We used to have earbuds that don’t need to be charged because they had a headphone jack, didn’t get lost so easily because they had a cord attached to a headphone jack, never lost the bluetooth connection because they had a headphone jack, and they cost less because they had a headphone jack. https://bsky.app/profile/daisyfm.bsky.social/post/3l3mfjc6sn62k
But they did tangle all the time. That was annoying.
And the cord would sometimes break inside/connector went bad.
Yeah, you’d snag the wire or slightly bend the connector and then you were just playing a game of making sure it stayed plugged into the exact right angle.
Had to make sure there has just the right tension on the left wire or you’d only get half the track. Bonus points for weirdly mixed stereo where that just sounded shit
and then you’d just replace them with one of the other three dozen you bought from Wal-Mart for five bucks back in 2016
And people wonder how the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and others like it came to be 🤦
hey I’ll have you know I keep all my broken earbuds in the same box in the garage with all the other cables and assorted dongles I can no longer identify and will likely never use, like any responsible citizen should
If you think Bluetooth earphones won’t also be in that pile once the batteries stop holding charge after 2 years, you’re in for a world of dissapointing sex
My AirBudz are over five years old and still play for like five hours before I need to charge them… and I used them 40+ hours daily for all of those years.
How are your days 40+ hours long
We must know the secret of your 40+ hour days. Are you on Earth? What’s the battery tech like on your planet? We could use some help.
My point wasn’t wired vs wireless. It was disposable crap that breaks vs corporations not deliberately making crap the only thing most people can comfortably afford.
But they need to skimp on those few milligram ounces of solder per bud, so that they can make one extra low quality bud!
Or rather so they can make the same number of buds and double or more the profits for the amoral shareholder dividends.
I don’t think earbuds make up a significant percentage of the patch to be here virtue signaling and shaming people for what they were encouraged to do by corporate greed. Your source says the great majority of the patch comes from agriculture and fishing.
I don’t think earbuds make up a significant percentage of the patch
Cheap and disposable plastics and electronics IS a significant part of the world garbage problem and yes, plastic particles is MOST of the garbage patch specifically.
be here virtue signaling and shaming people for what they were encouraged to do by corporate greed
Whoa, dude, hold your horses! I’m in no way blaming consumers. Making consumer electronics cheap crap that breaks easily and everything of decent quality prohibitively expensive is 100% on the greedy corporations, not their victims the consumers.
Your source says the great majority of the patch comes from agriculture and fishing.
Ok, admittedly a poor choice of example. Doesn’t invalidate my intended point though, however ill-stated heh
This is tough -
Making consumer electronics cheap crap that breaks easily and everything of decent quality prohibitively expensive is 100% on the greedy corporations, not their victims the consumers.
(US here) Gets me thinking about dollar store headphones. Consumers could buy decent headphones for about $10 direct from overseas. When that’s equivalent to more than an hour of wages, there’s still demand for the $1 version. Should this need not be met out of a sense of social responsibility?
(I don’t have a perfect answer myself)
Econ 101 on my mind here btw:
The problem is that our economic system has encouraged an environment where reputation is a thing to be immediately cashed out. You can’t even know if those $10 earbuds are any better than the $1 version.
When people talk about disposable plastic they don’t mean electronics like earbuds. They mean packaging, plastic bottles, plastic bags etc.
I’m here for the wired headphone -> pacific garbage patch vs lithium battery child labor -> wireless headphone fight 🍿
Or we could just have quality standards and price controls so that regular people can afford decent headphones that don’t break all the time whether they prefer wired or wireless 🤷
And a worldwide ban on child labor, of course.
Don’t fool yourself. Slave labor of children is not exclusive to batteries. They make most of the world’s textiles, for example.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods-print
Did I give you the impression I was fooling myself, or were you just speaking to the wider audience?
The wording implies that the wired headphones weren’t manufactured using child slave labor.
Somewhere the discussion chain has the following transition:
-> Hitler
You think wireless earbuds are better?? lol
Earbuds? Yes.
Real headphones? Nah
I’d imagine the limited lifespan of their batteries and the fact that they have ones to begin with would be of bigger concern
That’s fair. My first pair still works awesome after five years, and I’ve used them for 40+ hours a week for that whole time. I only have a new pair because I needed ANC, but I still use my old pair to sleep.
Again, wasn’t making a wired wireless argument. See my other reply itt for elaboration.
You might want to edit the comment since in the context it definitely sounds like saying wireless would be better
Not really, no. I’m responding to a comment about cheap buds that break too easily, which isn’t exclusive to wired ones.
There’s literally no mention of the wired vs wireless aspect in my comment or the one I’m replying to.
The TWS equivalent to that is one of the buds no longer turning on. I just had to RMA a pair because of that.
Yeah! That’s why I loved Sennheiser IEMs, they had oval cables that never tangle up, no matter what you do. Still have a pair for my Switch
Loved those as well and I am very angry they are no longer sold (at least not here). Even Sennheiser doesn’t escape the enshittification for their mid-range earbuds
Remember when they got stuck somewhere and yanked out of your ears? Somehow my Bluetooth headset don’t get that because it has Bluetooth
I hate it when the Bluetooth gets caught on the door handle and rips my blue tooth out
You know you don’t have to dangle cables about willy-nilly at full length? You can partially wind them up or tie a loose knot so they’re effectively shorter, or hold them in place under clothes or a peg or anything. I thought this was self-explanatory?
I know, but I still don’t miss it. Tbf I also switched from earbuds to headset at the same time
As a runner I hated cables. All the time I’d be in the middle of a run and my hand would catch the cord mid stride and yank them out of my ear.
I do this simple trick (Warning: YouTube video), and my cables don’t tangle at all, unless of course I forget to do that. It might cause cable to break more easily, but idk., my earphones tend to break just before warranty ends, which is fine for me.
Only because people couldn’t be bothered with learning the over-under cable coiling method.
All these people saying they like wireless earphones are completely missing the point. Devices with headphones jacks can do both. Taking away the headphone jack means you have to rely on wireless earphones, which have all the issues the post describes.
But Apple was so BRAVE when they removed the jack!
I wholeheartedly agree, I use Bluetooth most of the time, but I want wired to fall back on. When I’m on the go, bluetooth works just fine, but when I’m sitting down at home I prefer to use my full-size Roland headset on both my PC and my phone. No latency, and superior sound quality.
Bless the few companies out there still putting them (and the SD card slot) into Androids, but even they’re getting more and more scarce. I need to upgrade soon and I’ve never felt my opinions were so limited, let alone combining with other things like network compatibility, unlockable bootloader, etc.
It used to be anti-Apple. You use to have so many options, and so much freedom.
Soo… Sony, oppo, realme & HMD (Nokia brand)? That is about it right for new phones I think?
Motorola has a few as well.
Wdym, there are adapters and natively wired USB-C headphones.
i really don’t want to have to carry one more piece of junk, and while USB C is way better than alternatives, bending the dongle in your pocket while it is attached to the phone is a scary thought, wired earbuds make a hard right turn right out of the socket. The socket does fill with lint, I kind of get it that removing reduces loss of the phone from water damage or related assembly costs to making the socket not-a-water-vector
Those adapters are complete and utter shit
Because of….? Anyway I have headphones that have a lightning jack and don’t need an adapter.
IDK. I use one and have no problem with it. My car’s bluetooth is rather unreliable at connecting, so I just us a USB C->aux cable. I’ve got no complaints. Is it as good a signal as a properly paired bluetooth digital audio connection? No. But it’s certainly as good as the old aux->aux cables I used back in the day.
Adapters are a cop out. Just put the adapters in the phone. It also means you can’t charge and listen to music.
Also while there are some natively wired usb-c headphones, I can’t think of any. Any decent headphones will use a standard 3.5 or 6.5mm audio jack, and then the dac being built inwith those usb-c headphones means you can’t use a seperate dac, it means you can’t plug them into studio gear. It’s just so incredibly limiting.
There is already a universal standard (3.5mm/6.5mm jack) it carries analog audio, why change to a digital connection which requires digital to analog conversion? Why not let the user be able to have a dedicated piece of gear to do that if they wish.
No professional equipment, or even semi professional equipment uses usb-c. It’s a good old fashioned analog audio jack and it’s like that for a reason
I use an adapter from Walmart and it works better than a regular aux plug in a car? Do you think that the audio signal is boosted over type c?
Maximum volume depends on which specific DAC adapter you got.
It also means you gotta rely on the sound quality of the smartphone. I carried an Oppo HA-2SE strapped to my phone just because I wanted better. Wireless earbuds are just like carrying a Fiio BTR-5 and some good IEMs but without all the fuss. Totally has it’s own brand of fuss though.
Correct. That’s why I will NEVER buy brand new wireless earbuds from Apple, Samsung, or any other phone manufacturer. Oh, you took the aux port out of your phones? Go fuck yourself. I will not financially reward you for limiting my freedoms.
Currently I use Jabra Active 8s. The Jabra Active 10s are supposed to be so much better, but for the price, the 8s are just pretty good.
maybe you’re completely missing their point
What point? That the removal of a feature like the headphone jack is a good thing?
no, that the inconvenience of wired earbuds outweighs any advantages. which would still apply to a different port
wdym? you can still use wireless with a phone that has a headphone jack.
I didn’t say you couldn’t? my point was that the people you were complaining about were merely saying they don’t like wired buds. that’s it. stop trying to infer a deeper meaning
It also destroyed the “pass the aux cord” when driving with friends.
“Hey, I want to show you a song. Pass the aux cord.”
Plugs
Plays
Now:
“Hey, I want to show you a song. Let me connect to your car’s Bluetooth.”
“Oh, I can’t while the car is driving. Can you pull over for a minute?”
“Which submenu was is it in? Bluetooth or Settings?”
“Do you mind if I remove one of the devices already connected?”
“Oh, it just auto-connected to your phone instead.”
“Here, I’ll just send you a link.”
“Your phone locked. Can you enter your password again?”
“Oh, you don’t have [streaming service] premium? We’ll have to sit through an ad first.”
You can still do that if you want. My car’s bluetooth is finicky, so I just have a USB C->aux cable adapter I use. You can share between people and have them share their music. It doesn’t help with the password issues, but you absolutely can still use an aux cable with modern phones. You just need to use a USB C->aux rather than an aux->aux.
So glad the Europeans finally broke Apple and their ridiculous charger shenanigans. A coworker just got a new iPhone and asked me if I had an iPhone charger, I told them no all Ive got is USB C. They said they didn’t know what they had and showed me the bottom of their phone and, sure enough, it’s USB C. They had no idea that only Apple kept making their own charge connector and that basically everyone else had settled on one charger/data port like two or three standards ago.
You just need to use a USB C->aux rather than an aux->aux.
And make sure it’s not a cheap adapter so you get a reasonable volume out of it.
I love my car but it DOESN’T HAVE AN AUX JACK. Insanity. This fancy ass infotainment system with insanely delayed Bluetooth and I can’t use my amazing Bluetooth-to-3.5mm adapter that connects INSTANTLY and doesn’t lag two second behind when I hit pause and ughhhh
Well, then that is truly bullshit. I wouldn’t even buy a car without one. Have you checked your manual? Maybe there’s a hidden wire somewhere that you can attach an extension cable to.
I have indeed read the manual :c it’s wild too, cuz it’s a super high end stock system with a million speakers and a subwoofer hahaha. Checked forums and yep… USB and Bluetooth ONLY :c
I could swap it out but it’s whatever, it’s not worth the effort and money. It sounds excellent, I just wish the BT was fast like my cheap BT-Aux adapter…
Maybe try a Bluetooth fm transmitter? I have one because my car is too old for bluetooth and also doesnt have aux, but its great and snappy and i just have to reach down to the cigarette lighter to switch songs.
Great suggestion! My sound system is nuts tho, and I’m otherwise an audiophile so that doesn’t work out for me. But thank you <3!
Then use the USB? That seems just as good, no?
Nawhhh I prefer Bluetooth… I like to be able to just get in and go but listen through my phone. I do have a flash drive in the USB, though!
You don’t just pass a phone around? Any long trip, start a queue, add a song, pass clockwise. And if you fuck up the queue and hit play by accident you have to do a shot wherever we end up.
You pass your unlocked phone to another person!?
You’re probably joking, but yeah, I don’t really hang out with people I don’t trust at this point in my life, I’m 37.
My civic has a Pioneer audio ui and I have an aux cord!! It’s a usb-c to aux but yeah. It works nicely. Too bad it’s USB-c and everyone’s phones still take lightning.
Give it 4 years and lightning will be a faint memory
Yep, I look forward to it.
You can do this with wired carplay/android auto if you really want. Basically every car made after 2018 has the two, even the cheapest of the cheap.
Bluetooth audio (only) only ever had a pretty short reign. And basically every car that came with bluetooth also had a USB port for ipods which still works with modern iPhones (and some android devices).
Why on earth would you not just hand them the phone to put a song in queue. Also what songs are exclusive to a specific streaming service? Just play it on whatever you were already listening on.
I’ve thrown away so many headphones because the cable frayed though. There’s always some downsides.
What do y’all do to your headphones that this is a major issue? I’ve never really had wireless headphones and I think I’ve maybe had one pair of wired ones that had that issue in my life.
Normal use
But like… Clearly there’s something we’re doing differently here.
Pocket? Idk, it seems natural to me that moving around with a device in your pocket, plugged into a pair of headphones would cause bending and twisting of the cord, which would wear it out over time.
And lots of other stresses, like accidentally getting them caught on something and yanking them out of your ears, wrapping them up to put away in a bag/pocket, etc. It’s no wonder I wore out so many pairs.
OTOH, the only wired listening device I own now is a headset that I wear at my desk, which I expect to last forever because it’s subject to none of those stresses.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Guess I’ve just been lucky. I assume some people might also pull out the cable at the cord instead of at the base, I’ve seen that happening with charging cables sometimes.
At the moment I also have to use a little C to 3.5mm adapter and could maybe see that taking some damage but so far so good.
I could see the (USB-?)C adapter taking the worst of the wear-and-tear, and maybe being more resilient than plugging the 3.5mm directly into the device. Imagine the travesty if it turned out that USB-C adapters turned out to be the solution to fragile headphones all along!
Are you taking a belt sander to it? That might be the difference.
I’ve found any type of exercise wearing wired phones wears them out fast.
Okay that’s a fair point my lazy ass had not considered. Although cycling hasn’t caused me any issues.
And they would inevitably get tangled up in your pocket every time and you had to deal with the cord somehow when you connected, usually under your shirt or something. I went through a new corded headphone every 3 months or so. Meanwhile, the free pair of airpods I got from work are still going after ~5 years.
I’m going into my third pair of ear buds because the batteries only survive for 1h after 2-3 years if you are a heavy user, my wired JBL is still going strong.
I remember they used to last me for years around 2005-2010. Now it is like every year at latest i need to get new ones because the cable got fucked.
I bought a pair of wired earbuds off of wish or temu, something like that, they were like eight or nine dollars.
Honestly compared to any Bluetooth headphones I’ve used, equivalent or better sound quality. And the wire can be pulled out and replaced for just a buck if need be. I’ve had them for 2 years now and they have been wonderful.
Also Moto phones with their operational 3.5 mm jacks for the win.
They also didn’t add an extra layer of compression between the player and your ears - because they had a fucking headphone jack and wires that could transmit audio data without compression.
In ancient times, the wire also acted as antenna to pick up FM radio
The copper age…
It still does if you buy a phone with a headphone jack and avoid shitty companies that disable the FM tuner.
On the other hand, bluetooth headphones never catch on a doorknob and yank out of your ears
On the other other hand, we already had the option of choosing Bluetooth headphones back when most phones still offered headphones jacks.
Truth is, there are obviously pros and cons of each, but it just sucks that we no longer have the choice without jumping through extra hoops.
And the noise cancelling/amplification is something wired headphones probably would never do, and they aren’t more expensive than ear buds, unless you got the cheapest ear buds (that probably sounded like shit and had cords that would fray within months of use), oh and if you used them at all “actively” the cords would eventually wear out even in expensive models. I’ve got a 20$pair of ear buds from 3 years ago(wanted to make sure I wouldn’t lose them before investing in expensive ones, now I don’t actually like my expensive ones except for airplanes, and still use my cheapos). Oh and you couldn’t be more than 3 feet from your phone if it was charging, and you couldn’t fast forward, rewind, play/pause (if you had a great pair it had a volume control, that didn’t actually change the volume, just added resistance to the signal).
Ask my wife, I was one of the biggest sticks in the mud about losing my headphone jack and changing over to Bluetooth, but since I made the change, I’ve found plenty of reasons to be happy with it. I still miss my old phones built in infrared blaster though. And easily replaceable battery. There were some neat things you could do with the aux jack (credit card reader), and there was some convenience to having things corded together (especially if you’re absent minded) but it’s not as rosey as many would insist it was.
The rose tinted glasses people use when looking back (car technology, streaming being worse than cable, the Internet sucking (though much better arguments for this one)) is really a burr in my side.
You can get headphones with removable cables.
Meh. I don’t miss getting the cord caught on door handles and having the earbuds violently yanked from my ears!
Tbh I like the convenience of not being physically attached to my phone when listening to music. That said, the removal of headphone jacks from phones is a disgrace.
At least type c can send audio through aux via an adapter
I didn’t believe the hype about wireless headphones until I bought some with noise cancelling and all that for around $130.
Pros:
1 - You don’t realize how “tethered” you feel on older headphones until you really try to use wireless headphones. There’s a certain freedom you feel when you realize you can place your phone on a hotel table but lie down in bed.
2 - Noise cancelling and noise passthrough is a transformative experience when travelling or find yourself abroad. Airports are much easier to feel relaxed in when 80% of the noise or so can be filtered out as you wait for your flight to board. Additionally, the flight experience is less annoying (no engine drone gets through, even passengers can mostly be ignored) but you still have the option for pass through if someone absolutely needs to talk to you.
3 - Many of these headphones come with some kind of EQ feature, which can occasionally mean that you get speakers with more tunability and thus slightly better bang-for-buck that works globally across apps.
4 - Audio quality. Since these are expensive drivers, you’re often going to get better sound quality than those cheap 30 dollar throw aways were ever going to give.
Cons:
1 - Latency. These things could never be used in professional audio situations other than listening to a pre-rendered song for quality judgements. I don’t thing gaming would be nice with these either, even if I’ve tried (and failed) to play counter strike on these on occasion to keep noise levels down.
2 - Mic quality of the built in is lacking on my particular headphones (Sennheiser CX Plus). They’re really only intended to capture the outdoor for noise cancellation IMO, not the greatest for calls or recordings. They’re servicable, but it’s the area I’d like the most upgrade (and it would probably improve noise cancellation features as well.)
3 - Environmental / Sustainability Concerns: Other than people just “losing” these devices with built in batteries that are bad for the environment being a problem in and of itself, there are other long-standing concerns I have about these devices. They often require proprietary non-open software to configure, meaning if the software gets delisted, you will no longer be able to configure them until someone comes up with some kind of alternative using reverse engineering (good luck). Batteries are likely to degrade over time, meaning you’ll eventually end up with a worthless ear bud on the left or right and the only solution will be to throw them out. These things are often pretty bad scoring on repairability metrics, and I can’t even blame the companies producing them here because they’re so small.
4 - Despite passthrough being a feature, it’s hard to convey to people that you can actually hear them through the device. There should be some kind of blinking light on the outside that indicates that passthrough is enabled or something.
So I actually do love these devices, but #3 of the cons is really the biggest real issue I have with them. If they’re going to cost over 100 dollars, I would like to know that these things won’t just become ewaste in the same way that cheap crappy wired headphones end up being as well (which sea life often chokes on or gets tangled up in.) If they costs a premium, I would really like to know that they aren’t a figurative dead end when they eventually fail.
And they knotted up in your pocket/purse
All this romanticizing the past, but who members having to play with the jack until it was just the right in and out to get full stereo. I member. Who members breaking a wire for the left speaker only, so you only have right audio. I member
The real problem is that new phones dont have it, while there are actually people who use it.
To be honest i dont use it either, but i still prefer having it. Just in case you know? Phones without it did not get cheaper after all…
There are still phones that have it. Sometimes even pretty good ones. It’s just that they are not advertised so heavily. I recently learned about HTC U23 or 24 or something. Now I feel dumb because I never bothered to check because I always thought all good phones don’t offer headphone jacks anymore.
LG had it to the end, it was amazing. Still keep my v60 around for listening to music.
I think you meant new iPhones* don’t have it. There are new models coming out every year with a headphone jack.
You can still get a Sony Xperia 1 VI, or a 5 VI, or a bunch of mid range devices with headphone jack. There are offerings with headphone jack, so if you want one, you can get one.
Now the problem is we love to complain but not put our money where our mouth is. Has the lack of headphone jack made the iPhone sales suffer? No, they’ve gone up. Does Samsung sell fewer Galaxy’s? Nope. Is the Xperia range a massive success because they have a headphone jack? Not by any stretch of imagination…
…because most people don’t actually care enough to vote with their wallet instead of yapping away while they buy a jack-less phone anyway.
That’s because getting a headphone jack is lower in the list of priorities than, say, having a great camera. If I could get my current phone in a version having a headphone jack, believe me that I would. I just wasn’t prepared to compromise my camera quality for it.
Who remembers being able to fix it with two inches of electrical tape?
You’re the second person to say this but I’ve been using the headphone jack for like 3 decades and haven’t encountered this issue.
Having lived through that period but absolutely never experiencing this I wonder… Could the (port on the) devices just have been shitty?
I remember crackling when turning the plug and mono when not being inserted properly, though
I remember getting horrible feedback in my car’s stereo when I tried to simultaneously charge my mp3 player from the car’s cigarette lighter adapter and run an aux cable. Somehow this resulted in a feedback loop that ruined the audio quality. I had to either charge or listen to music, not both.
Are you purposely saying “remembers” wrong or do you think the actual word is “members”?
I expect it’s a South Park reference. 'member South Park?
They’re probably referencing ‘member berries.
A friend was complaining that he was always losing his air pods. I told him about my awesome idea to sell a little cord that would connect them so they were easier to keep track of.
He was like, ‘Dude! That’s a great idea… You’ve got to start selling those before someone beats you to it-’
Then it dawned on him and he called me an asshat.
Last time I used wired headphones on my old phone, I was riding a bike. One of the buds slipped out of my ear and got caught in the front wheel, dragging my phone out of my pocket and smashing the screen. 10/10
I wish I could watch a video of that.
Also, headphone cords go under clothing when doing activities like that.
https://www.isadoraduncan.org/about-1
Isadora Duncan’s death was as dramatic as her life. On September 14, 1927, she encountered a young driver in Nice, France and suggested he take her for a spin in his open-air Bugatti sports car. As the car took off, she reportedly shouted to her friends, “Adieu, mes amis, je vais a la gloire!” — “Goodbye my friends, I go to glory!” Moments later, her trailing shawl became entangled in the rear wheel, breaking her neck instantly.
How fecking long was the shawl?
Famous-1920s-dancer-long, apparently!
same
This issue is solely the fault of capitalism. By removing choice you are forced to by a more premium product, but you’re advertised it by all the supposed benefits: one less external opening on the phone, no more tangled headphones, no more dealing with headphones that only work when the cord is plugged in just right, no more chance of your headphone port going bad.
They skip over the fact that most of these issues are directly problematic because of cost cutting and designed obsolescence (aka engineered lifetimes). The opening is one thing, but headphones tangle in pockets easily because they use such thin flimsy cords. Same thing goes for cords breaking in the lining and only working at certain angles: a more robust cord would be less prone to issues.
On top of this, the entire designs of phones not having repairability in mind is the only reason that a headphone port breaking is a big deal. If they were designed to be disassembled with replacement parts being readily available, it wouldn’t be an issue. They could even make the ports more robust to decrease failure rate.
The ease of pairing Bluetooth headphones lately is pretty nice as well as not having to run a wire up my shirt to avoid snagging.
I do look back kind of fondly on physically plugging in my headphones and just having it work.
