

Can We Ditch The Headphone Jack? - mxpxpx
http://www.fastcolabs.com/3020874/can-we-ditch-the-headphone-jack-already

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unwiredben
I was at Palm/HP back when we did this on the Veer 4G smartphone... it only
had a POGO-style magnetic connector on the side to support headphones, USB,
and charging, but we shipped the phones with an adapter to allow using a
3.5mm-jack headset. We did it to make the phone as small as possible, but I
don't think it was ever a well-loved decision.

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tempestn
Any idea why not? Looking at that pogo demo video, it seems like building the
jack into the phone and supplying the adapter would be a perfect solution. I
guess the main down-side is that it's another thing to keep track of.

Hmm... one thing that might help with that is to include a slot in the charger
for the adapter, just to have somewhere to put it that isn't likely to get
lost.

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DZittersteyn
Oh man please no. Imagine having this in your pocket and playing music! The
little amount of stress your pocket puts on it will make your music jump.

Imagine having a magsafe connector on a laptop without a battery. So every
time your connector gets a bump your laptop shuts down. The reason magsafe
works is because you don't need _constant_ power, so a short interruption is
okay.

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isomorphic
The reason those TRS/TRRS connectors have been around for so long is that they
flippin' _work_.

While I agree that a MagSafe-style equivalent would be nice, it will be a
giant step backward if we end up with a gazillion new "standards." Or a de
facto standard with a poor mechanical connector (e.g., micro USB). Or a great
mechanical connector that's completely proprietary (Lightning).

Bluetooth headsets are not really a solution for the reasons mentioned in the
article. Even with voice codecs there's lossy recompression going on, and
music is worse. Add the delightful user experience of batteries, and you've
managed to replace a light, decent-sounding, completely-reliable $15 set of
earbuds with something heavier, lower-fidelity, always in need of charging,
and more expensive. All for the sake of removing a wire.

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tempestn
That's the great thing about something like the pogo shown in the op though
(except built into the device). It's entirely backward compatible, so they
could include a set of headphones that connect directly, as well as the
adapter that lets you use a standard 3.5mm jack.

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nticompass
According to Betteridge's law of headlines... no.

"devices right now won’t allow them to become much thinner" I'm sorry, but who
cares? My LG Optimus F3 is _way_ to thin for me to hold in my normal human-
sized hands. I had to get a case just to be able to hold it! Let's stop making
things thinner and start making them "usable"!

Plus, I'd rather not have to buy new headphones/audio equipment. I've never
had problems with my headphones, and I don't want to have to buy adapters just
to use the things I already have.

I mean, I guess in the future we could remove this jack, but if I were
shopping, I'd buy the device with the jack on it.

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majurg
Cool I guess, as long as sound quality is not degraded.

On the plus side, something like this would probably take a lot of stress off
the headphone cables when you accidentally jerk them.

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malandrew
I'm in favor. Most 3.5" jacks are horribly made. Only the 1/4" jack ever
worked well.

I desperately want us to ditch RJ45 for something as compact as Apple's
lightning connector but is an open standard and easy to make (i.e. uses a
crimping tool)

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GoldfishCRM
I believe apple will fight this like crasy.

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twiceaday
More proprietary connectors please. /s

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_ZeD_
Please, no.

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gcb1
no indeed. this is but a infomercial for a very lousy product. the so called
reporter does not even acknoledge that millions of cellphones in the past used
2mm plugs and they were hated by everyone. also nokia tried the popport for
the same reason, and was equally hated.

