I like wireless, I just fucking loathe earbuds. Unfortunately, they have completely replaced the wrap around on-ear headphones that were the best for wearing while running errands or exercising.
I don’t want something big and bulky while I’m walking around, but I also don’t like having shit jammed into my ears. And critically, those on ear headphones are just the right size to have a convenient button layout so I can easily pause or go back a few seconds in my audiobook whenever I need to.
But Apple decreed that wireless earbuds were the future and the market for everything else fucking died.
Have you tried bone conduction earphones? Shokz are pretty sweet, I use my pair all the time.
Used to have a pair of these. Motorola S305. They were the perfect running headphones. Big chunky buttons for volume and track skipping, a plastic band that wrapped the back of your head and over your ears so it would never fall off but otherwise wireless. The only downside was really old Bluetooth tech so connection was sketchy at times. Also audio has improved a lot since then.
Modern buds don’t stay in my ears. I’m using the pixel buds pro right now. The right ear stays in pretty good but the left is completely unpredictable.
Having the pixel buds myself, I feel your pain. Do a little bit of physical activity and at least one side gets loose and slippery.
I found that I simply dont have symmetrical ear canals, I use the mid size plug on one and the smallest plug on the other ear. That way they seem to fit somewhat reliably.
I had some jaybird buds that have the wrap around wire with a clip to your shirt so you can pop one out without tugging the other, also they came with all sorts of ear mounts so they can stay in your ear, I have really found anything that work as good for use while working
I’m using the pixel buds pro right now. The right ear stays in pretty good but the left is completely unpredictable.
I wonder if it’s their manufacturing or something, because I have the same issue with only the left bud.
Usually one bud is the primary one which connects to the phone and maintains the link. Then it pairs with the other and relays the Bluetooth session encryption key so the second bud can play it’s part of the audio
Have neckband Bluetooth headphones of various kinds too (I’ll never ever use those tiny plugs, I’d be worried about losing them and chances are they won’t fit well). Got a regular sport model, and recently got a cheap air conduction headset too.
This might be the right thing for you:
Wraparound on-ear headphones with USB-C plug. I can’t vouch for them personally though.
The problem with most USB c earphones (which are not super expensive) is that they sound like shit because they have a cheapo small DAC (digital to analog converter) in them. Our phones - most of the time - have decent enough DACs, at least had them when they had the 3.5 mm jacks
I felt this comment in my bones. It’s too bad my over ear buds are so old now the plastic has degraded. Regular earbuds just don’t stay in and I find them uncomfortable.
Now the real winner would be looped over your ear but using that spacial localized speaker thing Valve puts into their VR. That stuff works great, has surround sound, and you don’t feel a thing. A wonder if only exists on that headset and that headset alone.
Seems to be rather unique to them.
https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/index/deep-dive/ear-speakers
To be fair, I’d be like one of two people in this world who’d rock those in public. They’d catch an eye, haha
The parts are available, but I don’t know if there’s a way to send them regular stereo channel inputs without hardware hacking or writing custom software drivers from scratch.
I think peak design was the on-ear, behind-the-neck style. They rested on the top of your ears, and your hair didn’t get all fucked up from the headband. I don’t know why they had such a short-lived popularity.
I’ve tried the wired Koss independent on-ears, but you lose clarity of lows without the pressure of a neckband or headband.
They still exist, although aren’t as common. Plenty of places have them if you order online
The form factor exists, but not in competitive terms. Good luck finding them with high quality drivers. I tried for years and gave up.
Where my LG homies at?
I used to dislike wireless earbuds until I tried them. They really are much more convenient, especially while riding a bike.
It’s not like it was a mutually exclusive option. I have an S9 and I swamp between wireless and wired audio all the time depending on the setting. These newer phones have only one option. Bluetooth does not work well everywhere. Frankly forcing more things into the same radio frequency just makes it worse.
But useless when you need to get audio out of a phone into another sysyem
Yeah, but for casual use almost all relevant devices have bluetooth nowadays
You’re not wrong but I audio engineer and dongles are extra points of failure
I switched to wireless during the covid pandemic. Otherwise it was really painful to put on and off the mask each time I entered public transport. And I agree, it’s super convenient in many other situations as well.
But such a tiny, energy-optimized DAC can’t sound really good, can it?
I have both wireless and wired. The wireless ones sound fine although if I switch from one to the other the wired are a noticeable improvement. The real issue I have with them is that there’s a noticeable delay that makes watching every video like a dubbed movie. Secondary to that I have never been able to get ones that fit perfectly so I’m constantly having to poke them back in especially if I’m eating or something and my jaw is moving around and there’s just a lot of general bluetooth issues that are annoying. I have a much easier time with the wired ones just working.
The sony wf series sound honestly amazing. Not very repairable though. That counts for every brand though.
For the places I need portable headphones for,I really don’t care that much about sound quality. And it is by no means terrible.
It can’t match proper headphones. But I listen to podcasts and books, so the audio quality is not that important.
How bout a case
So many people go boomer argument mode over this because they don’t like change, but their anger is clearly misplaced. The 3.5mm is not the king of audio connectors and never was, it’s death could very easily have been a good thing.
Why the fuck didn’t headphone makers start offering USB-C devices once phones pulled this move? My PC mobo from 2017 has a C port that could be used for this, I’m certain computers could have easily adapted (and they’re the way smaller market anyway). Is it just because apple had to be special with their lightning bullshit? If so, they’d better start it up now!
Instead of being able to buy new cans with the wire that my phone uses I have to snag an adapter. Not a BIG deal but this change is over 5 fucking years old, we should have these devices as the norm now to avoid all of the fucking issues we’re currently looking at
Maybe, but than I want two USB-C ports.
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Usb is a carrying digital signals for the most part while headphonea are analog. So you have 2 options:
- Implement some janky non-standard analog audio in some usb alternate mode that will only work with some devices
- Add a digital to analog converter in the plug itself, which is more complex and expensive
Both options prevent you from chanrging while using headphones unless you use a splitter or wireless charging which is not ideal
3.5 mm may not be the king, but it’s extremly simple and fairly robust and has little to no disatvantages except for wireless headphones sales ofc. You don’t have to charge these heqdphones, you don’t have to worry about losing one of them.
Wireless headphonwa have their uses, I doubt they benefit the majority of people tho.
My phone would drop and just detach from the phone jack and still fall, sometimes ruining the headphones in the process. My phone has a case and takes a fall better than my headphones. But it’s also older (Samsung note 8), so there’s that
Heroes never goes out of style
I just had to give up my S10…I got a 20…I need my ports
Why not buy a Sony phone with an earphone jack?
Not only does the Xperia have a headphone jack, it supports aptx for Bluetooth headphones! No matter if you prefer wired or wireless, it’s not skimping on either.
A lot oft phones have aptx, no?
I moved from Galaxy S10 to Xperia 1 V precisely because none of the phones in the Galaxy line support aptx.
Also, there’s aptx, aptx-hd, aptx-LL (low latency), and aptx-adaptive. My headphones support only aptx and aptx-adaptive and I really wanted support for the latter. There’s licensing involved so not all devices support the whole range of aptx standards.
LDAC or bust, homie.
Is it better than aptx-hd?
Edit: aptxhd: 567kbit/a max and ldac 990kbit/s max
Love my AirPods Pro man. No wires, great sound and noise cancellation. I have never had them fall out of my ears, even when working out.
If your earbuds are falling out, clean your ears and your earbuds before you put them in. Either that, or you need tips that fit your ear better. If you have those ear canals that don’t want anything in them, we also now have great (and wireless!) headphones now too.
Wires are really just for those audiophile enthusiasts, people who can’t be bothered charging wireless things, or people who would lose their head if it wasn’t attached.
To each their own, of course. :)
However, a lot of companies dropped headphone jacks, because they could both save a buck on them, make them even more slightly thinner to the point it starts to impact usability, and create a market for 3rd party accessories (wireless head/earphones, converters, etc.).
lol, love it when people try to justify purchases that end up as e-waste after a couple/few short years.
The product I’ve had since 2021? Shut the fuck up.
I would never praise these things, but I’ve been using the same pair for 5 years now. Why would they become e-waste so quickly?
They have batteries, batteries do not last long
That’s fair. I’m not exactly testing their endurance, just use them for YouTube and podcasts, so it’s likely they’ve degraded quite a bit without me noticing.
Umm, you might want to read it again.
Why…?
Cause it said nothing about dropping earphones, it was all about saving phone with audio wire.
Okay? And there are plenty of other people on here talking about their own stories, so why the fuck can’t I talk about mine?
RIP that headphone jack
Rip that person’s ear holes you mean.
Not really. I’ve switched from wired to wireless because of the number of headphones I’ve destroyed getting the cable stuck so bad it yanks my body. My ears never hurt from it; just slightly disoriented and audio only working for one bud/side now. Eventually it was too annoying and I switched to full bluetooth wireless. I won’t argue against cables being better for audio, but for me they arent.
Those things are solid. It’ll be fine.
Get an USB-c to aux adapter for phones without aux connector.
There are two kinds
- the purely analogue that just connects some of the USB pins to the jack
- the digital that contain a DAC
Not all phones have the internal wiring from their internal DAC to the USB port to make the analogue type of adapter work, so watch out what you buy, if you follow SomeGuy69’s advice.
I didn’t even know that. Thanks for the info. But I guess an adapter is cheap. A phone on the other hand not.
those will start getting loose. at one point if i even thought about slightly grazing the adapter it would lose connection
Or get a phone who still has the port from a company like Sony or Asus or whatever
I love my Sony but the camera is so dogshit that I couldn’t recommend it to anyone 😢
My Xperia 1 III used to be quite disappointing at times (was too focused on RAW output for editing, even stacked HDR shot RAWs) but the 1 V is legit good and I can tell the new sensor stacking improved light capture (less noise in low light) and auto mode is much better, while I still see limitations both in auto and manual it’s not so bad. The most annoying parts have to do with focus and color balance when zooming in certain light conditions, and contrast in complex scenes in auto mode.
Well, there is no good reason for me to replace my 1 III yet, and probably for the next few years. So i might still look into sony, but it’s really hard to justify the price when there are huge compromises, even though I love a lot about xperias.
The usb-c would have popped right out and let your phone be smashed into smithereens.
God I miss my S10. It really was a perfect phone. I finally had to let it go when the screen cracked. Replacing it cost more than a refurbished S22 or S23, and I couldn’t justify purchasing another S10, since it will probably fall victim to planned obsolescence soon.
My S10e is cracked but only all over the backplate. Which is also no longer really attached to the phone. I’m driving this thing into the ground.
Still using the S9 with only the back and sides cracked. Only put 50€ into replacing the battery and jack. This has got to last until 2027 at least until replaceable batteries hopefully become a thing again.
How do you crack the sides of an s9? It’s metal…
I meant the curved sides of the front screen. The metal is just scratched.
I’m really hoping that Framework release a phone one day, given how good the Framework 16 laptop is.
I have an old S9 right here on my desk. I cracked the screen, and took it to one of those screen replacement places, and he asked if I had insurance. I told him I didn’t, and he said, wellllllll it’s going to be a lot more expensive than you think to replace this screen.
That wraparound screen they had was basically also the frame of the phone - you’re not so much replacing the screen as you are moving the rest of the components to a new phone body. I wasn’t sold on value of that wraparound screen in the first place; this didn’t improve my opinion of it.
We put a plastic screen protector on it and a new case, and I used it for a few months until we were ready to upgrade phones.
S9+ still going strong after over 6 years. I dread the day I will need a “new” phone.
I still use my s10e every day on my commute with the headphone jack plugged into a radio tuner so I can listen to podcasts
Still typing this on my S10! I’ve replaced the power button twice as it eventually started falling out. I have to admit I mostly use wireless earbuds these days but options are nice.
options are everything, i’m rocking 500gb removable storage, feel like a pig in shit
I’ve been getting the Samsung ‘plus’ models several years after they come out for a couple hundred bucks and still can’t find a reason to upgrade from the S10+
New phones are way too expensive for a better camera and marginally faster apps, which would be entirely out matched by a dedicated camera at the same price.
Surprise surprise, I also drive an old ranger that has aux but no Bluetooth so everything works out
The S10 is such a good phone! Things like samsung dex and being able to cast to TV are really useful - I’m guessing the later models have these, but I’d hate to lose them either way. I rarely use the headphone jack nowadays but it’s still nice to have. Hopefully I can get a few more years out of my S10.
I abandoned wired earphones before this whole mess with headphone jacks because I grew tired of replacing the every other month because the cable stopped working
