I had a phone without before, that one came with a simple cheap passive adapter for USB-C to 3.5mm headset. You lose out on using headphones while charging, but other than that I was never really inconvenienced…
That means the audio still goes through another DAC, lowering the sound quality, compared to an analog 3.5 jack. Also, who wants to further risk wearing out\vreaking their charge port, jack inputs almost seem like they can’t break.
Technically it only goes through 1 dac, not “another one”. But still, yeah, your phone’s dac is most likely a lot better than the one on a $10 adapter. However, the usb-c spec does allow an analog audio signal passthrough. Whether that’s available or not depends on the phone I guess.
What’s the use case for microSD slots on phones these days anyway?
If its just to avoid paying Google or Apple storage fees, you should buy several HDDs to keep at home and sync stuff over the local network, possibly even build a server and access your stuff remotely.
I really don’t understand the need for that much space on the go, though. Are you watching entire series on your phone?
“just”, I think not giving money to Apple or Google anything is a perfectly good reason alone to want expandable storage.
Phone manufacturers charge a massive premium for more storage on a phone, storage which is then lost if the phone dies. A microSD card can be moved around and they cost little.
Not everyone has a home server, in fact a very very small percentage do and being able to store their photos and what-not on a microSD card is very valuable. The freedom to add more storage is a good thing to have. Most people can understand an SD card, but not how to setup an entire home server with syncing etc, let alone exposing that to the web to access it anywhere. It also costs money to run, a microSD card doesn’t.
The only reason we don’t have expandable storage or a 3.5mm port anymore is: money. They want to sell you that cloud service, upcharge you for more internal storage and make you buy their bluetooth earbuds.
I understand all of that and I agree with you. Not wanting to pay monthly storage fees is perfectly reasonable too. I know I did everything to avoid giving Google any money for storage.
But microSD slots on phones aren’t coming back, and manufacturers are giving you 512GB at most, so we need to move on with the times. I don’t have a home server (yet) either, but I do have 2 TB disks I use to store all the important stuff I want to save forever. Nothing lives on my phone so I’m fine with 128GB.
Storage is dirt cheap these days, it makes no sense to hinder yourself buying niche phones, often at inflated prices, just for a feature that is easily worked around. In my opinion.
aw man, this is the first i’m hearing about discontinuation. apparently it’s because people want larger phones?!
i have a 5 IV and it is by far the largest phone i’ve ever owned… i wish it was like an inch smaller. but it was the only model i could find that doesn’t have a non-rectangular screen. these bloody camera cutouts are everywhere and i never even use the front camera.
I don’t mind the cutouts (if done right), they just sit in the notification bar, so they never obscure anything anyway. That’s a place Sony could have shaved off the extra height imo, the top and bottom bezels are pretty unnecessary.
We are slowly moving to under-screen cameras now though.
i mean the bezels together are less than 1cm. and the notch takes space from notifications, with two sim cards and a vpn active that shit overflows instantly anyway.
Fair, I suppose it depends on how the software handles it too. Personally I never let notifications stack up and the VPN for me is on the other side. I’d personally rather have the shorter phone and a cutout.
vpn is on the right, yeah. but this is with just one sim:
with two i get another signal strength and wifi calling symbol. it’s already collapsing them when not on the quick setting screen, which is very frustrating.
Thanks, I didn’t know about this. Though it should just be default settings you can change… size, position, enabled/disabled. All pretty simple settings that should be provided.
Yes that’s exactly it. A camera under/behind the display. Not at the bottom of the screen aha (the bottom changes I guess too, depending on your phone rotation).
I disagree about this being a good solution. USB-C is not meant to take the strain of being used as an audio port when being used in the go so there is risk of damaging the port while a headphone jack is more stable and allows the plug to rotate. Plus I don’t want to have a dingle I can forget when in a rush.
Awesome solution. Remove the port that everything used to have and make consumers buy adapters. I have like 5 headphones. Should I go buy an adapter for each one? Not to mention that I can easily fix a headphone cable but if a 3.5 to usb-c adapter breaks, it basically becomes junk.
I use them and that’s more than reason enough to want a reliable, small, cheap, jack that literally has no downsides and lets me use my devices how I want to use them.
I have a tablet that came with a C to 3.5 adapter and it worked well enough for a bit but soon enough it was only intermittently allowing the headphone connection to work, with a message about the port being dirty or something. Yet I could go right from unplugging that and putting the charger in and it worked fine.
There’s just no substitute for a dedicated port, especially when it barely takes up any room
I use one of those daily and god they’re all terrible. They’re huge and they all break really easily. My phone is fucking huge, just give me a built in headphone jack!
It’s really a small inconvenience, but using an adapter would mean I’d be prone to misplace it when I use my headphones on anything else, so it hardly makes anything better
The reason for not using a headphone jack is making it simpler for the manufacturer, one less connector to handle which also limits how slim a phone can be.
I’m not saying this is good for the consumer, but there are reasons for integrating the functionality into the USB-C port.
If you want easily replaceable parts and a system that can unlock the bootloader for example, your argument can be made for 99% of phones on the market. The more requirements you add, the smaller the scope gets until there are no devices left to choose from.
We were doing perfectly fine 10 years ago and manufacturing has only gotten more advanced, the only real reason the 3.5mm port was removed is because Apple wanted to sell people their AirPods. That’s literally it. The rest of the manufacturers soon followed suit when they realised how many people were buying AirPods.
These points were all disproved long ago. The jack is a the same thickness as the display.
The reason is because BT headphones have a much higher margin, and need to be replaced every few years because of the battery (if not already replaced because they were lost or damaged).
I had a phone without before, that one came with a simple cheap passive adapter for USB-C to 3.5mm headset. You lose out on using headphones while charging, but other than that I was never really inconvenienced…
That means the audio still goes through another DAC, lowering the sound quality, compared to an analog 3.5 jack. Also, who wants to further risk wearing out\vreaking their charge port, jack inputs almost seem like they can’t break.
Technically it only goes through 1 dac, not “another one”. But still, yeah, your phone’s dac is most likely a lot better than the one on a $10 adapter. However, the usb-c spec does allow an analog audio signal passthrough. Whether that’s available or not depends on the phone I guess.
Too bad LG got out of the phone biz. They had the best dacs and some good phones.
Damn right. LG G5 for example was a pretty interesting concept that could’ve evolved into something cool.
After having a phone without a 3.5mm port or a microSD card slot, the top 2 features I want on a phone are a 3.5mm port and a microSD card slot.
Shame Sony discontinued their Xperia 5 series, even if they were also excessively priced.
What’s the use case for microSD slots on phones these days anyway?
If its just to avoid paying Google or Apple storage fees, you should buy several HDDs to keep at home and sync stuff over the local network, possibly even build a server and access your stuff remotely.
I really don’t understand the need for that much space on the go, though. Are you watching entire series on your phone?
“just”, I think not giving money to Apple or Google anything is a perfectly good reason alone to want expandable storage.
Phone manufacturers charge a massive premium for more storage on a phone, storage which is then lost if the phone dies. A microSD card can be moved around and they cost little.
Not everyone has a home server, in fact a very very small percentage do and being able to store their photos and what-not on a microSD card is very valuable. The freedom to add more storage is a good thing to have. Most people can understand an SD card, but not how to setup an entire home server with syncing etc, let alone exposing that to the web to access it anywhere. It also costs money to run, a microSD card doesn’t.
The only reason we don’t have expandable storage or a 3.5mm port anymore is: money. They want to sell you that cloud service, upcharge you for more internal storage and make you buy their bluetooth earbuds.
I understand all of that and I agree with you. Not wanting to pay monthly storage fees is perfectly reasonable too. I know I did everything to avoid giving Google any money for storage.
But microSD slots on phones aren’t coming back, and manufacturers are giving you 512GB at most, so we need to move on with the times. I don’t have a home server (yet) either, but I do have 2 TB disks I use to store all the important stuff I want to save forever. Nothing lives on my phone so I’m fine with 128GB.
Storage is dirt cheap these days, it makes no sense to hinder yourself buying niche phones, often at inflated prices, just for a feature that is easily worked around. In my opinion.
aw man, this is the first i’m hearing about discontinuation. apparently it’s because people want larger phones?!
i have a 5 IV and it is by far the largest phone i’ve ever owned… i wish it was like an inch smaller. but it was the only model i could find that doesn’t have a non-rectangular screen. these bloody camera cutouts are everywhere and i never even use the front camera.
Yep… everyone wants phablets. Apparently.
I don’t mind the cutouts (if done right), they just sit in the notification bar, so they never obscure anything anyway. That’s a place Sony could have shaved off the extra height imo, the top and bottom bezels are pretty unnecessary.
We are slowly moving to under-screen cameras now though.
i mean the bezels together are less than 1cm. and the notch takes space from notifications, with two sim cards and a vpn active that shit overflows instantly anyway.
Fair, I suppose it depends on how the software handles it too. Personally I never let notifications stack up and the VPN for me is on the other side. I’d personally rather have the shorter phone and a cutout.
vpn is on the right, yeah. but this is with just one sim:
with two i get another signal strength and wifi calling symbol. it’s already collapsing them when not on the quick setting screen, which is very frustrating.
FYI, you can disable the icons you don’t want/need using (https://github.com/zacharee/Tweaker). Although that doesn’t solve the actual problem…
i do want the icons, yeah.
Thanks, I didn’t know about this. Though it should just be default settings you can change… size, position, enabled/disabled. All pretty simple settings that should be provided.
Nothing better than a selfie from a low angle, right?
i think they mean “under” as in “behind”.
lol, that’s very possible
Yes that’s exactly it. A camera under/behind the display. Not at the bottom of the screen aha (the bottom changes I guess too, depending on your phone rotation).
The Sony form factor is the best on the market IMO. You can hold it in you hand and get more screen in the height.
agree, i just wish they kept a model like the Z* Compact around.
I disagree about this being a good solution. USB-C is not meant to take the strain of being used as an audio port when being used in the go so there is risk of damaging the port while a headphone jack is more stable and allows the plug to rotate. Plus I don’t want to have a dingle I can forget when in a rush.
Interesting, I would think that they would consider being eternally connected to a power bank when designing USB-C.
Just have the dongle permanently attached to your earbuds like it’s a part of the cable.
Awesome solution. Remove the port that everything used to have and make consumers buy adapters. I have like 5 headphones. Should I go buy an adapter for each one? Not to mention that I can easily fix a headphone cable but if a 3.5 to usb-c adapter breaks, it basically becomes junk.
you use all five every week?
I use them and that’s more than reason enough to want a reliable, small, cheap, jack that literally has no downsides and lets me use my devices how I want to use them.
They should make cases with the adapter built in, the way they used to (still do?) for external battery packs.
Or just put the port in the phone.
You also have to remember to have that adapter with you
If you need to plug the headphones into the adapter, you can just leave them plugged in after disconnecting from the phone
This way, the headphones almost become ones with USB-C connectors than auxiliary barrels.
An issue shared with the headphones themselves
I just leave the adapter plugged into the headphones. Then there’s nothing extra to manage.
I have like a dozen pairs of headphones
how many do you use per week?
The adapters are dirt cheap, buy doezen of them
No thank you.
I have a tablet that came with a C to 3.5 adapter and it worked well enough for a bit but soon enough it was only intermittently allowing the headphone connection to work, with a message about the port being dirty or something. Yet I could go right from unplugging that and putting the charger in and it worked fine.
There’s just no substitute for a dedicated port, especially when it barely takes up any room
You can find adapters that can charge while still having a 3.5mm back
I use one of those daily and god they’re all terrible. They’re huge and they all break really easily. My phone is fucking huge, just give me a built in headphone jack!
fast charging / USB-PD may not work, and 3.5mm media controls may not pass through properly
It’s really a small inconvenience, but using an adapter would mean I’d be prone to misplace it when I use my headphones on anything else, so it hardly makes anything better
The reason for not using a headphone jack is making it simpler for the manufacturer, one less connector to handle which also limits how slim a phone can be.
I’m not saying this is good for the consumer, but there are reasons for integrating the functionality into the USB-C port.
For $700 I’m not interested in compromising my own convenience for theirs.
Fair, though the fact doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
If you want easily replaceable parts and a system that can unlock the bootloader for example, your argument can be made for 99% of phones on the market. The more requirements you add, the smaller the scope gets until there are no devices left to choose from.
We were doing perfectly fine 10 years ago and manufacturing has only gotten more advanced, the only real reason the 3.5mm port was removed is because Apple wanted to sell people their AirPods. That’s literally it. The rest of the manufacturers soon followed suit when they realised how many people were buying AirPods.
These points were all disproved long ago. The jack is a the same thickness as the display.
The reason is because BT headphones have a much higher margin, and need to be replaced every few years because of the battery (if not already replaced because they were lost or damaged).
It’s just a dumb cash grab.
The headphone jack is 3.5mm. iPhones are ~7.5mm thick, more than double. The smallest phone available on the market is 4.2mm.
It’s not hard to manufacture a headphone jack. We’ve been doing it since the 80s. Probably costs them a penny BOM.
I don’t think his point was the jack itself but the device around the jack. Physically and electronically.
That’s what I’m also talking about.