Google's latest iPhone rival off to a rocky start | Hacker News Reader

Google's latest iPhone rival off to a rocky start

reuters.com

249 pointsiamthirsty649 comments

I seriously wanted to like the Pixel, I think Apple's business model is entirely harmful, but the lack of a headphone jack on the flagship Google phone is really the last straw. We've lost so much good tech over the years to reduce costs, that I just can't accept a premium phone dropping such a global standard for no good reason at all. Next time I buy a phone I'll vote with my wallet and go with more consumer friendly options.

Same here. I just picked up a new phone the other day, and I immediately dropped the pixel from consideration because of its lack of a headphone jack.

If not an iPhone or a pixel, what decent phones are left in the running?

Check out mid-range stuff. There's an absolute treasure trove. I've been using a Moto G5 Plus (the 4GB RAM model) for some time now and it's an absolute treat.

Me too. Other than the mediocre camera I've been really happy with it.

How regular is Motorola/Lenovo regarding security updates?

Pretty regular, I will say they haven't seemed to put forth a patch for WPA2 yet, but I'm also unsure how fully vulnerable it is mostly because Android can be such a customized beast.

I wish there was more Android One devices in North-America. Cheap, good, "stock Android" + garanteed updates.

Another vote for the G5 here. It's a little larger than I'd like, but other than that it's been perfect for me.

LG Stylo 2 Plus here, and I heartily agree on going with mid-range (and I prefer phablets as well). There's a Stylo 3 Plus now, which fortunately still has the headphone jack, bumps the SOC from a 430 to a 435, and the display to 1920x1080. Neither have the fastest SOC out there, but still plenty for my needs, and both have an SD slot.

So far, I've been very happy with my Stylo 2 Plus. Battery life is amazing (the battery is usually at about 75% when I plug it in for the night), the screen is sharp in spite of being 720p, and plenty bright. I can't see spending more than $250 on a phone these days, except for bragging rights.

an iPhone 6s, most likely. i am in a similar camp of wanting to have certain ‘legacy’ tech wrt my laptop. my 2011 17” mpb will be my daily driver until it is pried from my cold dead hands (well hopefully its cold dead shell is pried from my living hands). i, however, didn’t feel the need to cry about it when the computers didn’t perfectly align with my desires though. maybe people just like complaining?

I know it's universally hated here on HN, but Samsung. Their top-end models just work; they have some UI bloat but some of that is also useful. They look good, are generally well-supported, good cameras, great screens, good battery.

(This applies to S8 and above, S7 and below were bad.)

The problem with the S8 and S8+ is finding glass screen protectors for it. The only one I can find locally is $40, and the curved edges means it cracks really easily.

Yes, I tried it for a day without a screen protector and ended up with scratches on the screen.

I've had my GS8 since its release and there are zero scratches on it. I have it in a case, but otherwise no screen protector, and no issue. I've dropped it several times, and today had the scariest incident yet -- set it on the counter and opened the cupboard to have a big can of split pea soup fall and smack right off the screen. No problem.

Scratching definitely isn't a problem. Cracking is a risk, but a basic case dramatically reduces the odds of that.

The new Nokia devices seems to be pretty good in the mid-range category.

The first Pixel is a good phone, still very performant.

Pixel is my last big brand phone. Next one needs to run Linux and not be tied to Apple or Google. It has all gotten a little too controlled and walled.

Pixel is an amazing phone and aside from the privacy aspects... I can't see needing more phone. The camera is better than any phone camera I have ever used.

We need to get away from the Android / iOS duopoly

If you find such a thing, and it isn't completely godawful, let me know.

Heh. Will do. Sony Xperia runs Jolla, that is something. We will see. I am guessing it means sacrificing a little hardware quality, but we are all kind of spoiled as it is.

Interesting, I'll check it out. Thanks!

I've been reading great things about the new LG V30.

The OnePlus 5 is pretty awesome.

How's the display on that? I'm on a Note 3, and I really like the fact that I've always been able to see Samsung's AMOLED display in the sunlight. I also have bad eyes, so I tend to keep the display pretty bright in the dark. It's always seemed so much more vivid than other phones I've compared it to, but that's been a while.

EDIT: And where the heck do you get one in the US?

Oneplus 3T (exact same panel as in 5) has good legibility in sunlight, I had no issues with it. As for vivid, you can configure display calibration on Oneplus to suit your taste. Unfortunately there are no gamma sliders for fine grained control, only 3 or 4 predefined settings.

OnePlus phones are a great Nexus replacement - they have good hardware (but not the best one) and near-stock system for reasonable price, and as enthusiast phone, they get a lot of community support from like LineageOS and stuff.

I’ll have to check that out. I’m stuck in the odd position of being tired of Apple’s “you can play in our sandbox”’approach, but I’m loathe to move to Android and give google what remnants of privacy I’ve managed to retain.

Absolutely. Bluetooth is not there yet. I still get stuttering and low quality all the time when using Bluetooth. I want a headphone jack, and I'll find someone who will provide one and vote with my dollars.

> I still get stuttering and low quality all the time when using Bluetooth.

Bluetooth works great for me (good enough quality, no stuttering) - what kills it is latency. Latency makes watching videos very uncomfortable. There's also faint static in nearly every pair of bluetooth earbuds I've tried (and not just cheap ones, $100+ ones do this too).

Have you considered that the problem (static, etc.) might not be on part of the bluetooth earphones, but rather on your phone's bluetooth hardware? I use an iPhone with bluetooth earphones all day and it's a great experience.

The ones I currently use have the same issues on both MBP and Nexus 5X, so I doubt it.

I haven't had any of those problems with the AirPods. No static, no latency.

There's some issues with reliably connecting though.

I had barely any issues with Airpods on iOS 10, but iOS 11 absolutely made them terrible. Constant stuttering, disconnecting randomly, falling to connect. Shame. I'll be moving to an Android now.

No issues here connecting at all with the AirPods. iPhone 7, Apple Watch, iPad, Nexus 5X, and even my old Nexus tablet all work beautifully.

The only issue I have w/ airpods on iphone 6 is stuttering when walking away from subway. What's up with that?

The problem I have with bluetooth is that it's a noticeable drain on battery. That's why I keep mine off all the time and avoid bluetooth devices.

I think bluetooth is absolutely there now... I've used bluetooth headsets for a number of years now and they are fantastic. You just need to buy a decent product! Currently I am using QC35s and there is no lag, no hiss, amazing quality all round.

Sometimes it is unavoidable though... for example my car's bluetooth implementation however is horrible - very laggy and sometimes unresponsive.

> You just need to buy a decent product!

And there's the issue, the 3.5mm works with something I can buy for a couple of dollars in the supermarket and it just works. A good bluetooth headset costs an order of magnitude or two more and I can't find out if it's good until I take it home and open the packaging.

Even streaming from my phone to my PC is something I've found to be incredibly laggy.

True - but the similar issues people complain about with BT audio are going to be present with $5 cabled headphones... crackly audio, dodgy cables might cut in/out with movement etc...

What about $145 cabled headphones?

Complexity has its price — it’s hard to get right and corner cases continue creeping in with wider use.

If there’s a popular example of over engineering, the replacement of a dirt cheap 3 foot cable that works perfectly 100% of the time, with zero lag and zero signal loss, with an expensive, battery powered wireless signal solution which lags, cuts out, creates security issues and dies after a few hours of use must be it.

Your last paragraph hits the problem: it’s possible that a car exists with a release-quality Bluetooth stack but I’ve yet to use one. The same is true of most of the non-current or expensive devises, which turns quality into something you need to carefully seek out rather than a given.

In contrast, $2 throwaway headphones work 100% of the time. Sure, the audio quality isn’t great but it’ll be better than any phone speaker and you can drop only a little more for a big improvement.

This annoys me because I like the Bluetooth concept – and have since I bought my first BT-equipped phone around 2004 – but the tragedy of the commons has hit really hard. It’s 2017 and turning Bluetooth off and back on is still a useful way to fix problems FFS!

If Apple and followers want to make this switch, they need to start blacklisting or warning for buggy devices (“x is unable to play back reliably; contact VENDOR support” or “sound quality will be low due to …”) — after fixing anything hokey they’re still shipping, of course. Trying to paper over the skimping just tarnishes the entire industry.

Is it really unavoidable? Have you ever had a car 3.5mm port not work?

Sorry, what I meant by that was that it is sometimes unavoidable using a less than stellar bluetooth device :)

I got what you meant, I just meant that if you had a 3.5 mm jack, you wouldn't have these problems, it would just work. We've replaced a very simple, cheap solution that works very well and has very high fidelity with an unreliable, expensive, complicated one that has worse sound quality when it works. Your problem could very easily be avoided with very old tech.

Yes. Not in a car, but in other devices.

In at least one of the cases, this was because of stuff (some sort of gunk) getting into the port. Before anyone says that wasn't a problem with the port itself, having a physical port allows problems like that to happen. Problems of that sort don't exist with wireless technologies.

Heh I know it's technically possible if you jam a candy bar into it, or spill coke on your phone, etc. It's much less pervasive than Bluetooth cutting in and out because you put your hand over the antenna and similar problems, though.

> Heh I know it's technically possible

it's not merely "technically possible". I've had this actually happen to me, and I'm sure others have too.

I'm not an audiophile, but I can hear a difference between a good DAC through an headphone cable and a bluetooth set of headphones.

I was also just in an airline lounge last weekend and got a huge amount of drop outs on my bluetooth headphones. I'm guessing because of a strong wi-fi signal to the point where the music was stuttering badly.

So it's got a ways to go yet.

This is exactly how I plan on acting too. I wish I had a way to tell these companies to attribute the lack of sale they normally would have gotten, to their decision to remove the headphone jack. I'm worried they'll attribute sales difficulties to some other reason.

And we've just got Bluetooth 5.0, which doesn't seem to address any of those issues. Instead it focuses on range, likely because that benefits local stores' advertising.

Everyone lamenting the loss of the headphone jack reminds me of the same people lamenting the loss of the CD-ROM drive in the MacBooks.

The headphone jack is a legacy, bulky port. I would not be surprised to see a port-less phone in the next few years.

Apple has a really good track record of dropping things at the right time: floppy, CD-ROM, Flash, etc.

At each of those steps there were people decrying the loss of these things. Today however, most people don’t miss any of them. They made the right choice then and I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt now.

I spent a good amount of money on decent headphones and if I can't use them with my phone without a dongle that's a no-no. I get that "the future is portless" but the future hasn't arrived yet and until then I'm not gonna hand out 800EUR for something I can't use with my headphones with.

But if you're the type of person that has one good pair of headphones then attach the adapter to them all the time and just pretend that the port on your phone is a weird shape.

I get that it's not ideal and that adapters are awkward but it seems like it's such a minor inconvenience for your use case. I would expect that audiophiles are used to adapters to go between 2.5mm, 3.5mm, and 1/4" stereo already. What's one more?

I get where you're coming from but the "What's one more?" idea is what led to this whole donglemania. Dongles are conceived of bridges into a brighter future but no thanks I'll happily live in the past for now.

I just wanted to say that this is a really great point and, inevitably, the answer from people with these objections is always the same - they just prefer what they already have and are comfortable with. It's such a mild inconvenience that they're already ok with in every other scenario but, for some reason, this time it's completely different. It doesn't make sense.

Im not ok with it in every other scenario, I just swallow it often times because e.g. making a switch away from my MacBook would be prohibitively costly for me and I'll rather endure these "mild inconveniences" (dongle for Cinema Display, USB, Ethernet).

And yes, I really do prefer what I already have (my headphones working without a dongle).

Edit: I'm not even an audiophile btw

So what do you do when you need to plug those headphones into a DAC with a stereo input? You need an adapter. What do you do when you need to plug them into a TV or game system? You need an adapter. You are definitely ok with it in other scenarios, just not this very specific one.

>need to plug those headphones into a DAC with a stereo input

Don't have one.

>need to plug them into a TV or game system

Don't have either.

You're completely right that I need adapters but that doesn't mean I'm ok with getting increasingly more of them. Especially when I get nothing out of them except backwards-compat for hardware that is simply not of the legacy type.

Adapters are easy to forget at home, lose on the go, break, etc. pp. They're detrimental to the user experience and hence should be restricted to support of legacy hardware.

This is exactly what I've done. I have one pair of $250 headphones I've had for years that I use when I want to sit in a dark room and just listen to music. Now the dongle lives on them and there is no inconvenience at all.

> I spent a good amount of money on decent headphones and if I can't use them with my phone without a dongle that's a no-no. I get that "the future is portless" but the future hasn't arrived yet

What's your criteria for when that future will have arrived?

When there's a decent wireless competitor to the headphones I already have. When there's cheap wireless in-ears on the market.

The problem is, the alternative to dropped techs were better to some extent:

- CD-ROM -> Bigger hard drives, faster internet connections.

- Floppy -> CD-ROMs And BIOS upgrade

- Flash -> Better browser security, and faster javascript

Now for headphone jack, we have bluetooth. Slow, unreliable, requires to charge an extra device, when you run out of earphone battery, you are done listening. If you use the USB/Lightning to AUX, you can't charge your phone at the same time.

If lose the earpiece, you pay premium to replace it.

Also: I can't watch a video with a half-second audio delay. Half a second is being generous.

Not to mention for audiophiles there is the extra concern about sound quality loss.

The DAC on most consumer devices is not audiophile quality. Having had a mac book and a standalone USB DAC, there's really no comparison.

I don't really have a problem with DACs on PCs, but the amount of noise present on most motherboards is terrible. (I can usually tell when my machine is compiling).

A few years ago I bought some USB DACs and separate headphone amplifiers and it made a world of difference, even to my relatively ancient ears.

At least the iPhone's DACs are absolutely audiophile quality, especially because the idea that "an audiophile quality DAC costs 20x what you see in smartphones" is patently ridiculous. There's no evidence at all that any good as in not flawed DAC will sound the same on nearly any, if not any system.

At the very least, the audio quality degradation of most bluetooth devices has a worse impact than even your average middle tier Android phone's dac.

I consider myself an "audiophile" and have spent way too much money on nice equipment. That being said, once I started hanging out with people that call themselves audiophiles and have way more money that I do, I realized that most of these people can't even tell the difference in the sound quality and, frankly, there is no loss. One of the meetups I went to even had a contest for anyone that could tell which DAC was being used and another for anyone that could tell a FLAC apart from a 320kbps MP3. No one won the prize money. "Audiophiles" are, for the most part, full of shit, in my opinion and just need to justify spending ridiculous amounts of money on great looking audio equipment.

Mind you, I'm also probably full of shit because everyone tells me that I can get exactly the same computer for half the cost of what I paid for my MacBook Pro and I'm yet to find anything that comes close. At least with the Apple stuff, there are objective things I can point to that justify the more expensive costs. With audio equipment, there's a slow curve up and then it just drops off once you get past a certain point.

I don't buy into a lot of audiophile nonsense (and personally I don't think I can tell the difference between a 192kbps MP3 and uncompressed), however there is a clear and obvious quality issue with some Bluetooth devices, in addition to how terrible the pairing experience is.

The Pareto principle is alive and thriving in the audiophile community. Anything beyond midrange is pure wank IMO (although I'll happily listen to 160kbps MP3 so you can probably disregard what I say. :P But this does seem to be borne out by a lot of double-blind testing, as you mention.)

As for Apple products, you might get the same spec computer for half the cost but Apple has really nice build quality and integration (or at least did when I got my MacBook). It's the same spec but it's just nicer.

> I'll happily listen to 160kbps MP3 so you can probably disregard what I say.

I'm with you several hundred percent.

Didn't a serious of fairly rigorous tests way back conclude that nobody could tell the difference between a ~160kbps VBR MP3 and an uncompressed source (as long as a good MP3 encoder was used)? I think it was the Hydrogen Audio people behind it.

I think they decided ~192kbs was the point where there wasn't any statistically significant evidence that anyone could tell the difference.

And that's in ideal listening conditions when people are being asked specifically to listen out for differences. I think the margin for realistic listening situations is probably much wider.

> Didn't a serious of fairly rigorous tests way back conclude that nobody could tell the difference between a ~160kbps VBR MP3 and an uncompressed source (as long as a good MP3 encoder was used)?

No, the conclusion was that most people couldn't tell the difference above 192kbps, but to a trained ear many people could still tell the difference in 192 to 256, or 256 to 320.

It was 320 and above where there was basically nobody who could tell the difference unless they were using recording studio grade gear, which most people don't have.

Agreed 100%. I've owned so many different computers over the years that I'm 100% willing to pay what most consider to be an "Apple tax" when, in my mind, I'm paying a little bit extra for an overall better product. You're totally right... it's just nicer.

I agree with all of this, but the knock on bluetooth sound quality doesn't fall into this category of audiophile foolishness.

It's real & severe downsampling, and incredibly noticeable.

Bluetooth 5 should have the bandwidth to solve this problem.

On airpods there’s so much background noise and lack of sound isolation the quality drop won’t make a difference.

While I get what you're saying, I only find this drop in quality on really cheap Bluetooth headphones/headsets. I have tried 2 "high-end" wireless headphones (1 of which are my AirPods that I own) and I find no downsampling or quality loss that's noticeable.

If you can't hear the difference between 320kbps and lossless you're either not using equipment capable of the response and the frequencies where the cutoff for 320kbps and resulting compression artifacts are noticeable or you just aren't able to hear the artifacts, either because of unfamiliarity or bad hearing especially as you get older. I've done blind a/b tests with my equipment and over 20 samples proven that I can tell a difference with a high degree of statistical certainty between 320kbps and FLAC (try http://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html) Lossless vs 192kbps or lower is just too obvious, I think most "audiophiles" like yourself should be able to tell the difference with a high-end set of headphones or speakers. 320kbps really only makes a difference for me for classical recordings as a violinist who can hear every detail with audio equipment thats pricier then what 99% of people are willing to pay for that extra 0.1% of audio fidelity. Alot of enthusiasts are also audio engineers who are very familiar with compression artifacts and audio mastering

Often, claims that 320kpbs is indistinguishable from lossless are based on tests conducted on regular people (as opposed to trained musicians) and with pop music (as opposed to classical recordings). I would like to see a test conducted on classical musicians with well-recorded classical music. I honestly don't know what the outcome would be, but it would be instructive.

Congratulations!

I'm also a musician and can hear the difference between plenty of blind tests but I'm going to call bullshit on your claims. There have been several tests done like this and some of the most prominent musicians and engineers couldn't tell the difference. Neil Young and his engineer couldn't even tell the difference when bloggers trolled them with their own Pono format files. You may very well be one of the 0.00001% of people that can tell the difference but I highly doubt it.

Do you have references? As I pointed out in another comment, I would be interested in tests conducted on trained musicians with classical (or at least acoustic) music.

My Aiepoda replaces a pair of $20 Sony over the ear headphones. They mostly sound better, the only difference being that the Sonys has bigger drivers and could do a better job on the low end.

I never spend more than $60 on headphones (ignoring my noise cancelling Bose).

Quality isn’t an issue. For something so small they sound quite good. For something so convenient they sound fantastic.

Bluetooth is slow and unreliable unless you're using Airpods (due to the W1 chip), which I think is the more subtle move by Apple in this case. I was not a happy camper when I first read about Apple removing the headphone jack, but I won't lie, I'm an Airpod convert. They work flawlessly for me and I haven't traveled with or used normal headphones since I got them (other than a nicer pair of over-the-ears when I'm working on my desktop).

I'm not saying this excuses the removal of the headphone jack, but from a business perspective it does add up.

I've said it multiple times now but I was exactly the same way. I was a little bit annoyed at the removal of the headphone jack but then ended up getting the iPhone 7 because I wanted the newer features. I didn't have wireless headphones, so I went all in and got the AirPods along with it and, holy hell, this is the closest that any technology has come to really feeling like magic to me. The pairing process was awesome, the range is great, the sound quality is great (after breaking them in hard for a week or two), and I literally forget that I'm wearing them sometimes to the point where it feels like the music is coming from inside my head. They're just so convenient and nice that I'm ok with doubting Apple initially but relieved that they proved me wrong. Forget the headphone jack. If this works the way these AirPods do going forward, I'm a convert.

> I literally forget that I'm wearing them sometimes to the point where it feels like the music is coming from inside my head.

I see I'm not the only one :D I've also noticed other people and their wires hanging out more and more. I'm thinking wires are probably going to go out of fashion in the future and will look weird.

This makes me jealous for an Android version. The Bragi Dash has been a huge letdown due to persistent connectivity issues.

If it makes you feel better, AirPod users rarely talk about their bluetooth stuttering issues, but it does occur.

How often do you have to charge airpods ?

Mine last about 4 hours, and are up and running again for at about another 2 hours in as little as 15 minutes.

Apple's quoted battery life and charging times seem accurate to me.

Amazing how factual statements in response to questions about same are getting downvoted. C'mon people.

I never pay attention to the absolute time, but when they need a charge they make a sound to indicate it and then you can easily put one in the case/charger and then put it back in your ear when it’s charged and then charge the other one, all without pausing your call. This duty cycling means you are effectively limited by the case battery size not the bud battery size.

I agree with the others upthread that I’m not going back to wires after getting my AirPods.

If you're on a call (and I do some marathon calls), I get a small ding in my ear and pop out one airpod, charge it, in 10-15m put it back in and charge the other one and with ~30m of completely uninterrupted conversation (swapping airpods does not cause drops) I'm good for another 2 hours.

For music, I get ~4 hours easily.

In addition to it being magical, it's really incredibly useful and handy for driving and for work. Great to be on a phone call in a crowded server room, without extra wires being in the way. Great for commuting. And super-extra-great at the gym.

Even on the treadmill? Even going hard?

I'm not trying to push buttons. I use Jaybird X3s and feel comfort from the corded nature of the headphones. Here on the streets of NYC, I see AirPods more as fashion statements over an actual audio solution.

The instantaneous pairing sounds lovely, but I'm concerned most concerned with audio quality, bluetooth connection in a busy city, and general practical logistics both in and out of the gym.

Yes, even going hard. I can't dislodge AirPods even if I shake my head around as hard as I can and try to dislodge them. My wife is on the treadmill almost every day with hers, running fast; she has no issues with them falling out, either. I do get that the security of a cord is preferable for some, but I've had a really great user experience. I don't wear them because they are fashionable; I think they look rather dorky, to be honest. But I love how they work.

I guess physiological variations are inevitable but for me I have to be a newly showered Labrador to shake it off my head.

I fear anything involving putting on/taking off a helmet could dislodge these suckers. And any activity the helmet is used for: mountain biking/climbing/mountaineering, is not the right venue for them. Too bad, since the iPhone's water resistance would be a major upgrade over my current phone.

You should try it if you can. Yes, helmet removal can and likely will dislodge, but it's not obvious that just the act of using them with a helmet on will cause problems.

Maybe it won't work, but worth trying.

I've worn them with a helmet and they only fell out when I tried to take the helmet off. As long as I look for them when taking the helmet off, they're no different from checking my regular headphones.

Most things I bring mountaineering - especially - most especially electronics are tethered in some ways. It may be too risky to buy an iPhone just to try this out, and I'm doubting anyone's gonna let me borrow a phone and a pair of these. regular earbuds are inexpensive, and if you lose/break them, it's not the end of the world. Airbuds are... $150. For something that can be easily lost.. yikes.

Wearing in-ear headphones while biking is a bad idea anyway. I've switched to bone conducting headphones for my daily commute by bicycle and they're great for listening to podcasts while still hearing the surrounding traffic.

> Wearing in-ear headphones while biking is a bad idea anyway.

On roads? Yes. Mountain biking? Depends on where I am.

> I've switched to bone conducting headphones for my daily commute by bicycle and they're great for listening to podcasts while still hearing the surrounding traffic.

Any brand/model you would suggest?

I tried wearing them at the gym, but I sweat too much.

I've also had one fall out when I was out shopping. I was on an escalator and managed to pick it up, but now I'm super paranoid whenever I walk near a sewer grating.

I own AirPods and Jaybird X3s, and the sound quality of AirPods crushes that of the Jaybirds. I completely switched over to AirPods a few months ago and have never looked back.

Then the X3s must sound really bad because AirPod sound quality is decidedly mediocre, especially for $160 in-ears.

I disagree completely. You either don't own a pair or you only tried a fresh pair. You gotta break those bad boys in. It took me 2 weeks before they broke in and I noticed a huge difference.

Bluetooth audio quality is subpar to a wired port in my experience. A good example is the Q35, when paired via bluetooth the audio quality is worse than when plugged directly into the headphone port.

IIRC there are multiple audio codecs in the standard (and of course different versions of standard), some of them really old. So with certain device combinations you may get better result than with others.

I once looked into these and got the impression that main goal is to make it possible to produce standard compliant devices as cheaply as possible.

Edit: I had written down some of the stuff I found: http://juhap.iki.fi/misc/qc35-windows-bluetooth-audio/

I had Jaybird X3's before I had AirPods.

The X3s were not terrible, but, the AirPods are more comfortable and stay in my ears more firmly. I can wear them for hours and hours without them bothering me and I only dislodge them if I physically knock them out of my ear.

I play basketball in AirPods. That should tell you all you need to know. Running, jumping, trick shots, drills, 1:1, and they've never fallen out even once.

I used to have JayBird X2s. They were fine but they definitely fell out from time to time and I'd always have to subconsciously "manage" the cord.

AirPods are my primary gym headphones and I'm never going back. I will pay double or even triple to replace them if I had to. That's how much value they deliver in my day to day life.

Just wanted to note that listening to music through earbuds while driving is illegal.

I generally believe that laws only need to be enforced when reasonable. But this law actually sounds reasonable...

In California, to my knowledge, it’s only against the law of both earbuds are in.

The legality depends on what state you are in.

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/10/31/is-it-legal-to-w...

I don't see what AirPods do that any other, more affordable, Bluetooth headsets don't. I get the wireless appeal, I like using my cheap 20€ Bluetooth headphones with build in microphone/remote. I mostly got them for the remote, their 7 hour running time lasts me for like 3 days of commuting.

But I also still carry around my wired UE triple.fi because I like having the option for going wired, better sound quality, less latency and especially less drain on my iPhone SE's battery due to disabled Bluetooth.

Even when nothing is paired/active just having Bluetooth enabled seems to drain phones batteries so much faster.

The thing AirPods do is work better than other, more affordable, Bluetooth headsets. There’s no lag, you painlessly pair once and can use on all your Apple devices, they’re so light you can easily forget they’re in your ears, etc etc. I have a Plus which has a much bigger battery, but I don’t notice any difference with Bluetooth on or off.

There is no latency or battery drain with the AirPods. That's exactly why I can't compare them to any of the other Bluetooth headphones I've tried. They are significantly better.

This is exactly what I feel: music coming from inside my head. The AirPod is a very under-hyped product. Its beauty is that you can wear it and completely forget about it and focus on whatever the hell you want to do. You actually feel that rare freedom. This freedom and focus it gives you is the most precious quality that 99.9% gadgets lack these days.

Well said. They're the only reason that I actually think a wireless future is possible without a headphone jack.

Apple has had a series of truly revolutionary products over the years.

The complete list, as far as I'm concerned: Original Macintosh OSX/macOS iPod iPhone AirPods

AirPods really are amazing, my singular complaint is that they're not waterproof.

Waterproof AirPods would be the one thing I would pay stupid amounts of money for. My biggest complaint with the AirPods (and it's a really tiny one) is that they don't have a great seal. Waterproof AirPods would have to have a good seal to the ear.

> the sound quality is great

Really? I use AirPods when I'm out and about but when I'm at my desk I plug in a pair of $20 wired Sony earbuds that sound way better...

Personally I really do find the sound quality to be quite good on the AirPods. When I'm at home I'm often using a much more expensive pair of open Beyerdynamic headphones so it's not like I haven't experienced high quality sound, though I wouldn't consider myself an audiophile.

Buy some felt covers for the AirPods.

The biggest problem with them is poor isolation.

This is another good point. Quality headphones are rarely bluetooth. I have a nice pair of Sennheisers. They do not come in bluetooth. And yes, I use them with my phone at work.

I thought the AirPods sounded like ass when I first started using them but after 2 weeks of using them every day for hours on end, they've really broken in and they have great range and separation. They don't have a great seal but I don't consider that a negative for what I use them for.

And that’s exactly why Apple is so often so great at innovation: they make bold trade-off decisions on behalf of the users knowing the public will beat them initially, but that it’ll pay off in the long run - for everyone. Which other company does that?

I noticed this thing with my old acer transformer 2-in-1 laptop if you enable bluetooth for audio streaming and have wifi running it slows to a crawl (watching youtube for example) actually won't buffer. I'm wondering if the bluetooth/wifi is on the same chip and can't run simultaneously.

> I'm wondering if the bluetooth/wifi is on the same chip and can't run simultaneously.

Worse, they're close to the same frequency band, and can interfere with each other. Wifi channel 14 is 2.484 ghz. Bluetooth is 2.4835 ghz.

Not just 'close to'. The wifi channels are very fat, and every channel extends .01GHz in either direction from its center. But more importantly bluetooth uses the exact same 2.40-2.48 range. It tries to minimize interference by frequency-hopping, but it's guaranteed to overlap 2.4GHz wifi.

So it's probably okay to use for a wireless mouse/keyboard but continuous sound output is a no go? Just seems like a bad design I mean the computer doesn't even have an ethernet port so to have wifi + bluetooth as a suggested combo/function and it doesn't work... haha

Bluetooth is lossy. Replacements must keep quality of predecessor as a minimum.

> Bluetooth is lossy.

And 99% of people don't care.

...which is how you slowly erode standards for both twisted fun and massive profit.

It's sad and pathetic watching this mission creep of audio degradation at the greed-fueled discretion of corporate profiteering.

Phone DACs aren't very good. I use a very expensive DAC when I listen to music at home because I actually care. I also own a pair of AirPods because in a noisy city environment walking around it doesn't actually matter that I'm losing fidelity.

As I commented elsewhere the problem with Bluetooth is fatigue related not listening pleasure related.

Edit: As a side note the only positive I can see out of removing the headphone jack is the potential proliferation of quality DAC/preamp dongles. Still annoying though.

Simply incorrect, at least on the Apple side of things. Android DACs and onboard amps are hit and miss.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/iphone-6s-plus-audio-qualit...

He's done similar measurements on other Apple audio devices, including their $9 Lightning-to-headphone adapter and they all fare well.

Do you mean in this case, or in general?

I think it's very often the reverse – a disruptive replacement has to really blow past the incumbent in some respect, but it's quite hard for something new to be up to par with the old, polished thing in all respects.

PCs were less powerful than mainframes, MP3 is lower quality than CD, etc. etc.

They all solved problems. For example you can't carry 10000 cds with you everywhere you go. I can't see what problem Bluetooth is solving apart from allowing companies sell more consumer grade junk. I'm not even a die hard audiophile but Bluetooth headphones take the biscuit. Shittier quality audio (and generally build too) for double the price and you have to charge them too.

If there was ever proof that we are brainwashed by consumerism in the same way the North Koreans are by the Kim's, Bluetooth headphones is it. Total worthless junk yet people still drop non-inconsequential amounts cash on it and rave about it.

The problem Bluetooth is solving is wires. It’s really something you don’t recognize how annoying it is until you don’t have to deal with it anymore. With aptX the audio quality isn’t bad either. Over time all of those issues (price, build quality, audio quality, battery life, etc.) will only get better, while wired headphones will by definition always have that wire...

Wires are better imo. Anyways they could and do easily offer both to keep everyone happy. No need to remove the wired option.

On a side note I found this analysis of aptX very illuminating. I found it after the salesperson in my local B&W store tried tell me it was completely lossless http://www.sereneaudio.com/blog/how-good-is-bluetooth-audio-...

I should add that the portable Bluetooth speaker he was demoing sounded great compared to other offerings in the market that I have heard. I wasn't sure if this was more due to the codec or the general quality of the components. The speaker in question is the Dali Kaitch https://www.dali-speakers.com/loudspeakers/active/dali-katch... for those who are curious.

Apple doesn't support aptX so it's irrelevant to cableless iPhone users.

> It’s really something you don’t recognize how annoying it is until you don’t have to deal with it anymore.

I definitely recognised it while still using them! When I'm not wearing the headphones, the wires are always getting tangled. When I am wearing the headphones, the wires are always getting caught on things.

> The problem Bluetooth is solving is wires. It’s really something you don’t recognize how annoying it is until you don’t have to deal with it anymore.

I bought an iP6S instead of a 7 just for the jack because I wasn't a fan at all. Then in the span of four months, three jacks died on me in a row. I had a spare cable for my over-ear Momentum but the two intras are dead, and having to look for a replacement suddenly brought back to my mind the whole OMTP vs CTIA mess, if they have remote volume control at all. I'm seriously considering wireless for the next ones without even having used any.

With aptX-HD you get lossless.

It's actually "near" lossless however one could successfully argue that it's good enough. Check out the wikipedia for details.

That is something you have to enable, if you need to respect some bandwidth restriction.

> The codec optionally permits a "hybrid" coding scheme for applications where average and/or peak compressed data rates must be capped at a constrained level. This involves the dynamic application of a form of "near lossless" coding – but only for those short sections of audio where completely lossless coding cannot respect the bandwidth constraints. Even for those short periods while the "near lossless" coding is active, high-definition audio quality is maintained, retaining audio frequencies up to 20 kHz and a dynamic range of at least 120 dB.

Analog headphones are lossy, I trust compression algorithms to improve more than I believe manufacturers will use more expensive, higher quality materials and connections at the same price point.

My Sennheiser HD25s are still going strong after ~18 years service. You cannot find Bluetooth anything that sound remotely as good. Not even for 3 times the price and I can guarantee you that each and every Bluetooth headphone in circulation today will be in landfill in 18 years.

> You cannot find Bluetooth anything that sound remotely as good.

In absolute terms, you are certainly right. However, for most people, Bluetooth headphones sound good enough. I'll gladly give up some fidelity if it means I can lose wires.

Yes, usage longevity is another factor to consider besides sound quality. However, I was replying to OP, who specifically was talking about the signal loss due to BT encoding. I countered with the fact that analog lines also experience loss, and only the latter has little chance of improving moving forward.

AirPod concert here, too. I love them things.

convert.

Same here. I have a pair of AirPods and the whole setup is so much more elegant now. I really don't miss them wired headphones, or the headphone jack. Now, I just pull the AirPods case out of my pocket, pop up the lid, insert the headphones in my ears, and everything just works.

my airpods are unreliable. I could not connect them to my MacBook Pro the other night. tried changing rooms thinking maybe there is interference. tried re-pairing from scratch. they'd pair but not connect. after 15 minutes of trying various things I switched to wired headphones.

I haven't tried again since then. Had to re-pair them to get them to connect to my iPhone.

this is the first time I haven't been able to get them to connect but I've had several times where they won't say connected for more than 30 seconds

As with troubleshooting most hardware issues - experiment, restart, reset. It can either be an issue with the driver in which case a simple restart (maybe a “hard” smc reset as well) fixes the problem, or a hardware problem with the bluetooth antenna which would require a swap of the chip itself, but is usually on the macbook/iphone side, not the airpods and would affect all of your bluetooth connectivity. I’ve had both types of issues and it sure sucks. Had to replace an antenna cable in an iphone 6 to be able to connect to my airpods again.

Bluetooth was never designed for audio usage. Revisions over the years have shoehorned functionality into what is effectively an FTP protocol. There's also the compression and audio mangling that bluetooth does. You do not get this with a straight through audio cable (or some other wireless technologies that don't compress)

Which makes everyone else's decision to drop the audio jack that much more stupid. Virtually all other OEMs tend to do things so much more superficially than Apple. Like face authentication for instance. It's been and still is a joke for years in the Android world. Perhaps Apple's will be a joke, too, but at least it looks like they put a good amount of effort into making it secure even if they had to add some extra hardware components in there.

Another reason why it's stupid for everyone else to follow Apple on this like sheep is because Apple also did it to sell their expensive Beats Bluetooth headphones. The other OEMs don't have a billion-dollar headphone division...

Moving the airpods between devices is still a huge pain. Even just switching from my iPhone to my iPad sometimes requires turning bluetooth off and on, and other superstitious pairing rituals.

If I only use them with my phone (which I do almost all of the time), they will connect automatically quickly. But pairing between devices will probably always be more painful than a simple wire.

How easy is it to move your Airpods from your phone to your tablet to your desktop to your non-Apple work PC? Don't get me wrong, I think Airpods are pretty amazing for what they are. But they're still hampered by what they are. For someone whose primary concern is "I hate wires" they're great. They sound 'pretty good for earbuds' as multiple friends, some of whom bought them, can attest.

Personally, I can't stand the sound quality of earbuds. My closed-back Audio Technica over-ear headphones can be unplugged from one device and plugged into another in seconds (no pairing/unpairing, turning bluetooth on and off, etc) and are always 'charged'. Plus they sound lightyears better than any bluetooth anything.

Don't Bluetooth devices start lossily compressing audio when either the sender or receiver can't keep up? I listen to flac files, so I'm not interested in that, no matter how much space you lose with a 3.5mm socket.

with regards to charging while using the "charging port", with my 8+ I simply leave it on a wireless charger and it gains charge while making a call. I have a Plesson charger.

I did move to air pods so I have that option as well, but the wireless charge ability and the fact they are cheap removed my concerns. plus with apple providing both adapter for old headphone to charge adapter as well as new head phones with that same connector I am in the camp of, don't matter anymore.

Apple computers come with SSDs only on the macbooks, so losing the DVD drive due to bigger hard drives isn't the case here because the hard drives are MUCH MUCH MUCH smaller now. I have tons of customers that face serious issues because they didn't know about this and they don't know much about computers.

Flash might be garbage, but its still super important.

Now lets talk about regular USB.... Apple dropped it without including a free adapter. They could have EASILY added one USB 3.0/3.1 port on the motherboard. There's plenty of space for it, but they would rather have you pay them tons of money for an adapter.

In what way is Flash still important?

I have had Flash disabled via a browser extension for what feels like years now.

Good luck taking online training from any government agency. FEMA, e.g.

What kind of issues is the lack of DVD drive causing your customers?

Not to mention a USB DVD drive is $25.

You can't be seriously suggesting that Apple did all the work to put only USB-C ports on the computer so that people would pay them "tons of money" for adapters. For starters, the adapters are cheap and can be purchased from any number of retailers that aren't Apple but, secondly, I have had to purchase 1 single adapter that has given me all the functionality of having these multiple ports and I've literally used it twice (once for the VGA out and once for USB). They didn't remove the old ports to get money out of people just like they didn't remove the headphone jack from the iPhone to get money from people. They did it because they feel that USB-C and wireless devices are the future and they're not wrong.

Lol I got the first 12” macbook and was sad about ports. Bought the dongle so I could hook it up to a monitor for a week while on business. Fast forward till today and I don’t where the dongle is cos I never use it.

Yup. Same here. Bought one of those "all-in-one VGA/DVI/USB/etc" dongles and have literally used it twice just because I was lazy and didn't want to unplug something else that was behind the desk.

> For starters, the adapters are cheap and can be purchased from any number of retailers that aren't Apple

Not all USB-C cables are created equal.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15473777

Half second delay? what Bluetooth are you using? I suggest you to buy something better, my 3 years old bluetooth headset doesn't have any noticeable delay.

The other examples are not really good examples: - bigger drives and faster internet connections? I don't think most of the countries where Apple sells had those things at that time. But, hey, it is a premium product, so they expect you to pay premium for other stuff too (read their new bluetooth earplugs) - faster javascript and better browser? Chrome had those things, not safary, and it did had flash too.

I have Powerbeats wireless 2 headphones and have no perceptible delay. I wouldn't be able to tolerate a half second delay.

If there was such thing as a 1 second delay then the tech would be dead by now. He’s just making things up.

He's not making things up. I experience massive delay with bluetooth headphones, and speakers. The delay is not one second, but it's enough to make it useless for watching video.

Apple has mastered hiding any delay with AirPods and perfectly syncs things up. No small feat because it has to sync up both left and right in addition to what’s on the screen.

What is the delay? For me it is imperceptible (it means it is below 50ms).

I see here a lot of people talking about delays and how $2 wired earphones solve the problem. So I get people buy cheap and wants quality with their new iPhones. Cheap earphones with or without wire are always crap, the sound is horrible and the quality follows. It might be the reason of the delays: cheap stuff

I've never seen bluetooth audio devices that were capable of syncing video and audio in 10 years of using bluetooth audio devices. My most recent tao tronics BT headphones were great for podcasts and audio, but useless for watching video from my Moto X. Have also tested this with Anker portable speakers, Amazon Echo in BT mode, and Creative BT speakers. All are useless for video. I replaced them with a set of $9 Panasonic wired Earbuds that sound just fine and never run out of batteries.

It also depends on the device (and software) you're watching video with - some are smart enough to compensate for the lag. iOS is decent at it when something uses the system APIs to play video (so not VLC), but I never had any luck back when I used Android. On that Mac I get really bad sync issues sometimes (seconds!).

I use Bluetooth and never had issues with delays. I had couple of computers, couple of mobiles and 3 different Bluetooth headset during this time. My Bluetooth headsets weren't the cheapest ones either.

Most of Apple's major markets had pretty good Internet connections by 2012, when they started producing computers without CD drives.

> I suggest you to buy something better

No thanks, I don't feel like spending more money. With my current phone I can buy compatible earphones with zero delay for as low as $1.50 a pop. Bluetooth headphones just can't beat that.

...and you can use all those same headphones with a current iPhone, using the adapter which is free and ships in the box.

Frankly, the ability to use $1.50 headphones is of vanishingly small significance.

Anything can beat $1.50 earphones. With that price I bet you the sound is going to be crap.

It's an extreme lower bound to make a point.

(And, actually, dollar store headphones are surprisingly decent these days. I use them to listen to podcasts in the pool, without worrying too much about whether they get wet.)

An average quality headphones are in the price range of bluetooth headphones. So I don't understand your point.

I couldn't find anything below 10€ with decent sound quality, and it was hard to find something at that price that was good. Moreover, they lasted around 3-6 months for me, while a 25€ Bluetooth headset I bought 3 years ago is still working and the sound is better.

I have bluetooth headphones (AOSO G18) that cost around 11€ (while on sale at Amazon) and they don't have a perceivable delay. They even show the battery level in iOS. Great for working out.

Looks like "AOSO" is a fantasy brand, they are also sold as "EarTime", "Dacom", "GranVela", ...

No, I prefer to keep using my wired earphones.

In fact, I bought them AFTER I had Bluetooth earphones, because of the inconvenience of having to recharge them.

I also got gigabit Ethernet in the apartment after using Wi-fi for some time.

In fact, I see the hate of wires as an irrational behaviour. They work better in practically all cases with only minor inconvenience.

I myself don't need to be walking or moving all the time either. If there's a chair, there are cables available.

Wires are a major inconvenience though. Sure, at work I use a big pair of wired headphones and connect my laptop to a dock.

But when I am on the move every cable stinks. I have caught the headphones wire on doorknobs and bus ticket validators so many times that now I gladly suffer through the unreliable bluetooth to avoid that.

I can see how wires can sometimes be problematic and I don't disagree with you. You can easily avoid most issues by having the cable under some of your clothes though.

My point is I don't think people can have an extreme opinion on the issue and still be objective, like I have seen so much online lately. Sometimes wires are better, sometimes wireless is better.

I use heavily earphones. They usually last between 3 and 9 months because of the fucking wire. When I am working I cannot type comfortable because of the wire, it is in the middle. When I move I always pull the wire. If I am walking with my mobile in my pocket I also pull the wire from time to time. So they always broke in the connector because of the wire. Even with a lot of care they always break in the same place. So it is around 15€ every 6 months. You can buy them cheaper but the sound is crap. My Bluetooth headset was 30€ and have been working like charm for more than 3 years now. They have 8 hours of battery life and I need to charge them less than the smartphone. So I don't get the inconvenience of charging something than last more than an smartphone.

You don't have to use bluetooth for audio. Every iPhone comes with an aux port adapter for a reason.

adapters are a hack, not a final solution.

I'm not saying they are, but phone connectors.. aka "Aux ports" were designed in 1878, with the 3.5mm rendition dating back to the 1960's. It's obsolete tech. We can easily be making headphones with connectors that are a fraction the size. There's no reason USB-C and lightning ports shouldn't be multi-use. One port, many applications.

So I want to charge my phone and use headphones at the same time. That's a dongle.

I want to use any piece of stereo equipment made since the 1960s. That's a dongle.

Why don't we just ditch USB C too. Wireless charging and pairing via wifi/bluetooth.

The iPhone8 onward now has wireless charging. I see portless phones in the next 5 years tops.

We have gone from one standard interface, to now three interfaces (headphone jack, USB-C and lightning), and one of them is proprietary.

We move from a world where you can buy any set of headphones, and use them with any device, to a world where... nothing is compatible with anything else. Either you use a permanently connected dongle, or you buy multiple sets of headphones.

The future is stupid and I don't want to live in it.

Standards are fucking amazing. You can plug an early electric guitar from the 50s into any modern amp or pedal.

How is an aux port obsolete for the task of transmitting audio? It does the job simply and perfectly, with a tiny connector.

Just because something was created a long time ago doesn't mean it is obsolete.

And a hack's all that is needed if you accept the premise, which is that wired headphones for mobile devices are hideously inconvenient and about to be rightly obsoleted.

I use the airpods and these are the future. I'm always wearing them and they are the least intrusing earbuds I ever wore. Now I always carry a wired one with me for two reasons:

1. The battery doesn't always last. the benefits are huge so I'm OK with it though. I don't think I'll ever go full airpods just because I'm always going to be in situations where I have no battery in these.

2. My Nintendo switch and some other devices don't have bluetooth :(

I saw the other day that no other game consoles use bluetooth headsets. However a recent Switch update enabled USB audio, either through the dock or with an adapter on the port (although for handheld you might as well just use a wire).

No matter how well you don’t Bluetooth has some latency, so until something improves I wouldn’t expect it to show up on game consoles.

I remember reading that the Bluetooth spec has about 300ms of latency. Far too much for games, which is why no current console uses Bluetooth for their headsets.

The PS3 and PS4 use Bluetooth for their actual game controllers and the PS4 has audio out on the controller.

All of those transitions where painful, it's just that we tend to look at the past with rose color glasses.

Not that not having a headphone jack doesn't suck. It very much does

For the few months before I got AirPods it was fine. I bought 2 or 3 of the little pigtails and it was largely a non-issue.

It does hark back quite strongly to when Apple removed the floppy drive from the original iMacs. And not having a floppy drive sucked at that point. Just because something's the way of the future doesn't mean the old option is instantly obsolete.

The headphone jack was emphatically NOT replaced by Bluetooth. It was replaced by a combination of Apple's W1-enhanced Bluetooth, which is not slow, not unreliable, etc., and also Lightning-based headphones.

You're also wrong about charging the phone while using Lightning headphones; there are already adapters that can do that. Plus, it's not necessary to charge your phone all the time; that's what having better battery life is about. And better battery life is made more possible by freeing up precious internal space that the outmoded, single-use headphone jack used to occupy.

If you can't watch a video without an audio delay, that means you're using really crappy headphones. Fix that. Don't blame Apple.

What about those of us with nice headphones that don't want to be locked into the Apple eco system.

The phone comes with an adapter. If you want another one, they cost $9. I believe the Pixel will be the same.

The iPhone came with a dongle.

>The headphone jack was emphatically NOT replaced by Bluetooth. It was replaced by a combination of Apple's W1-enhanced Bluetooth, which is not slow, not unreliable, etc., and also Lightning-based headphones.

Let's make a comparison.

Is the alternative faster or more reliable than the original that it's replacing?

No, not by any typical (audio) criterion.

> The headphone jack was emphatically NOT replaced by Bluetooth. It was replaced by a combination of Apple's W1-enhanced Bluetooth, which is not slow, not unreliable, etc., and also Lightning-based headphones.

That cost $160. Let's not dance around that. Airpods are extraordinarily expensive compared to the headphones everyone used to be able to use.

They are not extraordinarily more expensive than any BT ones I have used that work acceptably.

If you mean wired, those still work just as they did prior. The iPhone comes with the adapter.

Yes, the first iteration of W1-headphones are pricey. Point granted. But that will change. (Also, they are worth the price, which helps.)

BeatsX (with W1) are at $150, by the way. So the price is already down several percent! ;)

A $150 pair of in ear monitors will have a huge impact on sound quality and the average person will continue to notice improvement into the $300 (dual driver) range before significant diminishing returns. Air pods don't come close to that quality for the same price.

Power usage matters much more in wireless headphones. Bluetooth takes power. DACs take power (better ones and better algorithms use even more power). Better drivers use more power (without considering the big response boost you get with multiple drivers at the cost of additional power usage). With super limited battery size, all of these are cut with a corresponding decrease in quality.

The USB and lightning ports tend to get a lot of interference from the dozens of digital signals mere hundredths of an inch away. The size of the 3.5mm seems to ensure that it's more isolated.

BT headphones also have the massive downside of insufficient control over volume. Minimum volume is too loud == hearing loss. Strikes me as a market oppty for someone to develop BT headphones/earbuds that solve this.

Or just you kno. Plug headphones in using the adapter....

Or use USB-C headphones

What is the point then, why not just include another port or a jack? If I have to carry a done that messes up the audio.

Dropping the floppy also sucked. They were ubiquitous, and practically free. You could re-write them. Copying a file onto them was fast.

Writing to a CD was slow. And cost about a buck. And didn't always work.

So, yeah, there's pain with going to wireless headphones. But in 10 years, we're going to forget that.

Not even 10 years, with AirPods I've already forgotten beside when I want noise cancellation/sound isolation (airplanes)

Bluetooth isn't always the only alternative option.

I plug my iPhone into my car's USB port (via the standard USB-A to lightning cable) and it works really well.

I also could have connected to my car via Bluetooth, or via the AUX input.

The USB connection works best and also charges my phone.

Modern Bluetooth is nowhere close to a half-second audio delay. I was concerned with this in the past, but with modern headphones and codecs it is not an issue anymore, there is virtually no delay.

When they removed the CD-ROM Drive, a lot of people complained how they could possible do that, because apparently so many people used CDs a lot because in the real world internet connections often are not that fast etc. You will always get these kind of complaints but the majority will accept eventually and in a few years nobody cares anymore. I think it's better that way because modern bluetooth is really good (despite charging) and enables innovation in other areas.

> If you use the USB/Lightning to AUX, you can't charge your phone at the same time.

There's now a dongle that enables you to do both...

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/1/16393078/a...

Bluetooth 5.0 has none of the issues you've mentioned. Alternatively, you can run audio over usb-c if you want to continue using wired headphones. The selection is small at this point but will grow over time.

I still have CDs / DVDs I love, so I have to get a portable. My friend loves vinyl, so she has to get a vinyl machine. The latter example is probably a stretch, but there is a value in using and appreciating old technology.

The drop of headphone jack comes with one problem: I can't charge and listen to music at the same time unless I pay for the earbuds, or get a third-party thunderbolt hub which has serious quality issue...

P.S: Mr. Robot saves whatever he wants to store away on discs. Kinda interesting. He probably doesn't trust hard drive as much as discs, and thinks discs will survive longer.

I believe that discs do survive longer. I remember reading some article describing the decay of data over time. As long as the discs aren't horribly scratched up they will retain data for a very long time without decay.

A lot of people make this point but I just don't think the analogy works. For one, you use the headphones with the phone as well as other devices, and those things might not grow a Lightning port.

Exactly. Are airplanes manufacturers going to start building in the lightning port?

You joke but this has already been suggested by several airplane manufacturers. They want to build in lightning and USB-C ports to replace/add to the power outlets. Most airports already have the extra USB ports now next to the power block.

Hell even recent Apple laptops don’t have one.

Has any bluetooth wireless headphone maker solved the latency issue yet? If not, then portless might still be a ways off.

Apple Airpods.

Really? Have you tried playing a game with them or any kind of app that is like a musical instrument?

I just checked now and there is a very slight lag, maybe on the order of 100-200ms. It's pretty subtle though and I definitely did not notice it before you mentioned it. I can imagine that it would be maddeningly slow if it were something like a rhythm game or a musical instrument app though.

Yeah that's what I was referring to. At one point, I thought I was going to wirelessly connect my electric keyboard at home to my stereo through a bluetooth transmitter. I soon found out that there's a delay associated with audio transmission through bluetooth. I don't think anyone's really solved this problem for these kinds of applications because most people use bluetooth audio for passive tasks like listening to music.

Precisely this. We see this crying and beating of chests whenever some obsolete legacy interface is finally deprecated to the dustbin of history. "You can pry my 3.5mm headphone jack out of my cold dead hands!" the knee-jerk reactionaries foam at the mouth in mock outrage, and then they go and buy a good set of bluetooth headphones or earbuds a few months later.

I have an iphone and the airpods and I haven't missed the tangled mess of the old earbuds at all.

> Apple has a really good track record of dropping things at the right time: floppy, CD-ROM, Flash, etc.

> At each of those steps there were people decrying the loss of these things. Today however, most people don’t miss any of them.

Those statements don't really support each other. There's no particular evidence that Apple's timing was good, just that they dropped it and eventually nobody cared. But if they dropped it years before everyone moved on, then their timing was awful, not great, even though the end-state was the same.

Flash is a particularly weird example since Flash on mobile largely never existed, so claims to "drop" it are nonsensical. You can't drop that which didn't exist. Yes there was a brief attempt at Flash on Android, but that came long after the iPhone.

Dropping flash on desktop would have been a better example, but Apple didn't actually have the courage to do that, at least not on their own. It was more a unified push by all the browser vendors combined with Adobe themselves dropping support for Flash.

Flash on iPhone didn’t exist because Apple didn’t want it due to security issues. It was controversial when they decided not to allow it.

https://www.google.com/amp/bgr.com/2016/12/12/steve-jobs-iph...

We'll see how dropping the escape key does with people who love developing in vim.

I don't think it'll matter? I think it will just drive adoption of Ctrl + [ for vim users which is arguably better anyway since it's closer to the home row

The home row isn’t magic, I don’t get the obsession with it. Our fingers don’t lie in a naturally perfectly straight line—each finger has its natural zone, it tends to stray vertically from the home row.

Well I suppose my fingers normally stay around the home row because that's how I was taught. I suppose it's my mistake for assuming that's how others type!

Nevertheless, esc is still super far away from all the letters which is presumably what you are likely to be pressing.

I preemptively remapped escape to caps lock since my next laptop probably won't have an escape key. It took about a day to adjust to. Now, I can't see how I ever used escape in the first place, it's so far to reach.

Although now, I keep turning on caps lock when I use other people's computers.

serious people map caps lock to escape!

Seriously though, using the corner esc key to get into normal mode sucked anyway.

Or get a computer with a sane keyboard.

What do people map control to then? The fundamental problem for this era of computing seems to be that people's needs/workflows are fragmenting while devices are converging, becoming more proprietary and one-size-fits-all.

Will there be a backlash to this? Possibly, but if dealing with a shitty keyboard is the cost of getting a high-end machine with great build quality, maybe not. People will come up with more and more workarounds to fix something which wasn't a problem a few years ago.

I map ctrl to ctrl

lol... but Mac keyboards have small ctrl keys!! :)

I mean... Dell and PC still have plenty of options. My Pixel has a headphone Jack. My laptop can be upgradeable...

I am not sure I buy the one size fits all argument. That is mostly an Apple thing.

Also, while it's true Apple quality was higher the last few generations are much worse. We have had numerous service issues come up, keyboards now break... I can't see Apple quality being what it once was.

A few days ago my OS and applications were all customized to death, I had huge dotfiles to cater to my specific needs.

But now I decided it's easier to learn the "standard" configuration than to configure every computer I have to touch.

Let me let you in on a big mac daddy secret sauce:

Map both ctrl and esc to caps lock key: when it's pressed and released on its own, it sends an Esc; when it's used as a modifier key (pressed together with another key), it sends a Ctrl.

http://www.economyofeffort.com/2014/08/11/beyond-ctrl-remap-...

+1000 this is what I use and it's amazing.

I type in dvorak but I've never been able to stop the escape spamming.

Habits are strange.

Ctrl-C

For the loss of the headphone jack to not be a downgrade, two things have to happen:

* Bluetooth has to work flawlessly - I hear there's been some issues even on iOS 11 and Android's Bluetooth has always been terrible

* USB C Audio has to work flawlessly [1]

1: http://pocketnow.com/2016/09/08/the-impending-horror-of-usb-...

> Apple has a really good track record of dropping things at the right time: floppy, CD-ROM, Flash, etc.

Counterexamples to your claim: Thunderbolt? Magsafe? Magsafe2? The physical escape key?

All of your examples were actually significant improvements: floppy / CD-ROM took up immense physical space and removing them caused a significant improvement in space and weight. SSDs initially had less capacity, but at least they had way better performance and also improved upon space and weight.

> The headphone jack is a legacy, bulky port

The headphone jack doesn't save on weight, its alternatives aren't an improvement. It does save on space, and I understand that space is tight on a phone, but honestly, we've already had so many brilliant and slim phones that have headphone jacks that I don't really buy this as an excuse. Do we /really/ need ever so slightly slimmer phones every year? Remember the bent iphone 6es?

I'd be willing to buy this if there was something amazingly novel that USB-C provides for headphones, or if wireless earbuds lasted more than 5-6 hours.

Here's what it comes down to: my 2013 macbook pro is fantastic, and none of the new stuff regarding ports is a genuine improvement to my experience, but all of it adds to potential frustration when I eventually have to make the switch when the hardware can't keep up anymore. I feel similarly with my iphone SE.

I really wish they'd stop futzing around with everything just for trivial improvements.

>Counterexamples to your claim: Thunderbolt? Magsafe? Magsafe2? The physical escape key?

How are any of those counterexamples? Thunderbolt wasn't dropped and most users don't care a single bit about Magsafe and/or the physical escape key.

Magsafe is a lifesaver if you have kids/pets. I even tripped the wire sometimes. I understand the appeal of a single cable for power/data but Magsafe was great.

Early on Apple shipped with a thunderbolt connector that the rest of the industry ended up not using. Any tech purchased around that connector was deprecated when the machine it was to connect to was upgraded.

IIRC there were very few devices with a hard-wired cable on the device end. So for them it was just a new cable or if not, then a permanently-attached dongle. That doesn't mean the device itself is obsolete.

I still have a FW800-Thunderbolt adapter...

I'm still bummed about losing Magsafe!

However, I am very glad that I can now charge my laptop with pretty much any USB charger* and a cheap cable. I consider not having to buy $88 replacement chargers a huge win.

*Yes, even the tiny iPhone brick can charge my MacBook, albeit very, very slowly.

If you really are at risk, (thinking of when I had small kids running around the house) maybe consider one of the Belkin "BreakSafe" magnetic adapters? Yeah, you'll have a nub sitting on the outside of the machine, but it might be worthwhile.

https://griffintechnology.com/us/breaksafe-magnetic-usb-c-po...

Sorry, should have been clearer. What I meant:

Power: Magsafe 1 being incompatible with Magsafe 2, which is in turn incompatible with USB-C. No drastic improvement in either.

Data: Thunderbolt 1 and 2 were at least port compatible. Thunderbolt 3 is the same thing as USB-C, so the cable won't fit and you have to buy an adapter, so in effect thunderbolt was dropped. I get that it's a different story internally, but from my perspective, it's again frustrating.

Anyway, at face value, I'm happy that they /finally/ decided to collaborate with everyone else and agreed on an industry-standardized connector, but damn. Even then, I keep reading horror stories re: cable compatibility for USB-C because the standard is so complex. Oh well, it'll settle eventually.

Anyway, none of this bothers me as much as headphones specifically, which cost a lot of money, last decades, and aren't a throwaway item like adaptors and cables. So if you're going to make me change them or use an annoying dongle, there had better be an excellent reason :-(

Please check your facts before using words like "finally". Thunderbolt was a collaboration as well; it just seems like it was a proprietary Apple thing because Apple pushed it earlier and harder than everyone else. The same is true of the beloved USB-A, of course, which was pushed earlier and harder by Apple than by PC makers too.

Anyway, make up your mind. Are you furious that Apple had the courage to adopt a standard like USB-C, or are you happy? Choose one. :)

> Thunderbolt was a collaboration as well

As far as I understand, Intel co-developed Thunderbolt with Apple on their own. The standard was published, but this isn't the same as an open and public collaboration the way other standards are, e.g. USB has the USB Implementers Forum, which is a consortium of companies. Plus, they used to charge royalties, and only recently did intel make the standard royalty-free. Good for them for doing that.

To me it looks like they did what they wanted on their own, then eventually slapped it on top of the existing USB-C standard when it didn't get much adoption elsewhere. I don't know why Apple would care about that in the slightest, but I can imagine Intel does.

> Anyway, make up your mind. Are you furious that Apple had the courage to adopt a standard like USB-C, or are you happy? Choose one. :)

Why? Can't it be both? I'm happy that they found the "courage" now, but unhappy that they found it after floundering through a bunch of different options first. I'm also unhappy that they took away my darned headphone jack in the process :-)

One more counterexample: nano SIM cards. The move to micro SIM cards was wonderful and well-timed, everyone followed Apple within a year or two because the spacing savings were obvious.

In contrast, the nano SIM card has been around since the iPhone 5 came out in 2012, but cheap smart phone (think Samsung J-something[1]) still use micro SIM cards. Pointless fragmentation to save a millimeter.

If Apple wants to drop legacy cruft, how about they start with 5400rpm hard drives??!

[1] https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_j2_(2017)-8900.php

I'm usually ready to embrace the next step, but the loss of the headphone jack was what made switch to the Pixel.

Call it what you will, but the headphone jack is superior to its predecessor, unlike the floppy, cd-rom, etc. When I heard they were discontinuing it, it felt wrong - it felt intentionally radical. And I knew there was no way I was going to pay extra for some Bluetooth earbuds I will definitely lose on my morning runs.

Bluetooth is a merely adequate replacement, though. It regularly has dropouts depending on radio interference, and it means another peripheral that needs charging.

I don't know about you, but I regularly - at least 5 times a year - find the battery drained in my Bluetooth peripheral when I wanted to play audio, typically before or during a long trip. I keep wired headphones in my jacket pocket for these times, as a backup. I use three different peripherals often, and I don't track their charge state - the first I know about low battery is when they start giving warnings, usually about 10 minutes before they shut down, leaving me in silence. I don't have the time or patience to be checking their charge statuses constantly, or continually plugging them in to charge up, meaning disconnecting them from their home locations and needing retrieval before use.

Actually you're wrong. They dropped the standard USB ports and EVERYONE is pissed off about that. And if someone isn't, they're a retard.

Flash is still important even though its written like garbage.

Your last argument is as dumb as can be too. You're trying to say because people have forgotten what they were made about, it doesn't matter. So since people forgot that the iMac they had was USB only and couldn't use older devices, its not important. It may not be now, but it was important then.

This comment breaks the site guidelines badly. We ban accounts that do that, so please read them and follow them when commenting here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I really wish people like you would stop pooh-poohing legitimate complaints about attempts to prematurely retire tech just because companies have found something more lucrative for them.

We’re not luddites. We’re not short sighted. We understand tech moves on. That’s all fine and also irrelevant, because the situation here is that real tech used be lots of people every day with no real replacement is being yanked out from under us in the name of profit. Stop acting like you’re woke and the rest of us just need to catch up. It’s insulting as hell.

No one has taken away anything. Your current phone still has a headphone jack. Stop acting like somebody took something away from you.

In the age of mass production, you get what they make. Custom items of the same price & quality as those mass produced are often/usually prohibitively expensive. If they stop making what you want, you stop being able to get it. So what's Parent going to do when his current phone dies?

> So what's Parent going to do when his current phone dies?

Buy virtually any other phone, if it's that important to them?

Completely false. There is no adapter out there that can do simultaneous audio and data. My Apogee JAM sits gathering dust as a result.

> Your current phone still has a headphone jack.

My current phone is rapidly disintegrating. If I had the time, I could argue that the current method of production and rapid obsolescence did, in fact, take both my current phone away, and my ability to easily transition to the new model being offered without having to rethink how I listen to music.

> Apple has a really good track record of dropping things at the right time: floppy, CD-ROM, Flash, etc

They have a good track record of dropping technologies in order to push their own proprietary technology instead. And failing most of the time, resulting in ultimately adopting the standard that everybody else is using.

Floppy -> CD-ROM

CD-ROM -> Internet/USB stick

Ethernet -> WLAN

Flash -> HTML

etc -> pp

The only proprietary port on today's Macs and iDevices is the lightning connector, which is quite obviously better than the abomination that is microUSB, which the competition uses.

I can't fathom how people can delude themselves into believing such easily disproven myths.

Newest Android phones are using USB C, not microUSB.

Apple and others should have only considered removing the headphone jack if they were prepared to do all of the following at the same time:

1. Abandon all proprietary connectors and adopt USB-C only on the phone. Keeping the Lightning port while moving MacBook Pros to USB-C-only was incredibly dumb because it immediately made the new products less useful than ANY older and less-expensive combination. Let’s see: older iPhone with charge cable and earphones that seamlessly plug into both the phone and the computer, or new-and-expensive-for-no-reason computer that can’t do any of that!?

2. Put multiple ports on the phone to avoid port-unavailable issues during charging; or, make sure that so-called “wireless” charging is working first so it can be a viable alternative. Instead they just broke a bunch of things and figured at some unspecified point in the future it would all work out. Well, what exactly is the point of buying the product in the meantime?

3. Assume that people will still want wired earphones. Wireless is NOT automatically better, for any number of reasons (risk of loss, sound cutting out, constant recharge, worse sound quality).

I have wireless headphones and I basically hate them; seems that every other time I want to use them they’re already out of battery, or they just STOP working halfway through some music. And it’s one of those products that can’t be used while it’s being recharged. As a result, I just use them way less, and it is a step backwards in every conceivable way. All I want is a wire.

I also don't see why they didn't go full USB-C with their phones. Maybe they didn't want to put out too many changes at once. Still, iPhone 8 seemed a great time to pair USB-C.

It's to close to the point where they ditched the 40 pin and everyone bought new stuff.

I don't remember where I read it, but apparently Apple committed to the Lightning port for a certain number of years when speaking to accessory manufacturers.

Apple did not drop the floppy drive at the right time. They did in in 1998 which was at least 4 years before widely available USB flash drives. I remember every computer in the labs at school having a external floppy drive or even worse a Zip drive as there was no easy way for students to save their work and bring it with them. They also weren't responsible for the death of the Floppy disk as their marketshare then was low single digits.

Removing USB A from laptops for "professionals" and removing 3.5mm headphone jack is not really helping anything. USB C adoption will continue but there so many USB A products out there that it is inconvenient to the customer with zero advantage. Yeah I'd really like less ports on here for no decrease in price or increase in portability and would like to carry dongles said no one ever.

I rented a Hyundai over the summer and to play music from my iPhone, I had to Bluetooth pair with the car.

Guess what? It started syncing my entire contacts list. I just wanted to pipe audio from my phone to the car speakers, not share my life with a rental car.

So for those of us who value compartmentalising our lives, we'd very much like that bulky 3.5mm headphone jack, in addition to Bluetooth. Thanks.

You didn't have to do that, though. You can connect Bluetooth audio without syncing your contact list. Additionally, just because your phone is showing your contacts in the car's interface, that doesn't mean anything was synced to the car. It may have just been reading your contacts from the phone via Bluetooth. As soon you as unpair the device, those contacts would be gone, if that's the case...

My Ford does this (sync contacts) by default too. Yes it's an inexpensive car but you have explicitly turn this off and it's not intuitive. Not quite a dark pattern per se but I prefer to not connect BT to rentals for that reason alone.

Thanks for pointing that out possibility because I couldn't find it. I wonder if it's an option for Hyundais because it's not included in their quick start guide either:

http://www.hyundaibluetooth.com/content/dam/Bluetooth/Hyunda...

On Android, there's a prompt when a paired device requests access to your contacts/call history/messages, and you can deny the request. It's irrelevant to play audio but it allows the car to give you a built-in interface to use your phone for calling and such.

I didn't know that iOS didn't prompt you for that.

This isn’t about making phones smaller- they didn’t get smaller. This is about upselling some wireless earbuds. It made more sense to me when apple did it, owning beats, so even if you don’t go for the AirPods they win, but it looks like Google wants some of that upsell with the pixel buds.

I was recently listening to a podcast (embedded fm) regarding paypal and this triangular BLE block that had no ports. Would be funny if your phone was bricked and you had no way to interface with it. Maybe by display at the very least.

There's only one phone you can use? ;)

I set up the equivalent Square card-reader device for my kids' school parents group, together with a dedicated iPad with cell connection. It's magic... even the most technophobic mum can operate it.

Sure, would be a problem if (or when) the iPad died, but it is stupidly cheap (and contract-free!) compared to a dedicated payment machine.

I don't know if this tech was released yet, it was something to do with wireless payments if I recall right.

I think I bricked my phone once when I was messing with rooting/overclocking. I don't do that anymore, I bought a pretty solid LG phone for like $80 (new) from a lower end mobile provider it functions better than this other phone by ZTE that had a finger print sensor, it kept freezing after running say more than 4 apps.

Edit: The podcast was about PayPal Beacon

I use a tiny dongle that allows me to use any headphones I want. It's really not that big of a deal. It's about 2" in length that looks exactly like my apple headphone jack - so no one's the wiser really.

I thought it would be a big deal - I was wrong. It's fine. If you still want to use your cheap/expensive wired headphones, you can.

Actually I agree that this is just like a CD drive but reach the opposite conclusion. Removing the CD drive was mostly worse for the consumer of the MBA at the time. Sure, almost no one wants a CD drive now, but that gives little credence to the idea that it should have been removed while still best for the consumer.

CD-ROM was not the only removable storage medium, and it had an enormous cost in space (and sometimes power, if not implemented correctly). A good consumer-grade headphone amplifier has a minuscule cost in terms of space, even relative to a smartphone. The only reason to remove it is if you want your phone to be thinner than can support a 3.5mm receptacle, but as a smartphone consumer I don't really see the point in making a phone thinner than that, I figure it makes it hard to grasp the phone without touching the screen inadvertently. The iPhone 8 is about as thin as a phone should ever be, in my humble opinion, and at 7.3mm deep, there is definitely room for a 3.5mm receptacle, and there is already an audio chipset and opamp bank in the handset.

In short, the marginal cost in space, power, and BOM is negligible; and the value is high. I can't see myself buying a smartphone without a 3.5mm jack until wireless earbuds don't need to be charged more than once a month, and I can forget to put them back in the case for a couple days in a row without losing the ability to listen to audio.

I know you think you believe all that, but as an AirPods user and addict, I am at least somewhat confident in saying that you'd believe it a lot less after 48 hours using AirPods. Until you use them, you can't grasp just how rapidly they charge, just how easy it is to keep them topped off without even thinking about it, just by putting them back in the case, and the fact that you can't and don't "forget" to put them back in the case. Because the case is always with you, and because they're just a pain to carry without the case, and because of the penalty if you lose one.

AirPods are a miracle; a true "wow" product. And as an aside, the audio is really surprisingly decent. I'm a professional classical musician, so my ears aren't terrible.

The recharging story is made even better by the ability to put one at a time in the case. That's particularly important for long phone calls/web conferences/etc, when the microphone tends to drain the battery faster.

With my wired headphones I don't have to do any hacks or workarounds to use them as long as the host device is turned on, I get better audio, they will outlast AirPods if I'm not rough with them, I can (and do, probably several times a day) move them quickly between my workstation, my laptop, and my two phones, they cost about the same, they're more comfortable, they have a better seal, they work where RF is not allowed, they work just as well with every device I own.

If I ever need a replacement in a pinch, almost every convenience store has an inexpensive pair of compatible headphones, good ones can be bought online or at audio stores.

Headphone jacks also double as line-out jacks, allowing you to play audio through any of the billions (!) of compatible systems without noticeable RF interference even in congested conditions.

Yep. And I still would never go back. The liberation of wireless is just amazing.

I'm just sick of all of this "I know you think that" condescension. I'm not even telling people "The massive sucking sound you're hearing is a fad, you just haven't noticed yet.", I'm not telling people that wireless headphones aren't great sometimes.

I'm just saying: keep the jack there, it's cheap, it's convenient, it costs next to nothing in any way (BOM, water resistance, space), it gives customers good and valid options, even if they ultimately want to shove a little plug in the hole and forget about it.

It is not like a CD-ROM drive at all, because it is ubiquitous and common in use (unlike optical media at the time of the superdrive removal), and removing it does not notably improve the device in any way. It doesn't hinder form factor, it doesn't hinder any selling point of the device, and it makes hundreds of millions of people happy.

Four years ago, when Apple started removing laptops with optical drives — they only finished this time last year — from their lineup, very few people were still using optical media on a regular basis. Today, almost everyone who uses headphones uses wired ones when they have the option to.

There's a difference between avant-garde, and jumping the gun.

an AirPods user and addict

AirPods are a miracle

Seriously? Headphones?

Yes I would go with that and I hate Apple and have never tried airpods. I have tried normal Bluetooth headphones in Android world though and am prepared to believe that the Apple audio experience is better than what I am used to.

However, if you could go back in time by a short amount of years to show anyone the current iteration of music player and air pods then I think they would find the technology to be tantamount to magic and therefore a bonafide miracle.

At the other end of the scale you have the Apple fan and if they find these Airpods things to be miraculous then I think they are only being fair about what has been achieved here technologically to bring music to the consumer.

Miraculous? Really?

Equivalent to an act of God?

You don't think you're being utterly hyperbolic here?

>> I know you think you believe all that,

Without being an Apple product buyer myself, I feel I can get a good pretty read on Apple products' success by the degree of condescension / stridency in reviewers' language. Like some Garner hype curve for fanboyism.

Judging by your tone, Airpod is still rising in popularity, yet to break through to mainstream, but may still do so.

Pretty much. Wonder how much crying will be happening as we transition to a screen less, brain chipped world

having a headphone jack is graceful degradation imho

1) floppy was not big loss at the time -- not even close to the same thing

2) CDROM -- was just about as obsolete at the time it was removed -- also not even close to the same thing

3) flash -- well that did cause some people problems, but I didn't really care at the time, and it isn't really the same thing either.

The headphone jack may be old, but it is still way more useful than either a floppy disk or a CDROM were at the time they were removed. In the case of the floppy drive -- they were already on the way out, and the CDROM drive was there to replace them. When they ditched the CDROM drive, it could easily be replaced by a USB thumb drive or similar device -- which was still standard hardware, didn't have to be made by Apple, and was a reasonable replacement for the device removed. Having to have a separate adapter in order to use a standard set of headphones is, IMHO, NOT a reasonable replacement for just having the jack. And, yes, I DO believe that at least part of Apple's motivation was to make money by selling you Apple-branded headphones with their proprietary connector on it.

It's a legitimate gripe by paying customers. Apple is welcome to make whatever decisions they want on the hardware they sell, and we should not be essentially told to shut up when we (very reasonably) disagree with their decision.

LG V30 is a flagship that instead of taking the port away, made improvements to actually take advantage of it, offering a Hi-Fi Quad DAC built-in. It means I can use my studio-quality headphones and enjoy crisper sounding music on my phone and on the go.

All in all, all four of my headphones use the 3.5mm jack. Don’t see myself paying premium now for half-thought solutions, thank you.

Apple is not a god when deciding what ports to drop, alright? Just because they practically indoctrinate an industry to follow in their footsteps doesn’t mean it’s always right. I’m all for leaving really old or badly designed ports IF there are better alternatives. What’s currently out there is buggy at best.

The LG V20 has the Hi-Fi Quad DAC as well (in case anyone wants to pick it up at half the price).

The sound is quality truly amazing.

I voted with my wallet.

After owning every iPhone since 3G up to 5s, I ditched Apple, and bought a new phone last week specifically because it had a headphone jack.

My WHOLE PHONE cost only a little bit more than Airpods alone. It's a Chinese phone that offers incredible value for money and I can't be happier(Xiaomi Note 4, for those interested).

Sure, it's specs don't quite match up to the flagship models from A and G, but it had what I wanted - a headphone jack(cheap, good, battery-less and reliable audio), a large-enough screen, lots of ram and a fast-enough processor.

I believe the dropping of the headphone jack was not meant as a way of herding users to better tech, like the CD-ROM ect. They could have left the jack in the iPhone 7 and released the AirPods anyway, as a cross-over test. The market would've decided on the winner. But they didn't do that. They didn't do that because they knew AirPods would not have sold as well.

It was just a blunt move of trying to increase profits. Just like the death-by-a-thousand-dongles decision.

Bad Apple. Bad.

> Xiaomi Note 4

I picked up a Xiaomi Mi A1 for ~$325 last week when my Nexus 5X died of sudden bootloop. I think it's very similar to the Note 4 but is part of the Android One initiative which means it runs stock Android and should get updates more regularly. I think it's marked up a bit in my market but it was still cheap enough and is a great device—awesome build quality, fast enough, and has a headphone jack!

I rarely see mentioned the fact that the mini jack port ends up broken (connect /disconnect) a lot after a while. It always happens to me, no matter the cost of the device (except for my first gen gameboy).

There should be no ports.. wireless charging, bluetooth, wifi, induction usb if you really need a physical connection otherwise...

The headphone jack’s legacy-ness is purely marketing-driven. There are alternatives with tradeoffs, but no replacements. Barring some technical miracle, you will never be able to use BT headphones to play games, make music, or play guitar.

While I'm a big fan of my Bluetooth earphones, let's be honest: the sound quality isn't nearly as good as wired hardware.

I don't know about other people, but I get a lot of interference on 2.4GHz between WiFi and Bluetooth at home. It doesn't matter whether its Bose Soundlink IIs or on-ear headphones.

We have a UniFi access point that is brilliant. However, I don't use 5GHz because the signal can't penetrate though more than 2 brick walls, which is an issue in some of the bedrooms.

I'll copy what I said to a similar comment a long time ago:

> Well the major difference is that optical drives were becoming more and more obsolete with the increase in streaming and download services. With spotify, netflix, amazon prime, itunes, etc, the main uses of optical drives for dvds and music disks were decreasing in popularity pretty rapidly. The only uses I ever have these days for my optical drive is to install drivers for new hardware in my PC, which in most cases can be found online anyway. And even this isn't needed on Macs because, unlike customisable PCs, you'll never need to install drivers for a fancy new PCIE wifi card.

> The headphone jack is different, because it isn't being replaced by convenient online services. Sure there are wireless alternatives, but the cost increases, difficulty of pairing, and the fact that 3.5mm is a standard across a huge range of devices from simple headphones to complex audio recording/mixing/playback setups means it just cannot be replaced. They could remove the optical drive without including the external drive because most people wouldn't need it, they definitely could not have removed the headphone jack without including an adapter in the box because of how popular the jack still is.

my ears hurt from bluetooth wireless radiation :/

FYI There is a USB-C to headphone jack cable provided in the box.

Unfortunately, it's a cheap DAC/amp dongle as, unlike some other phones, the Pixel 2 doesn't output analog audio via USB-C using the phone's built-in DAC/amp. And the Pixel 2 XL has its gain set really low for said dongle, meaning you're going to have difficulty driving lots of headphones.

That's really unfortunate. Do any phones do it right?

iPhone 7 dongle audio quality is apparently fantastic, no reason to think iPhone 8 isn't the same.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/lightning-adapter-audio-qua...

Oh wow thats a pretty awesome read

> This tiny adapter houses a microscopic stereo digital-to-analog converter (DAC), a stereo headphone amplifier, a microphone preamplifier and monophonic analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and power converters to run this all.

OK what the hell, I thought they were just outputting analog through Lightning from the internal DAC but instead they put a second conversion chain in the adapter? Damn.

> You need iOS 10 for the adapter to work on older devices. iOS 9 and before predate the headphone-jack-less iPhones, but if you have iOS 10 it works great on my old iPhone 5S — not that you'd need it to.

And it works just fine on older lightning devices too, that's really impressive.

Worth noting that the Pixel 2 regular size isn't affected by the low gain setting the XL is. It's still using a cheap DAC/amp dongle, though.

> We've lost so much good tech over the years to reduce costs

I don't know what the reason is, but I doubt it's a matter of cost.

Why do you doubt that?

Because even if manufacturers did really save some money (which is debatable) it doesn't make sense to save some cents on an $800 product.

For example in terms of parts all phones already have a DA conversor and an amp to be able to send analog audio to the speakers. The actual headphone jack costs close to nothing.

It might even be more expensive for Apple to manufacture the lightning to headphone adapter...

> I think Apple's business model is entirely harmful

Between Apple and Google, you think APPLE'S business model is the harmful one?! We're talking about (1) actually charging for their products vs. (2) tracking your every move and collecting all the personal information about you they possibly can so they can sell you ads better, right? I'm actually not sure I can even name a tech company with a business model as simple and honest as Apple's.

I reluctantly agree. Apple has a bunch of dirty practices that makes me thing twice about buying their products, but their market position does incentivize them to protect my privacy. In contrast, Google is incentivized to provide a thick pipe between the highest bidder and the screen in my hand.

Honestly, I feel like this is an argument for watching HBO vs NBC, say. HBO makes a "honest" product and charges for it, while NBC uses the platform to sell advertising.

NBC must therefore be "dishonest" because they're showing you 30 second ads. Despite the fact the business model of serving content for with ads has been a successful (and accepted) business model for decades.

Google's privacy policy is open. No one is forcing you to use it, just as no one is forcing you to watch NBC.

https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/

It is a similar argument, but I think there is an important qualitative difference between TVs and smartphones. One is inherently passive, I interact with it on my own terms. The worst case is they show too many ads and I get pissed and cancel my service. I have some power in the relationship, they need my money month to month.

The other is an integral part of my daily life and knows virtually everything about me, who I communicate with, where I go, and is almost mandatory in modern society. I have no control over the software that runs on it, and the organization that does control it already has my money. If I want to exit the relationship, there are maybe one or two serious competitors (depending on if you include non-google android).

> One is inherently passive, I interact with it on my own terms.

No one is forcing you to interact with Google. You choose to interact with them because they have the content that you want, or they provide a service that you like.

And more importantly, you've accepted their privacy terms by using their service. In other words, you have interacted with them on your terms.

Legally, possibly, but ethically and from the position of most consumers? No. Google (and many other web services) do all sorts of tracking, even if you aren't using their services directly, particularly with Web ads, tracking via social integration buttons, etc, which I would argue is much less than consensual. This can even happen without their having to agree to having a Google account, let alone reading (and understanding the legalese in) their privacy policy (and all of its implications for what they can do with their data). I highly doubt the vast majority of Internet users know how much information and value is being extracted by private companies from their just being on the web.

> but ethically and from the position of most consumers? No.

I once had a friend frequent this record store, because every time he walked in the store, the owner would tell him, "You need to listen to this." And my friend would walk out of the store with a fresh vinyl pressed record with songs that he would spend hours listening to.

Was my friend be tracked? Yes. Did he experience targeted advertising? Yes. Was he subjected to unethical or immoral behavior? I don't know, but he kept coming back.

If you are the one opening up the browser and going to websites that do such unsavory things, such as trying to understand their customers to provide better content, then isn't the onus on you to not visit those sites?

I love how this ended up with a down vote. Sometimes speaking a painful truth is painful.

> then isn't the onus on you to not visit those sites?

Not what the discussion was about. The question was which business model was more 'honest'. And I'm not sure you can fairly say that bulk data collection across most parts of the Web which most people are unaware of, is an honest way of conducting business (Not to mention shit like [1] and [2]).

[1] https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/09/yes-google-uses-its-power...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric-schmidt-...

And my argument is that content and advertising and consumer tracking has been accepted behavior by corporations for a long time now. You may not like it, may think it's kind of "Nazi"-ish. But it's been a valid business model for decades.

But if you feel Apple's business model is truly more honest, here's a wikipedia page you should go read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Apple_Inc.

> Between Apple and Google, you think APPLE'S business model is the harmful one?!

Google provides services to everyone in the world. Apple provides services to the social elite, and only them. A person of moderate means living in Ghana? Apple doesn't care about you; you may as well be invisible.

> I'm actually not sure I can even name a tech company with a business model as simple and honest as Apple's.

Because sending in the swat team when you think a journalist has a preview model of your doohickey is "simple" and "honest"? Apple does the same sort of shady stuff as any other BigCorp, they're just better at making things look fashionable, so people tend to give them a pass on it. After all, this is the same corp that patented the black oblong with rounded corners. There is nothing 'simple' about Apple's business model.

> Google provides services to everyone in the world. Apple provides services to the social elite, and only them. A person of moderate means living in Ghana? Apple doesn't care about you; you may as well be invisible.

If Google wasn't dumping prices, there would be a local cheaper alternative. Now it's impossible to compete with them. Ad-supported will always be cheaper than pro-privacy and there is no enough people to pay little premium to have cheap-but-pro-privacy device/service. The only way to stay afloat is to sell with hefty premium like Apple does. But then it's not really affordable to poor people.

Apple doesn't care about "elite". They charge price they see fair and provide their services to anyone who can pay that price.

> If Google wasn't dumping prices, there would be a local cheaper alternative

Apple's not dumping prices. Where is Ghana's local cheaper alternative to Apple?

> The only way to stay afloat is to sell with hefty premium like Apple does

There are plenty of other companies that are surviving without the hefty premium Apple charges. Apple managed to reach $200B in liquid cash assets; clearly their path is not "the only way".

> Apple doesn't care about "elite". They charge price they see fair and provide their services to anyone who can pay that price.

... how do you think elitism works?

s/Apple/High-priced lawyers/, to see how empty that argument is against elitism.

> Apple's not dumping prices. Where is Ghana's local cheaper alternative to Apple?

Google is the cheaper alternative.

> There are plenty of other companies that are surviving without the hefty premium Apple charges. Apple managed to reach $200B in liquid cash assets; clearly their path is not "the only way".

Of course Apple could go a wee lower. But they won't be able to compete with $50 Android anyway. Very few people will pay even little extra for Apple's privacy-oriented devices if they didn't have premium style&hardware. Once they produce that style&hardware, they get to today's price. $50 or even $100 won't change much in terms of reachability.

> ... how do you think elitism works?

And how do you think elitism works? Elitism is working with select clientele based on some subjective criteria.

High-priced lawyer who charges premium is not elitist. Lawyer who works only for celebrities is elitist.

> Google is the cheaper alternative.

Google and Apple charge the same amount for maps, music, apps, mail, and operating systems. Google isn't seriously in the hardware game - it had a couple of smartphone handsets, but mostly left it to other manufacturers. Google does not make miniservers, desktops, general-purpose laptops, all-in-ones and so forth. Other companies do, and google does not set their prices. Google does not dictate that a smartphone must sell for $X.

So no, Google is not the "cheaper alternative". Their software sells for the same price, and for the most part other companies sell the hardware.

So, where is Ghana's local cheaper alternative to Apple? Come on, you started this free-market claptrap that every locale has the ability to make a Silicon-Valley-quality giant, so where is Ghana's?

> Very few people will pay even little extra for Apple's privacy-oriented devices

This whole 'privacy' angle is a very recent development in Apple's history. It wasn't much of a notable issue before.

Huh? We were talking phones. Modern phone is a bundle of hardware and software. Apple charges very specific fee for their bundle. Google is pouring a shit ton of resources into their bundle as well, which they basically re-sell as franchise to hardware makers.

I could start listing all the super cheap Android phones as Apple competitors. But that'd be very simplified story, because they'd be nothing without Google's software and promotion. And if Google charged for the software as well Android brand, those phones wouldn't be as cheap. Now end users pay that fee with their eyeballs.

I never said that every locale has ability to make a quality giant or whatever. I said that Google dumping prices make someone else hard to enter. Especially at the cheap end of the market.

Apple's 'privacy' angle was very clear for at least a decade. They didn't pay as much lip service to it, but they products are clearly very different from Google. And been that way for a looooooong time.

Is Apple obliged to sell a product that a Ghanaian of moderate income is able to buy? I don't think they are, if you extend that argument to other products categories you end up criticizing BMW / Audi / Mercedes for producing cars that are out of the reach of others, when other cars are available at lower costs.

I think the best evidence of Apple having an honest business model was the FBI V Apple encryption case. Have you seen any cases where Google has done this? I haven't. Either Android is not as secure and the FBI can get into any Android phone they want or Google has complied with a similar order...

On top of that, premium brands are the opposite of harmful. They push non-premium brands to iterate. The features that were in BMW/Audi/Mercedes in 90s are now in affordable cars. If nobody made premium cars back then, most that technology would have never made it to market. Same about Apple and cheap laptops. Cheap laptops nowadays are times better than what was available a decade ago. If there were no Macbooks to look up to, why abandon flimsy plastic laptops?

I didn't say Apple was obliged. I said Apple didn't care about that user.

> Have you seen any cases where Google has done this?

I haven't seen any case where Google has sent in the police to raid someone's house and confiscate their stuff. I haven't seen any case where Google has manipulated the legal system to claim rights over "black oblong with curved corners". Google doesn't have a history of taking things other people have done and then claiming that they were first to market. I haven't heard people complaining of Google designing planned obsolescence to drive future sales. I haven't heard of a case where Google designed their antenna incorrectly, and then blamed the users for "holding it wrong".

Apple is a very successful company and has broken a lot of ground, but calling them "honest" is horseshit. Don't mistake "a greater focus on user privacy" for "an honest business model". They're orthogonal things.

Honest in the sense that they are upfront about how they make the majority of their money - through phone/computer sales, and not through the sale of your personal data to 3rd parties, or targeting adverts at you.

Having a greater focus on user privacy adds to their honesty in this regard in my opinion, as they are protecting our personal data and not selling it, and even defending access to it.

When has google misled about how it makes its money? It's been pretty upfront about the tradeoffs and how googlestuff is paid for.

This kind of argument has been going on for well over a decade at this point - to suggest that google isn't honest and open about its business model at this point is simply choosing to be willfully ignorant.

I've given you plenty of well-known examples of Apple behaving badly. This isn't to say "Apple is the Devil", but that they're not this shining knight that some people paint them as. They behave dishonestly when it suits them as well.

Here's another example: tax evasion. Apple is the doyen of tax evasion. Is it legal? Yes, but stretched to the limit. Is it honest? Nope; it requires fiscal shennanigans, and they're not afraid to throw their weight around to keep things cosy for themselves. If they truly were honest, they'd pay their taxes, like the general public expects of good citizens.

I do not agree that google are upfront with the users of their services that they collect their data and use it to target ads at them.

How many regular consumers are aware that their android phone tracks their location and stores this data on googles servers nearly continuously? And that every single google assistant query is recorded and saved on googles servers? And that all this data is used to target ads and refine google services?

I don't disagree that Apple has unpalatable aspects to their business, as do all business of that size, but in my opinion they are more honest and upfront about how they make their money when they are compared to Google.

I don't really see why you're comparing them both, they are both in essential 2 big companies that wants to control their customers in certain ways, sell them products and keep them in their ecosystem.

If Apple could actually take advantage of the potential customer information they have access to in the same way I'm pretty sure they would.

It was OP who compared them by calling out Apple, I just highlighted the absurdity of it. And no, Apple specifically highlights at every event that they have no interest in collecting such customer data and it’s a differentiating factor of their products. That has been a key point of theirs for the past few years.

I really want/need a new phone but the whole headphone situation has left a really bad taste in my mouth. Not usually one to get worked up over the minor details of smartphones but it actually makes me angry thinking of buying one of these phones and then dealing with fucking dongles for the next 3 years.

There's a reason "pass me the aux" is a meme and not "pair your phone with my bluetooth speaker, oh wait it's not connecting, let me try disconnecting, do you see it? Yeah it's GHS-9013 I think, okay, I hit the pair button, do you see it now?"

so true. actually the whole phone market is dogshit right now

it sure seems like things are getting worse, when all my phone upgrades have been forced:

1. original iphone wipes itself when i connect it to a new computer. ouch. my own itunes account, but somehow not recognized, and zap. went to android after this.

2. first android was the nexus. it had a known hardware bug where the soft buttons were being triggered randomly without being touched. started to drive me insane.

3. enter a unibody aluminum HTC. owned it for 3 years. i missed the sdcard slot but grew to love it anyway because it was durable as hell. it fell down a flight of concrete stairs. then carried on about its day. eventually the camera died on it (all pics started coming out hazy and red). i still see people using htc 7s even now.

4. enter nexus 6p. decent phone. screen was not very bright which was annoying outside but otherwise checks all the boxes. and it still gets the latest updates-- thing runs on oreo! but now its falling apart. the glass at the back broke twice, the sim is loose, gps works half the time, the plastic bottom fell off..

5. and so here we are today. cannot find another 6p. the pixel looks worse in many ways (fugly and bezels are even bigger while the software is the same). the v2 with no headphone jack?? and all these phones with glass backs that are actually even thicker than their predecessors that are obviously not going to last very long (anyone out there have a screen shatter?? lets double those odds). everyone using their own bloatware and not updating anything... android ones only really available in eurasia... ugh. do not want to crawl back to apple. someone help? blackberry, where are you?? lol

About 3 weeks ago I sold my Nexus 6p and bought a used Pixel XL (1st gen obviously), and it's amazing. You should definitely consider it!

thanks, just might do that too!

Was considering this, but wanted the Pixel 2 to get more widespread adoption to drive down Pixel prices.

I've been using the Moto Z Play for 6 months and it's my favorite phone yet.

The battery life is insane, easily can make it 2 days and I'm an extremely heavy user. I love the plain vanilla Android stock and I got a deal where I got the Hassleblad camera Moto mod for free which is a great addition.

Sadly, there's no phone that has great software and great hardware. Pixels and iPhones have great software and quick updates, but they have no jacks, and the screens aren't very good, etc.

Samsung S8 or LG V30 have probably the best hardware (great AMOLED screens, jacks, SD card slots, etc), but the software might be lacking - there's some bloatware, some "me too" apps, and updates aren't quick. Although I have been told that the software situation is much better this year.

I think something like OnePlus 5 sits in the middle, almost a Nexus replacement - good (but not great) hardware for reasonable price, almost stock software, and it's kind of enthusiast phone, so it will very likely get working LineageOS for years to come.

yes the one plus looks great but it's not available anywhere (sold out on their website)

Absolutely. I'll be totally fine with the lack of headphone jack when wireless headphones last 72+ hours on a single charge, or they charge wirelessly from the bag when I walk into my flat. Until then, wireless headphones are something terrible I have to put up with to make the gym easier, and absolutely not something I want to consider using as I work during the day.

Really? I found losing the wires (that snagged, pulled them out of my ears, etc) to be a fantastic advantage that far outweighs the inconvenience of having to charge them.

Don't forget they should switch from computer to phone in less than three seconds.

I do hear this as a common complaint, but there's an adapter for this so I'm not sure what the big deal is? http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/google-pixel-2-headphone-...

The headphone jack is one of those things no one should ever remove. I despise having to charge an additional set of hardware, namely bluetooth headsets ...

I had the Pixel 2 in my cart thinking I could convince myself of a no 3.5 mm future, and like hell I could so I aborted the checkout. At this rate, if they do not bring it back, I will wait until I can get superb USB-C headsets inexpensively... or most likely, Samsung S9 is going to be my next upgrade.

Loved Google's Nexus and even the Pixel 1, but they have gotten complacent, do not listen anymore and actually believe that copying Apple in any way shape or form makes them look better.

Can't wait for that Librem phone either. That one sounds better than anything else Google has to offer at least for the HN crowd, if not wider...

never heard of the librem until now, thanks. would be amazing if it happens

Lack of headphone jack on Pixel XL 2 is what drove me from my Pixel XL into the loving embrace of my new Samsung Note8. There's no excuse to drop headphone jack.

Samsung understands the need, and the headphone jack in note 8 and next s9 is a feature

> ... but the lack of a headphone jack on the flagship Google phone is really the last straw.

Look, this is inevitable. The titans have decided this thing is dead, so it's going to happen. The thing that pissed me off most about the iPhone 7 and convinced me to leave wasn't the lack of a headphone jack, it's that Apple was/is confused about what to do about it. You can't go making USB-C only computers and then have all of your phones using something different. I get that this is shitty, but at least if we decide that USB-C is the way forward we can end the Great Dongle Wars.

right???

Apple is not confused. Lightning is a better and much smaller port for phone use. And there are over a billion Lightning devices out there. There's no compelling reason to switch to anything else, certainly not to USB-C.

And no, moving iPhone to USB-C would of course not end the Great Dongle Wars, nor even get rid of a significant chunk of them. Most dongles are necessitated by all kinds of old ports, mostly video, on laptops.

I honestly don't care about a headphone jack on a phone, I do care about the wireless charging...which the Pixel 2 lacks. Now that every phone has it (including the iPhone now,) it's baffling that Google felt it necessary to leave it out.

I'm at the point where I'd be happy to see Microsoft make their own Android phone, use the Arrow launcher to hook into Windows.

Do the blue tooth headfone proponents ONLY use headfones on phones? How do you use them on laptops and computers with no bluetooth capability? or on Roku remote? or on flights without buying some other crap dongle or adapter? I run out of charge on my gym blutooths soo often, who are these folks who only have to charge their headphones once in 3 months on daily use? Bluetooth could be an addon feature to a headfone if you wanna go cordless but why shut the effin gate on the device side by removing the jack altogether? (hyperventilating now)

That's the nature of change. It's awkward, and never smooth.

I'm one of those people who believe that eventually all consumer devices will use wireless headphones. It's not going to happen instantaneously, and the transition will be awkward, but eventually it will be complete and issues like you're talking about will be non-issues. This kind of thing has happened many times before.

Did USB stick proponents ONLY use USB sticks? What about computers that only use 3.5 inch floppy disks?

It's also an incredible hassle to keep pairing if you change the device quite a lot (between pc/phone) in my opinion.

I ordered one. It came with an adapter. It's not a bad adapter, really. It's no larger than the plugs to make the connections, and connects firmly.

What I lament is the inability to charge and use headphones at the same time with this adapter. They have another adapter "coming soon" in their store which will do both.

That said, it's been 25 hours since my last charge and I'm still at 71% battery, so it's less impactful than I thought it would be.

I'm a little concerned about the reports of screen burn-in I've seen on reddit, but the other rumors about discoloration did not impact my model, so it's just 'wait and see' now for me.

Overall, I really like it.

The number of "but AirPods are great" comments on this entire thread is hilarious. Not relevant. The article is about Google's phone, not the iPhone.

Google have arguably made their BT stack worse in Oreo. Since it got the upgrade at the start of the summer, my Pixel XL v1 no longer plays nicely with my car, and is pretty poor with my BT headphones. Even if I bought the fabled AirPods, they wouldn't use the W1 magic to talk to my phone, so I sincerely doubt they'd fix any problems I have.

Luckily, I have the fallback of the 3.5mm jack, and so largely the impact of these BT issues are small for me. But the article mentions that the Pixel 2s are also suffering BT issues, and Google won't even comment on them. If I buy one and find the same issues with it, then I have to rely on the dongle to get music from my phone to my car, and I can't charge it at the same time any more.

The AirPods are Apple's best product since the iPhone IMO.

> The number of "but AirPods are great" comments on this entire thread is hilarious. Not relevant. The article is about Google's phone, not the iPhone.

Except that a lot of the complaints are not specific to the Google phone. They're about removing the headphone jack, and what people claim are inherent problems with doing so. If AirPods can be used to counter such claims then they're definitely relevant.

I like how they used the excuse that they did it to reduce bezels. Does this look like it has small bezels to anyone?

https://cdn2.gsmarena.com/vv/pics/google/google-pixel-2-1.jp...

Getting a little tired of Google's obvious lies (still bitter about their lie about OIS in the past, and now the dual-camera, too).

Yikes, I thought the anti-headphone jack movement would have died by now.

Get rid of it, all of it, along with plastic media drives and plastic media, game cartridges, magnetic hard drives, SIM cards, full size USB ports...all this crap, go away already, please.

I love headphone jack and I do not like very much bluetooth (except Hands-Free Car Kit). But I also watch many TV series where the characters are always using tiny earbuds. People want to be as cool as their idols. The first generation of bluetooth headset was cumbersome. With the Apple touch and some technical improvements, this can be a success.

The headphone jack is not being removed for cellphone business reasons, it is being removed for music industry reasons.

It is a consumer hostile move, no matter the quality of the wireless earbuds.

I speculate they probably negotiated this as part of the iTunes library access some years ago.

This whole situation frustrates me to no end.

The Pixel 2 XL checks all of my boxes, which really aren't much: runs Android, has a large screen, is fast, has a good camera, is fast, is supported with updates for a few years, and is fast. My S7 Edge has made me truly understand the life pain and suffering that even minor lag can cause.

I implicitly assumed that any phone which would fit those criteria and be in the $700-$800 price range would also have a flawless screen. I'm not even talking about a Note8-level "holy shit that's amazing" screen - more like an S7 level of "nice screen" screen.

A speedy Android UI is so important to me though that I'm at least going to give the phone a shot when I receive it. "Maybe it's just a bad batch," I'm telling myself. And promptly RMA it or return it if there's any issues.

Part of me feels bad that I'm still willing to part with my money to try this phone out. Does that make me a sucker?

Why not get the old Pixel XL? It's still a great phone.

Dat chin do'

The bezels make it unworkable for me, Donald, and the rest of the small hand contingent.

Bezels make a phone easier to use. It's incredibly awkward trying to reach the space bar with my thumb on a phone without bezels.

It will only get software updates for another year and security updates for 2 more years, it's 1/3 of the way through it's effective lifespan. The supported lifetimes are far too short when you buy in release day, let alone a year later.

You should be able to manually update it to newer android versions after the official updates end since it has treble. The kernel as of now is still stuck on 3.18. Unless the blob makers update to 4.4, that will be the limiting factor regarding security updates.

After my S7 Edge almost made me cry, I sold it after 12 months of usage and bought the Xiaomi Mi 6.

Best Android I've ever used and seen. The software isn't exactly Apple or Google level but it's very solid and EXTREMELY SNAPPY. The whole thing flies like there's no tomorrow.

I will buy the iPhone X and make it a secondary device but holy hell that device is much better than I expected.

Yeah Xiaomi phones are extremely good. They are not really popular in the west but not hard to get one either through Aliexpress or any other reseller.

As far as I know Xiaomi still cant function on any US cell provider; dunno about europe but its not even an option for me

There are European versions of Xiaomi working on all European frequencies now in Poland. You can grab a nice Xiaomi phone for $150 with a fingerprint sensor and 3/32 memory.

Yes, I realize that and it's a real shame. It seems Xiaomi can't pull certain strings -- it's hilarious that one has to pull strings to be able to sell phones in USA but hey. Your carriers are a pretty strong mafia. ;)

Jokes aside, again, it's a shame and you guys are missing out. Xiaomi makes the most no-bullshit phones on the planet right after the iPhones.

The lacklustre cameras and LTE band support are my main issues with those. You'll also want to reflash the phone when you get it - this may require asking Xiaomi for "permission" to unlock the phone (what happens when that server goes away?)

I agree the camera is not great. No Android so far was able to compare against my former S7 Edge (I guess S8/Plus and Note 8 are better though). And that's not okay. I have to admit though, the Mi 6 is a filler device for me until the iPhone X comes out.

The LTE band support problem is weird and I guess it comes from Xiaomi not pulling the right strings in the USA. We can only speculate though.

I bought the mi5, installed Lineage on it and holy shit! I don't want this phone to become old and obsolete. Everything has been near perfect if not perfect. Everything. The battery life, screen size, the speed!

I actually look forward to use the phone.

The Android one version of Moto x4 is shaping up to be nice. I've been using moto since the first G variant (back when Google acquired the phone division of Motorola) and I am currently on X2 (by Lenovo, but still a good and very well-rounded phone). The only issue is X2 no longer receives updates, so an Android one version may be as close as you can get to the original. It's really a shame Google sold Moto only to struggle with hardware manufacturing of their "premium" phone for two generations now.

No notification LED and No fingerprint reader on the back is why I decided to delay going to the x4. I do like that it has a working FM radio and headphone jack though. :(

I thought the same (about the fingerprint reader), but in 2 days I was converted. I love it on the front. I use my thumb to unlock and it's flawless. Nice bonus: you can use a fingerprint to lock, too.

I upgraded from a 5x because I need more storage, and I've never adapted to a new phone so quick.

You could get the essential phone, which is now $500 and promises 3 years of updates.

I ordered a Pixel 2.

Some of these first batch issues can be sorted by adjusting the production and I am more than willing to return a faulty device.

Me too. After Google left us Nexus 6P (and 5X) users out to rot, I won't be buying into their next hobby.

To be honest, if the battery on my (already-replaced) 6P wasn't laughably bad, I'd be happy to use it for another year or two. Everything else about it is fine.

As it stands, my next phone is likely to be a Nokia 9.

> After Google left us Nexus 6P (and 5X) users out to rot, I won't be buying into their next hobby

Are there any phones that are actually supporting by Google or any Android maker that actually are suppported for several years? Seems like they all get abandoned after a year.

Nexus/Pixel phones got two years support, although the 6P/5X was soured when we got support but didn't get the new Pixel-only features (which weren't at all limited by the hardware).

I don't know of any Android manufacturer with support that lasts for more than two years, though.

Forget about headphones or not for a second. Removing the jack is about killing the last analog hole for good. It's about control. Yes there are adapters for now but they're transitional and we can expect them to eventually go away.

Once the output is locked down, expect to see the equivalent of HDCP show up. Only music you have purchased through your phone's marketplace may be played, and only to an authorized device.

That's the broader issue here, and it shows one more step in the long path to removing your ownership of your devices.

I think that’s a problem, but I don’t think it was done for DRM or to prevent the next square- more done to upsell Wireless earbuds. The cost of the iPhone can only go up so many hundreds of dollars per year, so they do things like offer exponentially more storage and fancy wireless earbuds as high-margin upsells to keep growing revenue on the same user base.

Why not both? Apple makes a killing from selling media on iTunes and with a healthy profit margin. A better DRM helps protect that golden goose just a little more.

That argument makes absolutely no sense when you apply it to a company that fought against and removed DRM from their music store many many years ago.

That was a marketing strategy, not something that was necessarily important to Apple. Apple did that to enter a market dominated by downloaded mp3s. Now it doesn't need that position. And besides many people have left the company since then, so a decision change wouldn't be strange.

More recently, the Movies and Apps parts of iTunes are very much DRM encumbered.

>Only music you have purchased through your phone's marketplace may be played, and only to an authorized device.

Is music piracy still a hot button issue that would motivate Google/Apple to remove the headphone jack? I'd imagine that most people that care about ownership are in the shrinking minority - the rest already don't own their music and streaming it via Spotify/Apple/Play.

Well, aside from that, it was the only interface that used a standard connector and an unobtrusive driver library. You could run data in and out through the jack. But now all that's left is the proprietary lightning port and the wifi stack which could have all sorts of undocumented filtering or restrictive behavior in its driver. So it also locks the phone down further in that regard.

Ah, someone else who also shares this view. I realized this myself a few weeks ago, and it was kinda sad.

The reason I realized this could become something to reckon with is the intricacy of the AirPods' innards: https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/lScC1ACEJmdTFQRm.h..., https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/XwBdUPqAmhHbWgWn.h..., https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/1ZnAZMJBfmIxFr1f.h... (from https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/AirPods+Teardown/75578)

Only Apple could design something like that. Have fun reverse engineering such a monster. If good crypto got applied to something like this... ouch.

That's one possibility, at least.

The other possibility is this. Shhhhhh, but Encrypted Media Extensions can't really stop you from, uhh, tinkering with PulseAudio on Linux, maybe doing a little rerouting, and et voila, who ordered PCM?

Obviously everyone's interested in making such systems be full-stack all the way down to the hardware level in the very long term, but for now, Spotify's entire DRM model is based (very successfully!) on this status quo.

It could be argued that this is why they're actually delivering Ogg audio (I'm not sure of the bitrate) but the more logical explanation is that it requires much less diskspace. But I'm sure everyone in the industry is aware of the above, and it's factored in somehow.

So the cyberpunk distopian worst case scenario is speakers with SoC DACs woven into the acuator coil in the speaker itself, but I strongly (and with much relief) suspect this is objectively quite unlikely.

With new inventions like UEFI and the Intel Management Engine, running Linux might be ruled out entirely at some point.

While somewhat meta, ME actually runs on Minix, which is a UNIX-like too, so...

Linux isn't going anywhere on servers at least. If anything, Linux's problem is that it's edging uncomfortably close to the point of being too big to fail, in many sectors.

But I can unfortunately concede your point with consumer devices. I've come to the conclusion that Android will be doing a quiet Linux->Fuschia switcharoo in the future (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15506377), for example.

> Yes there are adapters for now but they're transitional and we can expect them to eventually go away.

Unlikely. The headphone market is huge and these devices are expected to work with everything, from mobile devices to AV Receivers, DACs, amps and studio equipment. The headphone jack isn't going anywhere.

> Only music you have purchased through your phone's marketplace may be played, and only to an authorized device.

I doubt it. The music industry is pretty open these days and has given up on DRM for a long time - you can buy DRM-free, lossless music from countless places and while I understand that purchasing music has become rare, your scenario would be a dealbreaker for anyone that still does and truly owns their music. That might be a small share, but still a significant crowd. It would render the device close to useless for people like me. This is a whole other level compared to the compromise of an adapter.

> > Yes there are adapters for now but they're transitional and we can expect them to eventually go away.

> Unlikely. The headphone market is huge and these devices are expected to work with everything, from mobile devices to AV Receivers, DACs, amps and studio equipment. The headphone jack isn't going anywhere.

> > Only music you have purchased through your phone's marketplace may be played, and only to an authorized device.

> I doubt it. The music industry is pretty open these days and has given up on DRM for a long time - you can buy DRM-free, lossless music from countless places and while I understand that purchasing music has become rare, your scenario would be a dealbreaker for anyone that still does and truly owns their music. That might be a small share, but still a significant crowd. It would render the device close to useless for people like me. This is a whole other level compared to the compromise of an adapter.

For how long, until they come up with a new report that shows the margins are decreasing and they new ways to earn money?

What do you mean it isn't going anywhere? It's already gone. People who have discrete equipment are vastly in the minority and won't have any choices left anyway once every phone maker has dropped the jack. Plus, how often do you see an iPhone plugged into an AVR?

I mean that the jack will remain the default connector headphones regardless of what the iPhone or any other phone does, since headphones have other devices to consider. Will there be Apple-only headphones with lightning conenctor? Sure. But any pair of serious cans will be expected to work on any device and that means it will use the headphone jack. You'll simply need an adapter to use them with mobile devices.

> Plus, how often do you see an iPhone plugged into an AVR?

I'm talking about the headphone's connector.

They already could've done that if they wanted to. . The analogue hole is still digitally controlled, that's why it takes a second for audio to come through your headphones when you plug them in, your alarm plays through the speakers even with headphones plugged in, etc. The reason they don't do that is because they are obviously aware it would be commercial suicide.

I'm not sure people understand quite the level of investment Apple puts into 1) quality-control and 2) supply-chain management. These take years to build up and maintain.

HTC at least has long had issues. A few years ago, my much-anticipated HTC One was a huge disappointment when the camera went purple. I'm curious to know what their defect rate on the Pixel 2 is (not that there's any chance of that ever being public)

Interestingly, the htc-made pixel seems to be the better of the two. The defect-ridden phone is the LG one (at least so far)

It was the same with Nexus 5x (LG made) and Nexus 6p (HTC made). Nexus 5x was a disaster.

While my 5x never suffered the dreaded bootloop, I will never buy another LG phone. In the time I used it, Google replaced it 3 times. And hang out on the 5x subreddit, it's filled with unhappy people.

Yes. I owned the Nexus 5x. Imho it was a horrible phone (especially compared to Nexus 5)

Nexus 6P was made by Huawei, which in my opinion accounts for its quality.

Was it the Nexus 6 which was made by HTC then?

No, that was a Motorola.

The Nexus 9 (tablet) was the only htc-made Nexus. And it was a piece of garbage. The first-gen pixel phones were both htc-made through, and seemed to be well made.

Pixel 2 XL is made by LG and not HTC.

> I'm not sure people understand quite the level of investment Apple puts into 1) quality-control

Is this suppose to be a joke or something? Hello from 2 weeks ago when password was saved as password hint on encrypted drives.

I meant hardware. I agree that their software quality is sub-par.

OLED screens are lovely in many ways but after having a Galaxy S6 that I had to return twice due to burn in I avoid it now. It just isn't worth the hassle of having to get the phone repaired/replaced. It took Samsung over a week each time to replace the phone (for free) which was a royal pain in the ass.

I know OLED tech is getting better and maybe with Apple putting an OLED in the iPhone X it means they (well Samsung as that is who makes the screen in the iPhone X) have "cracked it". However I am going to wait a couple of months to see how things play out before I jump on the OLED bandwagon again.

Interesting, my Note II lasted almost 5 years and there was never any ghosting effect, so I thought Samsung controlled this technology quite well. Then again we can see what happened to batteries...

Anecdote for anecdote: I've been enjoying OLED screens on my Android phones since the Galaxy Nexus (2011), and I've never had burn-in or any other display-specific issue.

Same here. My Note 4 is three years old, with hours of screen-on time per day at a fairly high brightness. (I use it primarily as a tablet, not a phone.) Not the slightest hint of burn-in or any display problems.

For sure. Many friends of mine have had no issues. Maybe I was just unlucky or my way of using the phone is different enough, who knows.

I'm wondering if it can be done, or isn't already done, like plasma TVs that rotate pixels and other trickery to keep burn-in at bay. I had a Panasonic plasma for a good ten years that saw its fair share of video games, with health bars and the like, and never saw burn-in. I did see ghosting toward the end of its life, but never burned-in images. The new plasma (Samsung, because I missed the last of the Panasonics) is only a few years old, but no problems with that one yet, either.

Already done. Maybe this particular phone isn't doing it, but pixel shifting is standard on Samsungs and the iPhone X.

I used my Galaxy Nexus for 2 years, with no burn-in issues. The screen still looks gorgeous and has no burn-in that I can see.

Auto brightness can help when it comes to avoiding burn-in. Using max brightness all the time with static things on the screen is a recipe for burn-in even on IPS displays.

On both Samsung phones and tablets, I've found Auto Brightness to be unreadably low at first and had to shut it off. (With Auto off, you can set whatever fixed brightness you want, it's not a binary Auto vs. Max choice).

I have the GS3, GS5, GS6, GS6 Edge, GS7, GS7 Edge, and a Tab A.

Does Samsung change how brightness works in Android? I think since 7.x both Auto and fixed are adjustable. On my pixel, I have Auto brightness, but at the same time I can choose the baseline brightness level - it gets corrected from that point.

So the switch is really "fixed at point" / "floating around that point".

I just tried it on my GS7... sliding Auto Brightness from Off to On always bounces the setting bar down to baseline (about 40%) initially regardless of prior setting.

That's either old Android or Samsung breaks the behaviour then. You can have adjustable auto-brightness on stock Android. (Called adaptive brightness in settings)

My Nexus 6 screen still looks fantastic. Wish I could get a new one with an updated CPU, fingerprint reader, faster storage, better camera, and the same screen + form factor.

So much this. I just want an upgraded Nexus. Hell I'd even take the 5X.

Hell I'd take, nay, I'd pay premium for a Nexus 5 (pre-X) updated with new components. In fact, I reverted to my Nexus 5 when I found that it's still working fine after 2 upgrades, and it is a pleasure. Sturdy, light, perfect form factor, solid battery life 5 years on, and gets all the new Android goodies.

I miss the good ol' days when smartphone form factor wasn't expected to accommodate portable video playback as a first-class citizen. Honestly if I want to spend extended time watching a video on the go I'll carry my tablet with me =/

Working in a dev shop with tons of test devices, the Nexus 5 was the most resilient and snappy over the years by far

Snappy? If you compare it to other crappier android phones maybe. My iphone 4 was just a bit slower, but it was 3 years and half older.

The Nexus 5 came out late 2013, the iPhone 4 in mid 2011, so a little over 2 years. Also I believe newer devices tend to be less snappy, as the tendencies for grand flourishes of OS animations and hardware performance optimization seems to be moving at different paces.

I find the Nexus 5 snappier than every other Android device I have used since then including powerhouses like the 5X, 6P, Note 7, and snappier than many modern iPhones I've used in my dev shop work (5S onwards, haven't tried the X).

It's only technical downside is a lower max screen brightness than other devices, but I personally prefer my screens not overpowering my eyes anyway.

Yep, I miss my Nexus 5. Would defiantly buy it if a hardware updated Nexus 5 came out. Even just for the wireless charging and nice form factor.

I really, really can't understand how people can like that ungodly piece of crap. It has been the worst phone that I ever had.

I just bought three 5x's on eBay refurbished for my family, each for $160-200, to run Google Fi. They'd all boot-looped-to-death on their previous owners, who had sent back to Google/LG under warranty but then moved on to new phones.

So far so good for me. Their screens have minor scratches, but they have new batteries and logic boards. One has a non-working headphone jack but is otherwise fine. Wait, actually that was the fourth one, that we sent back under warranty.

I had some trouble with burn in on an OLED TV that was being left on all the time. I did some research and found out that the effect goes away by leaving the screen off for a few hours every day. I set the TV to turn off every evening, and the burn in problem went away and less electricity was wasted.

I wonder if this is happening from very heavy use or something else that's not allowing the screen to recover.

No headphone jack, no wireless charging. Why is the pixel going backwards?

Well the headphone jack is a step forward. But I agree with the wireless charging.

Usually you can only get one of those.

The LG V30 and Samsung Galaxy S8 were both released this year and both feature wireless charging and a headphone jack.

I was referring to not having a headphone check and not having wireless charging.

Want to take bets on whether LG and Samsung's flagships will offer a headphone jack in 2019?

Samsung still offers a flagship with a stylus, which everyone else stopped doing about the time of the first iPhone, and they recently went back to including support for additional storage on their flagships.

They might drop the headphone jack soon, but I wouldn't bet on it.

S7 also..

The nexus 5 has both of those things. What world do we live in where a headphone jack is considered a feature?

The same world where a floppy disk doesn’t come with computers any more.

The Nexus 4 has both of those and cost less than half the price back in 2012 here in Australia...

heh I was happy to use wireless back in the N4 days.

It is nice, but not as nice as being able to charge the device in no time.

I did not think about wireless charging at all until everybody started talking about it again with the new iphone.

If I can go without it without feeling its absence, it is probably not that important (for me anyway, but I am curious to know why it is so nice)

USB-C is not exactly hard to plug anyway, so it sounds really gimmicky to me.

I believe only the Pixel 2 XL is plagued by screen issues. The regular Pixel 2 doesn't seem to have any widespread screen issues.

They don't use the same supplier.

It's obvious Google has miscalculated when the their billboards show off the back of the device while Apple is advertising the edge-to-edge display of the iPhone X.

heh

I don't know ... they are both compromises.

a very ugly notch, no front facing speakers, the need for a really great palm rejection algorithm (and even in this case, the bottom of the screen might be a bit unwieldy to reach).

It does look cool, but it is 'just' a different compromise than the one made on the pixel.

Apple's iPhone 7 rival is also off to a rocky start, seeing as how the 7 is outselling the 8.

The iPhone X goes on sale on Friday, though, right?

Yes. That may have effected demand for the 8.

Good luck, I expect by 12:05am the website will show delivery dates in February.

The 7 is a great phone and it’s cheaper now.

There has been a guess at the reason: people want the X. Thought is after the reviews come out and say it’s not that great, or people try to preorder and get told they have to wait until March they may give up and buy the 8.

We’ve never had a situation where there are two dates the iPhone comes out on before so we don’t know how much thats effecting demand for the 8.

Around my neck of the woods everyone I know are holding out for the X.

And the people who can't wait for the X went for the 7 over the 8 (n=3)

I happily went for an 8, though I had been holding on to my 6+ for awhile. I suspect the X is the way of the future but I'm betting that the first iteration of the tech (including FaceID) might be rough. The better camera and processor in the 8 was justification already. Maybe the 7 is cheaper but may be slowing down with near-future OS upgrades.

Thanks to T-Mobile JUMP, I was able to get the 8 and will get the X next week or as soon as they are avaialable. I presume that many are doing the same

That just seems oddly wasteful.

Exchange 8 for the X and TMo refurbs and resells, perhaps.

Exactly right

I decided to upgrade to the 8+ from a 6 and it hits nearly all my points except for the slight negative that the form-factor is relatively the same (irrespective of size).

It's a great upgrade so far. The UI is snappy quick, the cameras on the back take amazing photos due to one having both OIS and digital stabilization, and the second also having digital stabilization. The resolution still looks good, etc.

I'm pleased with not needing to wait for the X, especially with the (supposedly) low supply at launch.

Time for some partial derivatives and supply curve modeling!

This says more about the iPhone X than it does about the iPhone 8. Unlike problems with the Pixel, this bodes well for Apple's bottom line.

I suspect not, since the X will only be available in limited quantities.

My guess is that it was a mistake to not release both at the same time. If they had done that, people that couldn’t immediately order the X are likely to just go ahead and order the 8 if it isn’t that big a deal to them. But now with the 8 having been out for a month, I think a lot more people are likely to just decide to wait. Net result will be a huge drop in sales (though higher ASP).

I guess we’ll see if I’m wrong many months from now, but this just seems like a huge error on their part to me.

> I think a lot more people are likely to just decide to wait.

Not going to happen. I think the X is going trigger its own super cycle. People who have the 6s are waiting for it along with people who have 7 and normally would have waited. The only question is if Apple can make enough phones. They gave themselves an extra month to build supply so we'll see. Current rumors are they are already shifting iPhone 8 production over the iPhone X. My guess is every X made for the next 6 mos. (maybe more?) will be sold before it even comes off the assembly line.

You agree with me, but I don't think you realize it. I absolutely agree that many people with the iPhone 6 and 7 are likely to hold out for the iPhone X, and that is a serious problem for Apple.

The entire existence of the X is predicated on the fact that it's an ultra-premium phone that they can only manufacture in limited quantities — quantities that would not be able to match expected demand for this generation of iPhone. If demand for the iPhone 8 is lagging and they literally cannot manufacture the iPhone X fast enough (even having shifted production away from the iPhone 8), the iPhone X may end up being a tactical disaster for Apple, even if every single one of them is spoken for the moment it leaves the assembly line.

Apple might only be able to manufacture enough iPhone Xs to satisfy 20% of projected demand for this generation. Shifting production capacity around doesn't help much if their supply of critical components is limited (e.g., OLED displays). If they were expecting the iPhone 8 to satisfy the remaining 80% of demand but half of potential iPhone 8 buyers decide to simply wait it out, this could be an absolutely disastrous year for Apple even if their ASP shoots up by a few hundred dollars.

I understand your point, but I'm not sure Apple ever presumed more iPhone8s would sell over the X.

Rumors are that the early manufacturing issues were around one of the face recognition modules, but those issues have since been fixed. Apple knows supply chain, they know how to get millions of units made, and I think they get it done. I'll make a bold HN prediction ;) and say the iPhone X will be the best selling item over Christmas and the best selling iPhone of all time.

I sincerely hope you're right, even though I fear that I am! We'll likely know in 6 months time.

That said, why do you think they spent so much effort to develop, manufacture, and release the iPhone 8 if they projected that they would be able to ramp up production enough to satisfy demand for the X within a reasonable time-frame Everything I've seen points to the X being their attempt at making a phone that they simply wouldn't be able to manufacture at typical iPhone scale. So if not that, then what was the strategy behind the 8/X split?

Good question. Another part of that question is why still sell the 7 or 6s at all? I think what we are seeing is Apple slowly filling all of the price points. There is a large group of people who want the latest, but also a group who traditionally were priced out of iPhones.

A question I really want answered is what will they call next years phone? Will they have 9 and XI? :P