I’m not a fan of BT headphones. It’s three things (2 pods and the case that charges them) that you have to juggle and keep charged, vs just one that works whenever the device it’s plugged into works. Wired headphones have a nice additional perk of discouraging people from interacting with you, while (at least anecdotally) the BT ones seem to lose that deterrent… and the venn diagram for times I want to use headphones and the times I don’t want to deal with other people is just one crisp circle.
I always try to pick out a phone that has a 3.5mm jack, but that’s becoming increasingly hard to do.
I feel like we can ignore this and it’ll mostly be a non-issue. Hopefully I don’t have to eat those words later.
YouTube can detect common current adblocking methods, and use this to hinder you now, prompting to comply with them. If you do, they win. You pay for no ads or you have an exception in your adblocker.
As another comment mentioned, it’s a cat and mouse game. Adblockers will get ahead of it. So just wait it out.
I have four installed on Android: Sync, Jerboa, Connect and Voyager. Five if you count Firefox which is the only one that does all the admin tasks I need. I switch between them because as admin I find myself testing the user experience frequently.
I have Memmy on iOS, but really only use iOS for testing purposes. I don’t browse with it.
I default to Sync for most browsing and commenting because the Dev is very active and it’s the only client I know of with any mod tools at all. It is the most polished of the clients at the moment.
I found an ideal solution for this (in my opinion). A Bluetooth DAC. The specific one I have is the FiiO BTR5, but there are others.
For mine specifically, it has the standard 3.5mm output (TRS), as well as a TRRS balanced connection (I believe it’s 2.5mm), and it can receive a signal from either Bluetooth or over USB from is USB C port.
The best feature of it is that I can charge it, while I’m using it. Which is something that most all-in-one Bluetooth headphones miss entirely. Even if they can be worn while plugged into a charger, many don’t operate while they’re being charged. All the true wireless (aka airpod style) by headphones, can’t even be plugged into power directly, nor would it be possible to use them while they’re charging in their case.
I can pick any headphones I want to use with it, provided they can operate from a 3.5mm connection (or something that can be adapted to 3.5) or by a balanced headphone connection… Basically any ear-mounted sound generating devices that use a wire, can be used with a few exceptions.
I’m naturally very cautious, so I also have a charging dongle that has a 3.5mm audio jack on it as a backup. It can literally charge my phone and play sound at the same time… I’m tethered to my phone, which IMO, isn’t ideal. With the BTR5, I can thread the wire through my shirt or something, and clip the unit to me or stuff it in a pocket and not worry about it. If I need my phone, I’m not fighting with how long (or short) my headphone cable is. The BTR also supports LDAC as well as aptX and related codecs, so it generally sounds excellent. It’s a bit of a bear to get it set up, so I generally pull it out for long walk/work sessions away from my desk, or if I’m in a situation where I’m waiting for something to happen for a long time. I also have a handful of Bluetooth headphones, all of which have their (dis) advantages, and I flip between what I have as the need arises. I prefer the BTR5, but it’s not always the best or most feasible given the situation.
IMO the BTR5 is better than just having a headphone plug on my phone, since the DAC and AMP in the device is known-good (many reviewers of audio stuff give it great ratings all around), and I can be untethered from my phone, so typing/scrolling/whatever is the same as normal; I’m not having to position my hand funny to avoid a bulky cable/adapter.
I had benchmarks that led me to the BTR5, and between it and the dongle, I have all my benchmarks covered.
To be honest I was extremely skeptical about Sync because I didn’t use it for Reddit and I thought that the default web-ui is pretty neat even on my mobile phone. But curiosity got me and I installed it, even though it’s not FLOSS and it has ads in it which are two no-goes for me. Still I’m using it on the phone predominately, but I hate myself for it.
I’m somewhat surprised by the result if I’m honest. I have switched to wireless and won’t go back at all. I do understand the use case for those who want them too but I did not realise it was such a popular request in modern phones!
Really? Because so far despite removing consumer choice the phones have been getting bigger rather than more efficiently using their space. Also you just use the screen, I don’t recall a screen having to make way for a tiny headphone jack. In fact I don’t really see any benefits coming from freeing up that little space. Not that I can verify that for myself since that would mean being able to open my phone more than once and therefore being able replace the battery and repair my phone and we can’t have that because it would hurt the bottom line of small mom n pop businesses like Apple or Samsung.
A headphone jack is certainly not such a big deal in terms of space that it warrants removing it at the expense of consumer choice just because redballoon here wants an extra cm³ inside their phone to be empty.
I wonder how much is a result of people just blindly clicking through not realizing they have to physically manipulate the response options to move the choice to the top. First time interacting with that site and it is an incredibly stupid user interface.
Re: headphone jacks, its 2023. If someone still demands an unshielded analog electrical connection for their headphones, I have zero sympathy for them. Its like demanding cars have a dedicated hitch to connect a horse.
People still have wired headphones that still work perfectly fine. We used to be able to use them directly with our phones. We also had the option of using wireless too if we wanted. The option was removed, so now in order to keep using some of still perfectly fine electronics with our phones, it requires adapters. That’s annoying. What is the benefit to me as a consumer now that the jack is gone? Some marketing bullshit about weight or cost savings? I don’t buy it. Phones are larger than ever and more expensive than ever.
That and headphone jacks were able to be made waterproof pretty easily too. It does introduce a new area for potential incursion, but it’s pretty minimal for the vast majority of users.
Don’t let yourself be gaslit by anti right to repair and apple propaganda. We had a smartphone with removable battery and headphone jack that you could swim with, it has been done. The water resistance argument does not hold water, at all.
That and the Lemmy demographic. Lemmy and the fediverse currently attracts folks who have rather strong feelings about the technology they use, which I won’t knock so long as they don’t give me shit for hading being tethered to my phone by a wired headphone.
Agreed. The only time I use a wire is on Delta flights with seat back entertainment. I can’t stand wires, they drive me nuts. I’ve been using Bluetooth headphones since they came out and their flexibility is unmatched.
Running on a treadmill watching tv? Done. Watching a TV 20’ away so the sound doesn’t wake my wife? Done. Working at a Starbucks and being able to walk to the counter for an order? Done. Automatic start/stop and device switching? Done.
Yes they runs on batteries, but so does the rest of my life. Keeping things charged has never been an issue. I have over the ears with 24+ hours of battery life and in-ears with 6 hours. I have never had an issue with them being dead.
One reason I can see for a jack, maybe, is for audiophiles who run high end setups. But even those I think use a DAC and not the jack.
I’m not saying people don’t want the jack, I just don’t understand it. 🤷♂️
I mostly use bluetooth, but the jack of my phone is not sitting there unused. I have wired headphones too, and I frequently use my phone as a microphone (because it is one) by connecting it to my computer by a jack cable.
Also, the next headphone of mine will probably be wired. Always keeping it charged is not really a problem, but the privacy aspect of Bluetooth has started to disturb me.
With a wired connection, you exactly know and control who connects to your devices, and at the same time you don’t announce to the world that you are here.
Also, as I understand you can’t use USB-C for audio and charging or data transfer at the same time, or even all 3 at the same time. Is that right?
That is critical functionality for me. Audio is not just entertainment, it could be an online meeting or other things too, and at one point I’ll have to change my phone, or transfer files from it. However I don’t have a USB-C phone so I can’t test it, so I would appreciate if someone could confirm if this is actually the case.
My current phone (Pixel 6) doesn’t have a headphone jack, and I hate it because of that. I bought an adapter and it didn’t work, turns out most phones with a Qualcomm SoC have a DAC so a passive adapter is fine… But the pixel has a non-qualcomm SoC which doesn’t have a DAC connected to the USB-C port so I had to get a dongle with a DAC. They suck, and cost more than the passive dongles, and half of them sound like garbage with terrible QC.
Also dongles are easy to lose or break, since they are fragile.
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