I use the 3.5mm jack to send audio out to my car stereo (which is up to date enough to have a 3.5mm input but not up to date enough to have Bluetooth input), and it's a pain in the rear, and I go through five or six cables a year. I'm not sure 3.5mm audio is the hill we all need to die on in the war against the march of technology.
> I use the 3.5mm jack to send audio out to my car stereo (which is up to date enough to have a 3.5mm input but not up to date enough to have Bluetooth input), and it's a pain in the rear, and I go through five or six cables a year.
Dude, what are you doing? I've been using one cable for several years for exactly that purpose, and it was a nothing-special cable I got, IIRC, at a drug store. I go through phones more often than I go through 3.5mm cables.
Probably either parent himself or his/her s/o is a "car tidyness" fetishist, and nothing will kill a cheap cable faster than winding and unwinding it every day.
Indeed. Apple cables, micro USB cables, even HDMI cables have all failed for me more often than 3.5mm cables. Even my earphones last like 1-2 years, and they get a ton of abuse
If you actually want Bluetooth, you can buy inexpensive dongles that receive BT and output on a 3.5mm audio jack, which you could run off your 12V plug and keep permanently in the car. Just thought I'd mention it in case you weren't aware and it's something you might be interested in.
In my neighborhood leaving something visibly plugged into the cigarette lighter in your car is a sign saying "Please break my window and look for electronics to steal"
So now instead of just plugging something into the car radio, we ought to solder (!) in a bodge to listen to phone music. Doesn't that strike you as over engineering a solved problem?
That depends on how badly you want Bluetooth and how comfortable you are doing this sort of work. Nobody is saying you have to do it, just that you can if you want to.
I think the question is not how much you want bluetooth, but how much you want to play songs on your phone over your car stereo.
In the current world you can often plug your phone into your car by a 3.5mm jack and play music. In the brave new world, you can plug a bluetooth dongle into your car's cigarette lighter and 3.5mm jack, pair your phone and then listen to music. If needed, you have the "option" of hiding this awful mess under the dashboard and hard wiring it.
It sounds worse than cassette adapters to me, but I am not a phone manufacturer, so I can't do much more than bitch on the internet :)
It's an option, sure. It's just far less convenient or practical than my current ability to plug a simple wire into my phone and then into a jack in my car. Removing that option in favor of soldering a device into my car stereo is not desirable.
OK? Nobody is saying that it must be desirable for you. It is merely being presented as a possibility in case the tradeoffs do make sense to you.
I find this to be a very puzzling part of hacker culture. Any suggestion that doesn't fit the personal desires of the commenter must be attacked, not merely ignored or politely rejected.
I hardly think imgabe and my posts constitute an attack. I'd call them a polite rejection of an idea.
Ignoring an idea in the context of a discussion about the idea seems pretty weird. Disagreement is part of discussion, and disagreement is not, in and of itself, impolite.
Losing a universal port on one of the most common phones doesn't really seem like an "option." It hasn't happened yet, so it's still a "possibility" but it is a possibility in the sense that the future is unknowable, not in the sense that it's something you have a choice in (beyond abandoning iphones). It's something Apple wants to do, but it isn't like a person could go buy an iphone with the "backwards compatible audio" option
Bude, buy cables that are not total crap. I DJ and I go through cables like no one's business but my home setup has had the same cables for years and they only cost me a couple more bucks than the bottom-tier stuff.
If you have a "not crap cable" recommendation I'd love to hear it, but at the same time, I suspect your home setup doesn't involve plugging something into a jack and then removing it quite as many times a day as plugging a phone into a car stereo.
TS connectors were literally designed for telephone switchboards that are connected and disconnected on a near-constant basis. Consumer audio companies happily sell plastic garbage in fancy colors without strain relief, any compensation for compression and wear on the cable itself, and with low-grade connectors... but these are solved problems in the professional world.
If you're a heavy user, buy a cable intended for professional use. As an example, look at these:
Mogami specializes in entertainment-grade cable which is often certified to be waterproof, crushproof, oil resistant, UV resistant, etc. The connectors used are from Neutrik, who are also highly reputable. In the event that something goes wrong the parts are usually hand-repairable, and often you can find cable/connector assemblies carrying lifetime warranties. Other reputable names to look for are Belden and Carnare on the cable side and Switchcraft on the connector side.
The quality of the cables you buy and how you treat them is an idependent issue from that of the 3.5mm jack.
I've had more iPod and phone charger cables (read - digital cables akin to what a new headphone jack would use) die than I've had straight analog audio cables die.
I have a 3.5mm cable that originally came with my Sega Genesis that still works fine. I've used it for all sorts of things throughout my life.
If you are going through six cables per year, you are doing something wrong. Even the cheapest cable from eBay should last longer than that provided you aren't also using it as a jump rope.
