yeah sure not having a wire is nice, but two generations of earbuds from my phones own manufacturer and both pairs i get regularly dogshit audio quality, and half the time one of the buds doesn’t even work or produces barely any audio. There is no way to remedy this even after resetting the buds and the bluetooth connection. and you have to shell out 3x as much money for these things. also it’s yet another device whose charge you have to keep track of

  • trinicorn [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    11·
    9 hours ago

    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

    • Tom742 [they/them, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      2·
      8 hours ago

      Chi-Fi

      I really really like these cheap buds I got from Faaeal, they sit in your ear but not inserted in your ear canal, so you still have situational awareness and can hear what’s going on around you.

      Most of the chifi buds I’ve seen are like Moondrops where they go in your ear canal, do you know of any that are like my Faaeal Iris buds?