
Headphone inline controls – how they differ on Apple iOS vs. Android/Nokia - sengork
http://www.head-fi.org/t/825485/xiaomi-in-ear-headphones-pro-hd-2-1-hybrid/210#post_13086213
======
wlesieutre
To be more precise than "they don't work because Apple is terrible," the two
competing pinout standards are CTIA (previously meaning Cellular Telephone
Industries Association) and OMTP (Open Mobile Terminal Platform).

According to Wikipedia, the OMTP devices include:

    
    
        * old Nokia (and also Lumia starting from the 2nd gen)
        * old Samsung (2012 Chromebooks)
        * old Sony Ericsson (2010 and 2011 Xperias)
        * Sony (PlayStation Vita)
        * OnePlus One
        * Xbox One controller with head phone jack
        * iPhone sold in China
    

and CTIA devices include:

    
    
        * Apple
        * HTC
        * LG
        * Blackberry
        * latest Nokia (including 1st gen Lumia as well as later models)
        * latest Samsung
        * Jolla
        * Sony (Dualshock 4)
        * Microsoft (including Surface and Xbox One controller with chat     adapter)
        * most Android phones
    

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_connector_(audio)#TRRS_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_connector_\(audio\)#TRRS_standards)

I haven't personally tested most of those, but IIRC when I had a Surface Pro
the iPhone TRRS earbuds worked fine with it.

~~~
stonogo
CTIA is a post-facto 'standardization' of what used to be known as 'AHJ,'
which came about once companies needed a name for 'Apple-compatible' without
actually naming Apple. CTIA is primarily a lobbying organization, and their
past hits include laws that made it easier for the US government to surveil
email and an attempt to get the US government to shut off TV broadcasting
entirely.

OMTP was an actual standard from a real-life standards body -- the same one
that brought us micro-USB across all non-Apple phones. We lost functionality
when we lost OMTP; imagine a world where you had dedicated buttons for track
forward and back.

Having been involved in the design phase of devices that supported each
standard, I miss OMTP.

~~~
comex
> We lost functionality when we lost OMTP; imagine a world where you had
> dedicated buttons for track forward and back.

There's one argument, albeit small, for killing the headphone jack. USB HID
has included track control keycodes since forever, so USB earphones should be
able to control playback by appearing as a HID device... I think...

Of course, there too Apple is off doing their own thing with Lightning.

~~~
stonogo
You can indeed -- and Nokia was producing such devices in the mid-2000s. There
are even some models of Nokia phone that did not have a headphone jack; they
had a micro-USB port that was used for both charging the phone and attaching
headphones. Sound familiar?

The peak of that approach was the Nokia WH-501, which consisted of a micro-USB
connector at one end and a clip on the other, which had several audio
controls. IIRC: volume up/down, call answer/hangup, mute toggle, track
forward, and track back. It came with a regular set of 3.5mm earbuds, but of
course you could use whatever headset you wanted, as the mic was built into
the clip.

At the time I remember someone had written a linux driver for this device,
which worked quite well.

So, ten years ago, we had a cross-platform standards-based headset with audio
controls and reconfigurable earpieces. Like I said, a lot has been lost in the
recent past.

~~~
digi_owl
From an European point of view, the mobile world was set back a decade (if not
more) by the tech media's fawning over Apple and Google's entry. This in large
part because they built products for the US market, and it was lagging the
rest of the world massively.

~~~
coldtea
> _From an European point of view, the mobile world was set back a decade (if
> not more) by the tech media 's fawning over Apple and Google's entry_

As a European I couldn't disagree more. Have you see the crap (including Nokia
and Sony) that passed for smartphones before the iPhone and Android devices
came along?

You also make it sound like some big conspiracy for "the tech media's fawning
over Apple and Google's entry".

If there was that much better European mobiles where were/are they hidden?

That some standards (like the above for headphones) existed and were lost, I
can accept. But nothing much else...

~~~
jnky
> Have you see the crap (including Nokia and Sony) that passed for smartphones
> before the iPhone and Android devices came along?

I have to disagree with you here. The first iPhone was awful and the
smartphones and PDAs of the time were in my opinion way ahead of the iPhone. I
will concede that the established players failed their market, as people in
general (as opposed to techies) wanted a sleek device with nice UI over the
features that people took for granted until the iPhone.

I know it's not to be taken seriously, but this neatly expresses my opinion at
the time the iPhone came out:
[http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone](http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone)

~~~
coldtea
> _I have to disagree with you here. The first iPhone was awful and the
> smartphones and PDAs of the time were in my opinion way ahead of the iPhone_

I had the then reviewed as "best" smartphone pre-iPhone, a Sony top of the
line one with a stylus. It was crap. Have also played with the Nokia
communicator and others. Also crap.

Can you point to any "smartphones and PDAs of the time" that were "ahead of
the iPhone" with an actual link to a product page/review/wikipedia, so we can
see if that was the case?

> _as people in general (as opposed to techies) wanted a sleek device with
> nice UI over the features that people took for granted until the iPhone._

If those devices didn't have a sleek device and a nice UI what did they have
over the iPhone? More features? Features are nothing without the form factor
and usability. The internet browsing experience, for example, in those phones
were beyond crap.

~~~
jnky
> I had the then reviewed as "best" smartphone pre-iPhone, a Sony top of the
> line one with a stylus. It was crap. Have also played with the Nokia
> communicator and others. Also crap.

I strongly disagree.

> Can you point to any "smartphones and PDAs of the time" that were "ahead of
> the iPhone" with an actual link to a product page/review/wikipedia, so we
> can see if that was the case?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N95](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N95)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_TyTN_II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_TyTN_II)

The difference between these devices and the iPhone baffles me to this day.
Yeah the iPhone had a better UI, but it didn't even have 3G, Apps, IM, MMS,
Copy&Paste and a whole load of other features. You couldn't even open a socket
or ping a machine with it.

> Features are nothing without the form factor and usability.

Again, I strongly disagree. Features are everything, while a sleek UI is
worthless if you know your way around the apps you care about.

Unrelated to the iPhone, I consider the trend to "dumb down" UI such that
untrained users can have pleasant user experiences without prior knowledge to
be annoying and misguided. Obviously that's what the market wants, but I find
it frustrating when apps or services are lacking features that people have
been taking for granted for 20 years.

> [...] The internet browsing experience, for example, in those phones were
> beyond crap.

I'm willing to concede that the browsing experience on the iPhone was far
superior to all other smartphones at the time. However, I would argue that
even on the iPhone the browsing experience was kinda crap, as there was no
mobile web to speak of in 2007 and the usability of desktop sites on mobile
was hit and miss.

------
jws
For the curious or confused by the _" when you tap the button it shoots an
electrical signal that the phone will pick up and interpret"_ in the article,
the control buttons are implemented as resistors switched across the
mic/ground pair. The mic is 1000Ω or higher. The functions resistors are
lower. You can see nice diagrams at…
[http://source.android.com/devices/accessories/headset/plug-h...](http://source.android.com/devices/accessories/headset/plug-
headset-spec.html)

~~~
hugodahl
Very nice and handy reference! Will give me something to compare against and
my Pixel and Amazon headset. Apparently, vol up on the headset triggers the
assistant, while all other buttons work as expected. Oddly, the same headset
worked flawlessly on a OPO and Nexus 6. And Google hardware support cannot
recommend a specific make/model, just one with "an on/off switch for the mic".

------
rickdeckard
Apple didn't patent a "resistance", they implemented a control-chip in their
headphones starting from the iPod Shuffle in ~2009, and patented that chip.

Purpose was to ensure a revenue-share from headphones so that every accessory-
maker who wanted in-line controls had to pay a license to Apple to use the
control-chip.

(the control-chip was meanwhile reverse-engineered and its functionality is
now integrated in non-licensed headphones as well)

~~~
bostand
"ensure a revenue-share"

Such a nice word for such an ugly business practice....

------
mattkevan
Has this got anything to do with the way inline controls seem to be unreliable
in Android?

I got out of the habit of using them as there was only a 50/50 chance of
anything happening when pressing a button. Sometimes even when successful it
would take a while to take effect. Pressing the button a few times in case it
didn't register led to nonsense like it stopping and starting rapidly a few
seconds later.

I first noticed this on a Fairphone on 4.2 and just thought it was due to a
sluggish phone on an old system, but the problem remained on a Nexus 6 with
versions 5 and 6.

Also Android seems to be bad at remembering the last audio app that was open.
On iOS, you can listen to something, unplug the headphones, do something, plug
them back in, hit the play button and you carry on where you left off. Android
not so much - you have to manually open the app for it to work. Although I
once had a podcast app and a music app start _at the same time_.

~~~
hsod
> On iOS, you can listen to something, unplug the headphones, do something,
> plug them back in, hit the play button and you carry on where you left off

In my experience, this doesn't work very well anymore on iOS 10

------
simonjgreen
This is not a fair representation of the situation at all, and also doesn't
even hold true.

For example, I recently switched from iPhone to Galaxy S7. My apple earbuds
centre button pauses and resumes but the volume controls do nothing. So the
problem is not as straightforward as Apple vs Android.

------
codfrantic
To make things even more complicated, I have a Sony Xperia Z2 which uses a 5
point jack plug TRRRS, as far as I know the extra connection is only used to
receive microphone signal from the included noise cancelling headphones.[1]
(Since the noise cancelling logic is handled on the phone).

[1] [https://www.sonymobile.com/global-
en/products/accessories/di...](https://www.sonymobile.com/global-
en/products/accessories/digital-noise-cancelling-headset-mdr-nc31em/)

------
tener
> In other words- you could have a device with the same TRRS Pinout as apple
> products- but the headset wont work because the resistances (ohms) of the
> headphones send signals that your phone is not allowed to interpret into the
> correct actions (since apple patented these)

Can you seriously patent actual resistances?

------
joecool1029
Pretty sure Blackberry use the Apple 'standard' as well.

------
nickcano
This causes a ton of compatibility problems, and it's worse that a lot of
companies don't seem to care and advertise compatibility anyways. I noticed
this a while ago when I wrote this review:
[https://www.amazon.com/review/R2RH78QWKSM5W7/ref=cm_aya_cmt?...](https://www.amazon.com/review/R2RH78QWKSM5W7/ref=cm_aya_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B004SP0WAQ)

------
jswny
Wow I had no idea this is why Apple headphones don't work on other devices. I
was under the impression they did not work because apple devices are 3 pole
vs. everything else being 2 pole.

~~~
davidbanham
Everything with a microphone is 3 pole.

~~~
brians
Everything discussed in the article is 4-pole, isn't it? L, R, G, Mic?

These days, Apple devices are 8-pin 2-lane lightning, and use separate lanes
for audio and control. The Apple EarPods appear to be _7_ -pole: separate
grounds for each signal wire, all as twisted pair. That's pretty cool, as
someone who wants earbuds to work well near RFI.

~~~
Godel_unicode
> ...wants earbuds to work well near RFI.

This is the first time I've heard that argument, what RFI are you near that
was breaking normal headphones?

~~~
kuschku
> what RFI are you near that was breaking normal headphones?

Mobile phones. The good old _br t br t brrr tt br_ whenever the mobile phone
thinks it has low signal and fires at full power and causes interference.

A video demonstrating it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TWXCVbBTcc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TWXCVbBTcc)

~~~
tjohns
That sound has less to do with power level, and more to do with what mode your
phone's modem is using.

Specifically, that sound is associated with TDMA-style networks (e.g. 2G GSM),
since the transmitter has to rapidly switch on/off, giving other phones a
chance to transmit. This induces a series of audible-frequency voltage spikes
in nearby cables.

CDMA-style networks (e.g. CdmaOne, 3G GSM, LTE) don't have that problem, since
the transmitter is effectively always on while transmitting.

That's why you don't notice that sound very often anymore.

~~~
kuschku
> That's why you don't notice that sound very often anymore.

Except yesterday. And today. And every second day in my life. Because even my
Nexus 5X in a 4G network occasionally sends/receives SMS in GSM mode.

~~~
lightedman
I hear it every day with my 4G Moxee X1 sitting next to my Technics stereo.
Anyone downvoting you must not realize this sort of interference is UBIQUITOUS
and can be triggered even by someone with loose spark plugs in their engine.

