Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/02/15/the-verge-reviews-the-chimer.html
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I had this problem with my Google G1. That was 2009. I had (technically still have) basically this same hookup for that phone (that also featured a weird proprietary but nonetheless mostly useful micro-usb port). They realized their mistake pretty quickly, but they also didn’t have the new market of wireless headphones to force on people.
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Bluetooth headphones: a real thing for 14 years.
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FTFY
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Now I just want to see it as the final boss in some ridiculous shooter game.
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Maybe I’m misreading this or the image at the top isn’t what this person is writing about (or I’m looking at it wrong), but…I mean…most headphone cables (definitly all earbud models anyway) split at one point, so why is it astounding that this one splits at two points…
“Tracing your eyes along this hybrid horror is almost like an optical illusion: one cable splits in two and then splits into two again”
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I dunno. The Bose QC35s I have are pretty damn flawless.
It’s just sad how much emphasis is put on making a phone slimmer and not just focusing on better overall performance. Taking away things like headphone jacks just seems like a bad idea.
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I’d agree with that. The thing I’d offer (if I was an apple) is a 1mm thicker iPhone with a much better battery life. I’m not missing the headphone jack, though. But that’s just me.
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There are more shitty Bluetooth headphones than good ones. Nokia (RIP) made some in the latter category. Mine are going on their 8th year if near-daily use – the foam padding long since converted to dust, plus some minor repairs along the way – they stubbornly persist in denying me reason to upgrade.
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Because saying “hybrid horror” is way more fun than saying “slightly complex headphones.” Rule of cool, bro.
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Oddly enough, I have never used an iphone case, and yet despite dropping my phone on hard surfaces a few times, the screen has never broken. And i find the battery on my venerable Iphone 4s more than adequate to get me through the day.
I know my use case is not typical, but I submit that perhaps yours is not either, and you might want to be careful about generalizng universal statements from the experiences of yourself and the people you know.
It’s really not that hard to keep a phone charged. Honestly.
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And here i am using my Android Samsung Galaxy S8+ with my headphone jack. Must really suck for me to have this convenient port and cheap wired headphones.
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I have an iPhone 7, which is afflicted in this way. But I also have a MacBook, which has a regular 1/8" headphone jack. So I need a hybrid of this chimerical monster and a Lightning-to-1/8"-jack adapter.
It’s like a gryphon fucked a jackalope.
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Are any of them as cheap as cheap corded headphones?
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Yes and no. Full day of airport travel I’ve ended up in situations where I want to listen to music and need to charge my phone as well. It’s not a regular occurrence, but since switching to the iPhone 7 it has definitely happened to me multiple times. Same thing for road tripping. I don’t have bluetooth in my vehicle, so I’m wired into a Aux jack. So can’t listen to music on my phone and keep it charged up. Trust me, travelling in Rural Manitoba drains your battery quickly compared to being in the city with good coverage.
Yes they are solvable things. Get bluetooth, get an adapter, etc… the point is that with previous devices I could charge and use the audio jack at the same time with out needing to get all these dooflinkus thingies.
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Are we amortizing the cost and counting cable / plug breakage and assigning any value to the time untangling cords and discomfort of yanking them off your head or swinging the phone into hard objects?
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Yes? Well I got a set for about $19 cdn. So not that much more. Are they any good? NO! First set I got only lasted 15 min on a full charge… I wrote the company and they sent me a second set. They last for about 3 hrs. So that’s better. But if I have my phone in my pocket I can get glitchy audio from dropped bluetooth packets.
I don’t know if it gets better if you spend more money on bluetooth? I suspect so. But I don’t want to spend the money to find out when wired suits me just fine.
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It would depend on where you use them. They will be fine in noisy environments, but if you are using them somewhere quiet then you will start hearing transcoding artifacts if you are listening to lossy files (which most people do).
Lossless Bluetooth is workable in theory, but I haven’t seen it in the real world.
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