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Comment by 20tibbygt06 | Hacker News Reader

My car stereo has a 3.5mm jack. My TV has a 3.5mm jack. My speaker system has a 3.5mm jack. The new chromecast has the version with a 3.5mm jack.

I just don't understand where manufactures are going with this. I recently got a small Bluetooth speaker and have problems pairing from time to time, but not when I have a 3.5mm jack. I just connect the cable and it works. Don't even get me started with battery drain.

This is really annoying. It all reminds me of when I was searching for my first cellphone and most phone didn't have the jack. In the end my first cellphone (Samsung Omnia) didn't have a 3.5mm jack and it was really annoying having to buy an adapter in order to listen to music.

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In my experience, Bluetooth is just the worst. It's consistently unreliable for me. Every Bluetooth device I've ever had has been a constant headache of pairing issues and random disconnects and reconnects, sometimes getting into a loop of that every few minutes.

I don't know if that's a universal problem for everyone, but my negative experiences with it have been enough to turn me off wanting to buy anything Bluetooth and favor other solutions instead. I use a Logitech mouse with a little USB antenna instead of Bluetooth, which is consistently reliable and never has an issue, and normal headphones with a 3.5mm plug or non-Bluetooth wireless headphones which have no connectivity issues.

I've also had bad luck with Bluetooth phone stuff.

On the other hand, my Bluetooth Mac keyboard seems rock-solid (other than dying when the battery goes dead, of course). I don't recall it ever losing its pairing.

On the third hand, a Bluetooth iPad keyboard (not Apple-made) we had at a place I used to work was total crap. You could figure on having to go through the pairing process at least once a day.

I haven't used an Apple Bluetooth keyboard but did use an Apple Bluetooth mouse some years ago that had endless loss of connection issues.

Other non-Apple Bluetooth keyboards also have this issue, where I'll be typing and it randomly loses connection mid-word, then sometimes comes back after a few seconds and other times just decides it's not going to turn back on without manually turning it off and on and fiddling with Bluetooth settings on the computer before it finally returns, or not.

Sony of all companies did the same thing with their Walkman cellphone! Drove me up the wall but I loved that phone.

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