fuck touch controls btw

When they removed the headphone jack from almost all smartphones was genuinely when I stopped buying smartphones. fucking bastards lol

little individual buds with nothing to stop you from losing them down a storm drain or in the grass or whatever and no room for antennas or anything are just like, not that great of an idea to begin with, but fine, some people like them. Except bluetooth is such a dogshit protocol that designing a custom set of chips for both phone and earbuds that extend the protocol and are supposed to make everything run smoothly was the only way to get such a product off the ground and not be a flop. But it only takes one to be a trendsetter and then it kinda doesn’t matter if the other copycat products are any good, everyone just wants the cool buds. If they don’t work reliably you better just buy the latest flagship, your 2 year old flagship obviously is just dogshit and you can’t expect phone manufacturers to actually test their products for compatibility. Oh and they might not work worth a shit with that flagship either, especially with the 2.4ghz band being so utterly destroyed by noise

And of course the batteries are typically completely unserviceable so the lifespan is like 2 years tops, maybe a bit more if you baby them and dont mind the degrading battery performance. All to “improve” away one of those technologies that basically worked great and didnt need it. I have headphones from 1975, another from the late 80s, another from the late soviet union/early independent ukraine, and some more modern examples, and they all work with any device with a headphone jack and reliably sound anywhere from fine to excellent. All but a few of the cheapest modern examples are basically infinitely repairable too, if the jack goes bad it takes 15 mins and little skill to resolder them. Occasionally the cord is annoying, but thats the price you pay for shit actually working reliably and not being a brief transition state of e-waste.

And don’t get me started on Chi-Fi, the shit you can get for barely $20 now basically blows the pants off of any bluetooth ever made. And the mic quality of a wired mic that sits right next to your mouth is 5x better too

I like when I’m walking through home depot and the audio starts to break up. It’s like, " hey dipshit, you left your phone on the bike."

I have a pair where the battery is shot and can’t be replaced, not sure why I didn’t see that coming or why I maybe did and didn’t care at the time.

My next phone is going to have a headphone jack again for podcast listening, I do most music listening on an old ipod anyways.

I can still find headphone jacks, tho you have to look. I finally had to give up on getting one with a removable battery a few years back and that really pissed me off

i used bluetooth for my car once and it totally fucked everything up. now when i use an aux cord it tries using both (even though i turn off the bluetooth) and produces crackling. fuck bluetooth

Well i guess it has pros and cons. A pro would be for example that you can connect it to the bluetooth speakers in your car, or any other device where cable wouldn’t do. A con is that cable is simply more sturdy and less fickle.

The same goes for internet connectivity. All bigger servers are connected over cable, because it simply is more reliable and has higher throughput than wireless. But also, with wireless, you can move around the house without worrying about stumbling on cables and accidentally plugging them out.

I’ve found this is one of the areas in the market where brands actually make a big difference, and some quality legacy brands clearly don’t give a shit. Active noise cancelling is a godsend for someone like myself with ADHD or autism in loud spaces. Then there’s some brands that have LDAC high quality audio over Bluetooth. I found that Anker Soundcore is pretty great in these respects, and they have some pretty inexpensive models. However, the controls on my now two year old models are hit and miss. I disabled the wear detection on the headphones, and the touch controls on the earbuds. The headphones don’t respond to volume controls on the phone, and they don’t work when connected to my computer so only the computer controls the volume 🤷‍♀️.

The earbuds were a design that is shit for staying in your ears while active, so I’d recommend carefully reading reviews and get a set that have the little stem that hangs down from your ear maybe?

Other than that, they sound really good, have tuneable eq, strong noise cancelling, and a lot of models of their headphones allow you to use an aux cord.

Bluetooth is shit for music and should be replaced with something that can do lossless audio

I’ve always used the $20 ones and they work great, have a 50 ft range and last for a few days before I have to charge them.

I found ear buds just do not like the distance from my ears to the pocket my phone lives in (upper thigh, front pocket).

Headphones were a lot better, but broke in that one spot they always do (earpiece swivel bracket). >.>

Can’t relate. I use my Samsung buds everyday for years now. Audio is great, touch controls are incredibly useful, calls are effortless. For use during work, particularly physical work, wireless ear buds are UNBEATABLE.

I still use wired headphones, just now I have to choose between charging my phone or using my headphones because they use the same port now. (I bought one of those splitter things once but it didn’t work for me, idk why. Maybe I just got a faulty one)

I purchased anker ear buds for everyone in my family after my apple airpods failed after 18 mos and they have been running strong ever since! Still 80% charged after a 2 hr half marathon. A week or two between case charges. Zero complaints on audio quality. Would never ask for the wire back or try to convince myself that audiophiles listen to music on their phones if they care about quality.

I got a really nice pair when I got a motorcycle because I didn’t want to deal with the wires. It’s the best pair of earphones I’ve ever used. They cancel out all the loud wind and engine noise of the bike, have incredible sound quality, and surprisingly the Bluetooth maintains a steady connection.

These things have me in the top 1% of Spotify listeners worldwide for the past 3 years lol