.
There is no issue with removing a headphone jack if there is a legitimate reason for doing so. With Samsung they have claimed its to make the device thinner and lighter and have a larger battery for the Note 10/10+. However, the claims fall apart when you look at the S10 series all had a headphone Jack and in tear downs on the 5G model could easily fit an S Pen enclosure there (the S10 5G is almost exact in size specifications to the Note 10+). If you look at the thinner and lighter argument the Note 10+ is only 0.01 thinner than the S10 5G and 0.01 lighter on the spec sheet. For battery capacity the Note 10+ has less capacity than the S10 5G.
What’s also ironic for Samsung is that for years they have had advertising mocking competitors for removing the jack in their phones while Samsung promoted the fact they still had one as a USP. Suddenly these adverts have been wiped off Samsung official channels.
You know what works in 100% of the phones (with headphone jacks), the wired headphones. You know what works about 90% of the time? the Bluetooth headhpones. You know what might work if I do a little rain dance and pray? the USB-C headphones.
USB-C headphones might work on a phone, they might not. My favorite right now is that USB-C headphones work for audio on my Note 9, but not for taking calls.
And do not underestimate the need to charge and use headphones at the same time. My dad does this *all the time* taking conference calls for work. Or plenty of office warriors who want to listen to music all day while working but also not have a phone at 20% at the end of the day. We don't allow people to listen to streaming music on their work computers, so people do it from their phones.
the promise of USB-C for audo is great, and honestly, I listen to bluetooth headphones more than wired headphones now, but wired headphones. just. work. Hell, my Sony WH-1000MK3's have excellent battery life, but if the battery dies on me, I plug in the cable and listen wired for the rest of the day.
You make a good point, I usually have a 12v charger with me when I rent a car.
EDIT: I will say that almost all the Fords I have ever rented have had wonderful Bluetooth support.
Its either listen/charge or blow $200 on noise cancelling true wireless buds (I hear the Sony ones are quite nice).
I love the very last part of that video. Dude is absolutely right, "put the 3.5mm jack back in the damn phone"... as he clutches 3.5mm headphones plugged into the LG phone for emphasis.
The moral of the story is, when weighing up which phone to get, Samsungs, Pixels, etc, etc... don't forget LG. They're good! Honestly!
( /iamashill
Steam | XBL
The tech journos who went through there are my short list of people who know about the industry and will give you solid insight (off the top of my head: Nathan Edwards, Dave Murphy, Florence Ion, Will Smith, and Norman Chan (both started the Tested website and do Still Untitled with Adam Savage).
I like the default UI launcher. It's not perfect, but at least it doesn't have some bullshit unremovable search bar element in it (on my phone anyway).
That being said, I changed the theme immediately and am currently using G6 UX 6.0 Black, which I like except for the annoying decision to make phone calls display solid green or red. But I'm still trying to find an Android interface I really like, and it was the same back on Nova Launcher on my PRIV. Something like half of the LG Themes available for free are OnePlus clones, which I don't want.
I really have no problem with the UI skin or launcher. I'm running default on my V30. The skin is toned down a lot on the V30 compared to what it was on the G4, but I didn't mind it then. It has a few tweaks that honestly I sorely miss on other Android phones.
The OS updates have also improved significantly, but yeah, they are still slower than I'd like. They're not terrible on security updates, I just wish they wouldn't chuck in UI tweaks and not include those in the patch notes. I don't care for them being surprises.
Steam | XBL
e: I'm seeing reports over in the SE tech thread that other android users are getting this across different calendar apps and service providers so it looks like google might have been hacked?
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/23/20829615/google-calendar-spam-events-sharing-email-how-to-stop
Like, why??
*gives himself a self-congratulatory pat on the back*
PSN:Furlion
I use LG's own calendar app on my phone, but it's effectively just a different (I'd argue nicer) front-end for Google Calendar.
Twiddled settings to hopefully prevent that spam in the future. But I've had a couple of events get added previously when I've had email confirmation of ticket purchases come through, and thought that was kinda handy. Guess that shit is abusable.
Steam | XBL
Actually according to my wife, I've been cutting in and out lately during calls. I tried enabling Wifi calling but that hasn't seemed to make it better or worse. (on AT&T)
I never had a problem until maybe the last month or so.
I thought it was just me. But it only seems to happen when I am at home calling over WiFi, so I'm more inclined to think it is my terrible ISP.
CamScanner had a Trojan loader for a long while it seems. Beware if you had it.
Just deleted it. Fucking come on people.
Supposedly, CamScanner already got rid of the ad loader enabled this, but the trust is already lost. I used to have it on all my phones, but didn't install it on my new one a few weeks ago.. Lucky.
Samsung website Item coming soon... WTF!
If you look at the video on the top of the page shows the issue with that.
Basically, if the note 10 has a dac on board, than any USB-C to 3.5mm adapter will work. If the note 10 does not have a dac on board, than you need a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter with a dac built in.
To be safe, buy one that has a dac on board. that should* work no matter what.
*I say should work because while there's no reason it shouldn't, USB-C audio is still kind of the wild west because literally every phone manufacturer does it differently.
After a bit of looking it seems it needs a DAC built in adaptor.
This from a website shows just how stupid this whole USB C audio thing is and how desperate it needs proper standardisation.
Honestly, the only way to solve this once and for all would have to be the USB-IF group literally building a dac into the USB controller spec. Then every single USB controller would have a dac and none of this should matter. but, building a dac into a USB controller sounds absurd, and will probably never happen.