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Comment by rpmisms | Hacker News Reader

Pixel 6a dropped the headphone jack. Great. Gotta find another brand now.

Any recommendations? I've been holding off on upgrading my shattered-screen 3a for almost 6 months assuming I'd get the 6a when it released, so pretty much anything would be an upgrade at this point.

I'm really just looking for a good camera, a headphone jack, and a good battery.

Another option to consider might be supplementing the best single-port phone you can find with a Dongle Dangler [0], which allows you to keep a dongle on your keychain.

I use it with an iPhone 12 Mini (which has good enough camera/battery for me) and it solves the wired headphone problem, albeit with adding some extra steps. I would prefer to support manufacturers that are keeping the jack, but at a certain point I felt like I was sacrificing quite a bit in terms of other aspects of my smartphone experience to do so.

[0] https://www.dongledangler.com/dangler

Still can't charge and listen without yet another dongle.

If you used wireless charging like MagSafe, you’d still be able to use the port for audio, right?

A friend of mine swears by the MagSafe experience, but I’ve yet to try it.

Sony phones (at least the ones I looked at and then stopped looking at once I saw their prices) seem to still have audio jacks. And amazing cameras.

They seem to be great phones, the price tag is just crazy to me (as with all other flagships tbf).

I'm considering to buy a Pixel 5a, seems like the last good phone. It seems there are good deals on Ebay.

A friend of mine is in love with Samsung, and they seem to be the last major OEM making phones with > 1 port.

usb-c headphone jack dongle + cable tether to attach it to your headphones

I'm not really a fan of keeping the dongle attached to my headphones since all of my other devices have actual jacks. This probably works well if none of your devices have jacks (and they all have usb-c), though.

Sony launched their Xperia 1 IV (yes, it's the fourth version of the 1, ridiculous name) today. It's probably around twice as expensive as the Pixel 6a since it's a flagship, but it still has a 3.5 mm jack, and it introduces optical zoom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Xperia_1_IV

Only two years software upgrades though.

Looks amazing, honestly. The big draw of the Pixel a-series for me was midrange phones with normal features, headphone jacks, and stock Android. I don't think that's an unreasonable ask.

It's been kind of funny to see folks criticize apple, then when their product cycle catches up copy them :) This has been like clockwork for a number of companies, starting with the move from keyboards to glass etc.

For me the lighting jack on the iphones actually has fantastic latency. Does anyone know how that works? Much better than USB-C (ie, you can use as a monitor for a multi-track recoding very comfortably)

Apple writes their own audio drivers for very specific hardware is how it works. It's very annoying, because there's so many amazing music apps that just couldn't work on Android. I just want a headphone jack or a simple way to use wired headphones.

You make it sound it's true but it's misleading, the critics was because apple users were the beta testers. Letting plenty of time for the industry( headphones, etc) and users to adapt for their Android phone

damn. I've been hanging on to my 3a, unfortunate to hear.

Yup, my latest 'upgrade' was to the 5a for this reason... I fear it may be the last Pixel with a headphone jack. When it eventually eats shit I'm terrified of being relegated to the sea of horrible OS bloatware Android devices.

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