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Comment by mschuetz | Hacker News Reader

I was briefly considering buying an iphone for the first time ever, since I wanted a good camera phone. Scratched that idea when I learned that it didn't have an audio jack.

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I ended up making this jump.

What I've found works best for me:

- In the car I have a Bluetooth audio adapter for the aux in my older car. Works great.

- In my backpack I have a pocket where I always leave a headphone adapter. I always put it back if I use it.

- Bluetooth to Aux adapter with a small battery. Costs like $20 on Amazon and also lives in my backpack. Has saved my ass many times.

Beyond that, I just own more Bluetooth headphones and I keep a few space headphone adapters attached to headphones I use occasionally.

It sucks to spend $50 on adapters and another $40 on Bluetooth adapters. But it is very usable now and I don't ever "miss" my headphone jack now that I have the proper infrastructure setup.

I mean, I have a phone with an audio jack, and I plug my headphones into the audio jack and I am happy.

How would you sell "no audio jack" to me? What's my gain here?

You, uh, get to work on your habit-forming because you now have more devices to charge?

I mean, practically, once they've managed to kill audio jacks we'll probably transition to HDCP-like DRM for audio so that you need Approved(tm) headphones to listen to your favourite pop music. Once we get there that will be the feature for you ...

I don't think there's any "gain", but there's possibly not as much downside as you're thinking. I just leave my adaptor plugged into my headphones all the time, so it's really no different plugging the lighting connector in compared to plugging a 3.5mm audio connector. More hassle if you have multiple sets of headphones I suppose (and I do, but only one cabled set that I use regularly, and a bluetooth set as well).

There's still a minor downside, I can't charge my phone with my (wired) headphones plugged in - but I can get almost 2 days without charging my phone (an XR) so that's never bothered me at all.

For me, the camera on the iPhone XR is _totally_ worth the "downside" of Apple's "no audio jack" decision. That's a very personal thing (I want great low light camera performance for band/gig photos) and it's not something I'd ever tell somebody else is an important purchase decision for them. Same for you, there's no way I'd try to "sell no audio jack" to you. But I might advise that whatever _other_ feature a specific phone has for your personal use cases might possibly override the downsides of no headphone jack.

It's incredibly stupid to drop them and yet here we are, with only a few phones with headphone jacks.

I'm not going to sell you on it, but I'm not the guy you responded to. Pixel 3, no head phone jack, never bothered me. I used bluetooth headphones when I still had a headphone jack.

I don't think there is one. I noticed recently that after losing the headphone jack my behavior changed and I almost never listen to music through headphones on my phone anymore. I'm not sure if that's a positive change.

> What's my gain here?

More choice of phones when buying one.

I'll be honest, this sounds like quite a set of workarounds when one can just... get this phone.

it's definitely not the end of the world. spend a little money on some adapters, change some habits, and it's not really a huge inconvenience.

the main issue for me is that bluetooth audio just doesn't sound very good. most of my music is in mp3, which pretty much guarantees a lossy-to-lossy transcode for bluetooth. the inline DAC adapters tend to be pretty bad as well. I don't really expect a high fidelity audio experience from a smartphone, but the official google adapter for the pixel 2 is noticeably worse than the onboard dac in my old nexus 5x. not a showstopper, but very frustrating considering how much I spent on the phone.

So just FYI if you do want a hi fi experience from your smartphone, I recommend this: https://www.nextdrive-spectra.io/

My phone does have a headphone jack but I still use one of these. The difference is not close to subtle.

> it's definitely not the end of the world. spend a little money on some adapters, change some habits, and it's not really a huge inconvenience.

Or just buy a phone that has a headphone jack, and not limit your options. You can still use bluetooth audio on a phone with an aux port if you want. But there are still lots of decent phone choices that have DO an aux port, eg the new pixel 4a we're talking about, no need to limit yourself.

If I don't have to buy adaptors (one for my desk at home, one for my backpack, one for my desk at work, one for my car, one for the first trip when I forget to take one...) I've saved $50-100.

There is a little 3.5mm-to-lightning dongle that came with at least the iPhone 7. Not sure if it comes with the current model, but FYI.

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMX62AM/A/lightning-to-35...

It came with my 11 pro! Although I did immediately lose it...

And you can't charge the phone while it's plugged in.

iPhones have had wireless charging for a while though. Not as convenient of course.

For me, it’s more of a problem with my iPad Pro.

It’s not even about charging. It’s about having to buy a USB-C hub just to plug in my headphones and midi controller to my iPad Pro.

It’s possible if you use a wireless charger

You can if you order a Chinese splitter. All it does is split your lightning into two ports: the charging pins and all the other pins. Because the sound is sent digitally from your lighting port to the splitter, then digitally again to the lightning-to-3.5mm dongle you have no quality loss from a subpar splitter chip.

Edit: to be clear, this shouldn’t be needed, but alas, we cannot steer Apple.

Losing it is my biggest reason for needing the audio jack. I not only lose dongles I also lost my expensive Airpods even with the Find My app. I also lose my wired earbuds but at least they're cheap. I know many people that don't have as big a problem with losing things, maybe it's a personality thing.

A friend of mine semi-permanently attached his dongle to his headphones by heatshrinking over the joined headphone jack/socket (after having lost several already). Seems to be a neat/workable solution. (I've never had my dongle come accidentally detached from my headphones. Maybe the tolerances in my headphone jack and my dongle socket all serendipitously turned out "just right"...)

They don’t come in the box anymore, but are fairly affordable at $9.

Also, they’re quite effective devices: https://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/lightning-adapter-audio-qu...

Impressive! Didn’t know Ken did audio reviews too.

I have heard hardcore audio nerds say "he doesn't"... Specifically in regard to that blog post. But these are mostly the same people who pay $bignum per meter for crap like silver plated oxygen free 3mm^2 speaker cable, so I don't really place much weight in their opinions...

They aren't durable in my experience though. Although most apple cords have issues with the connection "neck" (not sure of the actual nomenclature).

Is "strain relief" the nomenclature you're looking for?

More like the lack thereof... Apple seems to really go for form-over-function on those, and it's been like that for a long time.

Cannot charge and you need a dongle.

Don’t know why the parent was down voted for starting a fact.

I think the better solution if you can afford it is a Bluetooth receiver (Fiio make a nice one) for your old headphones.

If you are getting new earphones get some of the cheap Chinese BT earbuds. They are really cheap these days and work quite well for the money. I got a quite nice pair for ~$35AUD from amazon. Surprisingly good.

The Pixel cameras are supposedly incredible. My understanding is that there are usually one or two Android phones per-generation that are considered either slightly better or slightly worse than the iPhone's camera.

I have one. And I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the photos considering it has only one camera. Given the blur effects in Portrait mode are hit-and-miss once in a while (the algo blurs human hair pretty frequently). But I think it's pretty good for my use case, which is to capture memories that I can revisit.

I thought the Pixel 1's camera was incredible. I still have the photos saved from using it for a few weeks and I don't think any iPhone I've had since has been as good.

I use a Xiaomi Mi 9 Lite. Has a very nice camera and audio jack. The only drawback I can think of is 6.3" size, I'd prefer something below 6" if possible.

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