Apple Had a Better Idea:

[MineralMan]

Basically, the company said, "For customer convenience, we have removed the headphone jack from all iPhones."

This week, my wife, who has been an iPhone fan for quite some time, got her new Samsung A51 phone from the friendly FedEx driver. It has a headphone jack. She uses it to listen to a distant radio station at night on the internet. Today, she is sending her iPhone SE back to Verison for a partial refund. It had an earphone jack, but it was time to update her phone, and none of the new iPhones have one.

After she had it all set up to her liking, she remarked: "How come this phone is so much cheaper than an iPhone and does so much more, AND it has an earphone jack?"

I just shrugged and said, "Sometimes, change is good."

So she switched to Android and the nation is switching to Biden. Change. It's all good.

[safeinOhio]

1. I have an SE, my second one.

No jack, so I got a cheap set of blue tooth headphones. The only time I use headphones is when I do my hour and a half jog. Use to have the plug in ones and the wire was always in the way.

On these colder days they keep my ears warm too.

I still like the Biden change.

[Yavin4]

2. That's what soured me on Apple. The ear phone jack.

You had to buy special adapters or use their headphones, etc. This is all a scam to get you to pay more.

I've had Android, and I love it. Works just great. No problems at all. I use my headphones to listen to podcasts.

[MineralMan]

4. Yes, and the battery in the Samsung A51 lasts twice as long

as her iPhone SE. She was shocked. I have an even cheaper Samsung A10e. The only difference I can see is that it has only one camera lens on the back, while hers has four. It's OK, though. Neither of us takes a lot of photos, and we always just press the red button anyhow. So, only the main camera of the four will get used, I suppose.

My wife is upstairs, now, choosing ringtones and stuff like that. So many choices; so little time.

[Tripper11]

3. I've been android from the get go

Pretty much cheaper than Apple almost always, and does everything and more that I need it to. I have the Samsung S20 Ultra 5G and it smokes! Just got the new Android 11 update as well. So far I am digging the new features and slight change of look.

[MineralMan]

5. Yabbut, the iPhone is really worth $1000, right?

I mean, those bluetooth earbuds are mega cool, too.

[Tripper11]

8. I have both options of course

I have a headphone jack with provided earbuds and bluetooth of course.
I generally use bluetooth but there's been times I needed the corded ones

[MineralMan]

9. One nice thing about wired earbuds is that

they never need charging. They're cheap, too, so you probably have several sets lying around, just in case you lose one.

[tinrobot]

13. The cheap ones also break, get tangled, etc...

And the wire itself is annoying.

[MineralMan]

14. OK.

[Tripper11]

15. Indeed...but...

the newer Samsung phones wired earbuds are a usb C type connection, not the traditional 3.5mm jack.

[Sympthsical]

22. If you buy good ones, and not the ones they sell at TJ Maxx, it's not generally an issue

As a special self-treat, I splashed out on a higher end pair of Jabra earbuds a few months ago. They last about four to five hours and come with a little carrying case that acts as a fast-charging battery, holding an additional 28 hours of charge. I keep the case in my pocket like one would keys.

Since I can't think of any time I need to be wearing earbuds in constant use for five hours straight, it's not an issue. I listen to music quite a bit, jog and work out with them in, even use them to watch movies or play PC games at home. I have never had an issue with battery life. Plus, I get crystal clear calls while my phone is in my pocket (my set have four microphones).

I get this is an Apple hate thread. I'm not particularly a fan boy. But you're talking about an SE, which is intended to be a lower end phone several generations behind. Of course it's not fantastic. I have an 11 Pro and it suits me just fine. Battery lasts all day. I have a 2000 mAh portable battery with a USB-C port I carry around sometimes, but never need it unless I've literally been staring at the phone all day, streaming video. How often does one do that?

Different strokes. I don't need my phone to be a portable PC. Keep it simple stupid. Make it so I can explain it to my elderly mother. Apple does this well. It's pretty much their entire point.

[GoCubsGo]

33. No battery to eventually die and need to be replaced, either.

Which also means no e-waste of which one has to dispose before shelling out a ton of money for a new pair.

[Initech]

6. My new Note 20 doesn't have a headphone jack.

That's the only thing about this phone I don't like. Thankfully there are ways to get around it, though.

[lark]

7. I got my Iphone for free from a friend.

When it dies, I will probably go back to Samsung.

[tinrobot]

10. I was adamant about headphone jacks on my phones for a long time.

Then I got a nice set of noise-canceling headphones.

Never went back to wires. My phone still has a jack, but I've stopped using it. For the next phone, I won't demand one.

[USALiberal]

11. Made sense to me. Bluetooth is the deal now.....

And they have a headphone jack adapter.

[Silent3]

12. I don't think Apple ever claimed removing the jack was for customer convenience

And I found its removal mildly annoying myself, but not a big deal. I really like that my iPhone is waterproof, and while that could have been done while keeping the headphone jack, the more holes in the case there are the harder that is to do.

Apple has done this for a while, removing features that either are outdated, or that it wants to make outdated. For the most part it has paid off, and the rest of the industry has moved in the same direction.

I don't miss the floppy drives Apple removed. I don't miss the CD and DVD drives they removed, or the VGA video connectors.

I was recently annoyed when I expected I'd simply be able to plug sound bar into my iMac with a digital optical cable, and discovered Apple no longer puts a digital signal in their headphone jacks along with the analog signal. But I'm probably one of the very few people who ever used this feature. It definitely wasn't being used by many other customers.

[MineralMan]

16. That was sarcasm, actually. A joke.

But, how about USB C? I love that I no longer have to look to see which way the cable end is facing to plug the charger cord in.

I mean, I like the idea of cordless charging, but I just plug my phone in at night when I'm sleeping and it's always at 100%. So far, it has never gone below 70% charge.

[Silent3]

23. Sorry I missed the sarcasm, but it's because I've heard people say...

...seriously what you said as a joke as if it were true before.

Apple has been big on pushing USB-C, they just haven't gotten their for phones yet because of the bitchfest dropping the Lighting connector would create. I don't really care about which end of the cable I grab anyway, just that I don't have to worry about which side of the connector is right-side-up like older USB.

Apple with Lighting has given people that convenience for much longer than Android phones, which AFAIK were for a long time mostly USB 2.0 on one end and some form of it-only-goes-in-one-way mini USB on the other.

[mopinko]

18. i have a 2012 laptop i'm never letting go of.

it has a dvd drive.

my pet peeve? why does this shit have to be so slippery?
sure, everyone loves shiny. but a little texture would save a lot of devices.
oh yeah, they dont make money that way.

[mopinko]

17. neither do ipads.

they have too many baby geniuses and not enough old ladies.
on my 3rd iphone, 3rd laptop, and 1st ipad. each one dumber than the last.

[hunter]

19. The headphone cord also acts as an FM radio antenna in many phones...

... allowing you to listen to the radio without streaming charges.

The iPhone "radio" apps I've seen are actually streaming apps.

[MineralMan]

24. Hmm. The app my wife uses is a streaming app,

but the phone is on our wi-fi network, so it doesn't involve any cell data. She listens to it at night, in bed.

We're on an unlimited data plan with Verizon. It's a family plan so, her sisters also are on the same plan.

We have five or six cell-enabled devices. Maybe more. I don't keep track of her devices at all. My wife reviews websites and online software mobile apps, so she has to have a range of devices available for testing. She has one of the latest iPhones, just for app testing. It's all a business expense for her. My cell phone is on the plan, too, but gets less use than any of her devices. It replaced a cell-enabled dongle on an old notebook computer. We hadn't used it for a couple of years, but there it was on her list of devices. So, I swapped in my cell phone on that number.

I'm her tech support person, so I've had to learn all of her devices so I can fix any problems that come up. The latest one was echoing on one of her phones during phone convos. She couldn't seem to solve it, despite searching for a fix online. I fixed it for her, by shutting off the wi-fi connection. That phone is gone now, though, so problem solved.

[Happy Hoosier]

20. I have not found a non-iPhone I like.

I use wireless buds, so not a problem for me.

[L.Pharmstrong]

21. You need an earphone jack until

you try a set of AirPod Pros. Then you wonder what the fuss was about and why anyone would want to plug in headphones.

[MineralMan]

25. That's funny. They cost more than the new cell phone

she got. Verizon is selling her A51 for $184. No earbuds are worth as much as a cell phone. Really.

Hilarious!

[L.Pharmstrong]

27. Each to his own.

I love mine. Well worth the money, especially if you catch a sale. But I also have an iPhone 12 Pro and an iPad Pro. Between conference calls for work, listening music, watching video on my iPad, using them for Discord when doing indoor cycling workouts remotely with my cycling club, and listening to MSNBC at night while in bed, I use my AirPods multiple hours each day. They sound good, and the noise cancellation is really nice.

[MyNameGoesHere]

34. The Herman Munster look was never really my Thang.

[Codeine]

26. I switched from Apple to Android a few years back.

I lasted a week. Non-Apple phones provide an absolute garbage user experience. I honestly don’t know how you guys put up with that slipshod, amateur-hour nonsense. User interface is an art that clearly isn’t being developed by the other companies. I tried, I really did, but in the end I sent it back and I got another iPhone. It was worth the penalty.

People don’t need headphone jacks anymore, and building around the jack just forces the phone to be wider. No point.

[JHB]

28. They prioritized thinness, and couldn't make it thinner and keep the phone jack

They figured that most of their customers would switch to headphones that used their Lightning connector or (for those who hadn't already) switch to wireless.

That cut off people using standard jacks, but apparently they have been right enough that the decision wouldn't put off enough customers to decide against that design requirement.

Right enough for their number-crunchers, that is. Not so much for anybody who had different priorities.

[orwell]

29. Because everyone needs...

...bluetooth radio frequencies beaming directly into their ear canal.

It help to "rearrange" the neurons...

[PJMcK]

30. Okay, you don't like Apple's decisions about their products

Perhaps there are reasons for their decisions that you haven't considered.

For example, the headphone jack presents a recurring problem in that moisture can get inside the device through that jack. This happened to my first iPhone and it shorted out the WiFi transceiver. My new iPhone 12 Mini is waterproof because it doesn't have any openings.

Another point about the headphone jack is that most of the world is migrating to wireless connectivity, including with headphones and headsets. Should a user want to plug headphones into the new iPhones, there's a small adapter that connects to the Lightning jack. Its cost was negligible. (With the explosion of wireless devices, I just wish we had a better protocol than Bluetooth!) Get your wife some wireless earbuds for her new phone; she'll wonder how she ever lived with the cord!

Your comparison of the battery life between your wife's two phones is a bit like comparing apples and oranges. First, all batteries deteriorate with age and multiple rechargings. The battery on the SE is older and has been used far more than on the brand new A51. Additionally, the A51 probably has a larger battery complement than the SE.

As for the A51 "doing so much more," I have no idea what she meant. Are there apps for the Android that aren't available for the iPhone? Are her phone calls clearer? I'm on my 4th iPhone and have never had a problem and I've found far more software than I could ever use.

There's a final point I'd ask you to consider regarding the costs of our various devices, from computers to tablets to phones and onwards. When you buy a new device, it's expensive no matter what machine or version you get. Personally, I prefer to pay up front for my technology but others pay over time. Then we use the devices. And use them. And use them some more. Like all the time every day!

My point is simple: If you amortize the cost of the device against the time you use it, you'll discover that it costs pennies a day for these fantastic technologies. My older Mac laptop cost $2,500 and gave me 8 years of flawless service. That's roughly 2,900 days so it cost me less than a dollar a day! And it still works great as a second computer. Basically, our devices don't cost that much but the services that we need-- cellphone carrier, internet provider, content providers, etc-- cost a lot.

[mahina]

31. My new second generation SE came with headphones

Earphones rather, and then plug into the charging port instead of a headphone jack.

I changed to iPhones because my android couldn’t be repaired at the charging port a third time and it was just such a waste. That’s the Achilles heel of those phones so be real careful when you plug it into charge.

[dalton99a]

32. The trend is clear for wired devices. It's hard to find a wired keyboard/mouse anymore in stores

Not a fan of Apple prices, but their stuff is good and durable.

[MineralMan]

35. Yeah, that's funny, really.

My wife's PC has wireless mouse and keyboard. She forgets about that, and lets me know that her mouse or keyboard isn't working - always right about the time she's on a deadline. So, I go up and put a new battery in whichever one has stopped.

Me? I have half a dozen brand new wired USB keyboards and mice. I noticed that they were getting hard to find, so I picked up a few Logitech sets to have on hand when I spill coffee or something into the keyboard.



What I'm going to miss is the end of the desktop PC. It's coming. I write for a living, and I just can't do that on a laptop or notebook. I need a good keyboard and a good monitor to be at my most efficient at work.

Desktop towers are getting more and more scarce these days. I'm going to miss that a lot.