I wish there was something that could be done beyond feeling powerless. 4k+ tvs mean nothing if it is constrained whatever meager the bitrate companies feel they can get away with streaming.
I find this to be not unsimilar to the claims that echos that the number one desire for cellphone users is to have a replaceable battery. People don’t use physical media because it’s inconvenient and doesn’t match with what they’re doing, and the quality is good enough that the viewer doesn’t care. It’s apparently cool to lament headphone jacks, or field replaceable batteries, but the inconvenience of them means nobody would be using them anyway.
I have the whole setup with a laser projector and atmos and whatever else, but I’ve never thought for a second that I’d want to increase the friction of it more than click and go, even for a theoretical increase in bitrate. That almost all the most popular blu-ray players output 1080p supports the thesis that nobody really cares what it looks like past a point.
The main reason people want replaceable batteries is so they can keep using their phone for several more years after the first battery wears out. The problem of recharging has been solved by extra batteries that snap onto the back of the phone and give you hours of extra charge in minutes.
> It’s apparently cool to lament headphone jacks, or field replaceable batteries, but the inconvenience of them means nobody would be using them anyway.
Motorola has some phones with headphones jack (and microSD) that I think are even thinner, at least it feels that way compared to my Xperia. They're significantly cheaper too.
I will say I increasingly reach for my Sennheiser earbuds over the wired headphones/earphones for convenience. But the audio quality of Bluetooth is just awful compared with wired audio.
There's nothing significantly inconvenient for the user about any of those things.
But the headphone jack has a cost, and it takes up a tiny amount of space. It's inconvenient to design and manufacture.
It makes good ingress protection (ie water resistance) more difficult to achieve. But there are examples of waterproof phones that have headphone jacks and easily-swapped batteries, so that's clearly not impossible at all.
At the end of the day Apple decided, at the behest of their User Choice Bad metal-edged ruler, that the features were useless. Others than copied the gilded rounded-rectangle example that Apple produced.
And it's not even a very good example of minimalizing down to the features that "regular people" need, anyway. There's tons of stuff in a modern pocket supercomputer that most people just don't use.
---
People use phones to watch videos, listen to music, play games with touch inputs while ~stationary, doom scroll, send texts, make calls, take informal photos and video, navigate on roads/sidewalks/public transit, and/or occasionally do whatever it is that means Real Work for them.
Most of that can be done with a bright 720p touchscreen, an SoC, some radios, some speakers and microphones and the amplifier(s) to make them work, some camera bits, a battery and charging bits, and GPS.
If we were really being minimal, we'd strip out the barometer, the compass, the accelerometer, the gyroscope, the uber-def screen, the front-facing colorimeter, the friggin' laser beams, satcom, the squeezy bits, the hard-press bits, and the motorized zoom lens assemblies.
Now we're saving some space, manufacturing expense, and some power budget along with some cooling needs.
And most people wouldn't ever notice. They'd still get the same stuff done and it wouldn't matter to them at all.
But what happened instead is that the headphone jack disappeared. This 3.5mm headphone jack had been the standard for handheld portable audio for as long as we've had handheld portable audio. This entire market started with 1954's Regency TR-1 portable radio[1], which had a headphone jack that still works in 2026.
And yeah, people noticed when it disappeared. Others noticed that the justification for it smelled like bullshit; some even hacked in their own headphone jack to prove the justification wrong.
Sure, we can work around it.
We can buy dongles, but those have their own hidden complexity: There's a whole fucking USB sound card buried inside each and every one of them. Some of them include excellent-sounding electronics (Apple's dongle is a marvel in that it is both cheap and sounds lovely); others less-so.
But then there's compatibility issues: An Apple dongle works fine on Android, except the volume is always very low because Android doesn't support Apple's way of dealing with volume. (But we don't need to root our phones, right?)
We can play whac-a-mole and buy one from Samsung or third-party brands like Walmart's ONN or Qnxowkly alphabet-soup on Amazon? Buy a lot of them, scatter them around? They're deliberately rather indistinguishable; how is it to be discerned in the drawer of dongles and wires which one is which? What if I want to hear music from someone else's phone of a different brand? Should they always carry their own dongle that works for them? (Oh, I know: We should just each subscribe to the same streaming music services so we can share links! It's only money.)
We can give up and just deal with Bluetooth's inscrutible issues, by adding even more gear to our existing cars and audio systems? Sure, things like Bluetooth devices with FM transmitters and/or headphone jacks exist and many even connect to the cig plug of an old car for power, but they're often annoying in ways that seem driven by deliberate and malicious intent.
We can sidestep the issue and just buy a different car that uses Android Auto or CarPlay? (Hint: Both of those actually use wifi for transport because Bluetooth is such a fickle low-bandwidth chud.)
We can get wireless headphones with a wireless charging case and add 3 more non-serviceable batteries to the mix? Awesome. (Also: I love having more parts to lose track of instead of fewer! Fortunately, they make more in factories every day; it's just money.)
And then: It still breaks up when we go through certain areas of town, or we're in a crowd. Awesome!
I mean: FFS. It's just audio. It takes 3 conductors and the amplifier that already exists, plus one connector, to keep continuity with more than 7 decades of portable audio, and also retain passive compatibility with ~every other electronic audio system ever developed. And because it's simple, then it's easy to fix (by just -- you know -- cleaning the contacts or repairing a wire, which are concepts that are shared with dongles) when it fails.
Sony has also exited the video camera business ("HandyCam") it seems. I've been wanting to buy a replacement for mine but can't find any Sony products in this category.
Instead they come up with a $6000 Walkman type audio player. I can build one which is probably as good for $50 in parts.
I wish there was something that could be done beyond feeling powerless. 4k+ tvs mean nothing if it is constrained whatever meager the bitrate companies feel they can get away with streaming.
There are high bitrate services: https://www.kaleidescape.com
They're pretty expensive now but I suspect the transition away from Blu-Ray will create a market
There very much is a lot you can do, torrenting made me feel more powerful than owning physical disk ever could.
I find this to be not unsimilar to the claims that echos that the number one desire for cellphone users is to have a replaceable battery. People don’t use physical media because it’s inconvenient and doesn’t match with what they’re doing, and the quality is good enough that the viewer doesn’t care. It’s apparently cool to lament headphone jacks, or field replaceable batteries, but the inconvenience of them means nobody would be using them anyway.
I have the whole setup with a laser projector and atmos and whatever else, but I’ve never thought for a second that I’d want to increase the friction of it more than click and go, even for a theoretical increase in bitrate. That almost all the most popular blu-ray players output 1080p supports the thesis that nobody really cares what it looks like past a point.
The main reason people want replaceable batteries is so they can keep using their phone for several more years after the first battery wears out. The problem of recharging has been solved by extra batteries that snap onto the back of the phone and give you hours of extra charge in minutes.
> It’s apparently cool to lament headphone jacks, or field replaceable batteries, but the inconvenience of them means nobody would be using them anyway.
What is inconvenient about any of those things?
it's hard to make a phone with a 3.5mm jack that is A) razor sharp thin B) diving proof to 50 fathoms.
and the market has proven that the audience needs those two characteristics, apparently.
The Sony Xperia is thinner and lighter than any iPhone and has the same IP rating.
Apple just outputs propaganda so that they can sell everyone overpriced earpods.
Motorola has some phones with headphones jack (and microSD) that I think are even thinner, at least it feels that way compared to my Xperia. They're significantly cheaper too.
I will say I increasingly reach for my Sennheiser earbuds over the wired headphones/earphones for convenience. But the audio quality of Bluetooth is just awful compared with wired audio.
There's nothing significantly inconvenient for the user about any of those things.
But the headphone jack has a cost, and it takes up a tiny amount of space. It's inconvenient to design and manufacture.
It makes good ingress protection (ie water resistance) more difficult to achieve. But there are examples of waterproof phones that have headphone jacks and easily-swapped batteries, so that's clearly not impossible at all.
At the end of the day Apple decided, at the behest of their User Choice Bad metal-edged ruler, that the features were useless. Others than copied the gilded rounded-rectangle example that Apple produced.
And it's not even a very good example of minimalizing down to the features that "regular people" need, anyway. There's tons of stuff in a modern pocket supercomputer that most people just don't use.
---
People use phones to watch videos, listen to music, play games with touch inputs while ~stationary, doom scroll, send texts, make calls, take informal photos and video, navigate on roads/sidewalks/public transit, and/or occasionally do whatever it is that means Real Work for them.
Most of that can be done with a bright 720p touchscreen, an SoC, some radios, some speakers and microphones and the amplifier(s) to make them work, some camera bits, a battery and charging bits, and GPS.
If we were really being minimal, we'd strip out the barometer, the compass, the accelerometer, the gyroscope, the uber-def screen, the front-facing colorimeter, the friggin' laser beams, satcom, the squeezy bits, the hard-press bits, and the motorized zoom lens assemblies.
Now we're saving some space, manufacturing expense, and some power budget along with some cooling needs.
And most people wouldn't ever notice. They'd still get the same stuff done and it wouldn't matter to them at all.
But what happened instead is that the headphone jack disappeared. This 3.5mm headphone jack had been the standard for handheld portable audio for as long as we've had handheld portable audio. This entire market started with 1954's Regency TR-1 portable radio[1], which had a headphone jack that still works in 2026.
And yeah, people noticed when it disappeared. Others noticed that the justification for it smelled like bullshit; some even hacked in their own headphone jack to prove the justification wrong.
Sure, we can work around it.
We can buy dongles, but those have their own hidden complexity: There's a whole fucking USB sound card buried inside each and every one of them. Some of them include excellent-sounding electronics (Apple's dongle is a marvel in that it is both cheap and sounds lovely); others less-so.
But then there's compatibility issues: An Apple dongle works fine on Android, except the volume is always very low because Android doesn't support Apple's way of dealing with volume. (But we don't need to root our phones, right?)
We can play whac-a-mole and buy one from Samsung or third-party brands like Walmart's ONN or Qnxowkly alphabet-soup on Amazon? Buy a lot of them, scatter them around? They're deliberately rather indistinguishable; how is it to be discerned in the drawer of dongles and wires which one is which? What if I want to hear music from someone else's phone of a different brand? Should they always carry their own dongle that works for them? (Oh, I know: We should just each subscribe to the same streaming music services so we can share links! It's only money.)
We can give up and just deal with Bluetooth's inscrutible issues, by adding even more gear to our existing cars and audio systems? Sure, things like Bluetooth devices with FM transmitters and/or headphone jacks exist and many even connect to the cig plug of an old car for power, but they're often annoying in ways that seem driven by deliberate and malicious intent.
We can sidestep the issue and just buy a different car that uses Android Auto or CarPlay? (Hint: Both of those actually use wifi for transport because Bluetooth is such a fickle low-bandwidth chud.)
We can get wireless headphones with a wireless charging case and add 3 more non-serviceable batteries to the mix? Awesome. (Also: I love having more parts to lose track of instead of fewer! Fortunately, they make more in factories every day; it's just money.)
And then: It still breaks up when we go through certain areas of town, or we're in a crowd. Awesome!
I mean: FFS. It's just audio. It takes 3 conductors and the amplifier that already exists, plus one connector, to keep continuity with more than 7 decades of portable audio, and also retain passive compatibility with ~every other electronic audio system ever developed. And because it's simple, then it's easy to fix (by just -- you know -- cleaning the contacts or repairing a wire, which are concepts that are shared with dongles) when it fails.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regency_TR-1
Sony has also exited the video camera business ("HandyCam") it seems. I've been wanting to buy a replacement for mine but can't find any Sony products in this category.
Instead they come up with a $6000 Walkman type audio player. I can build one which is probably as good for $50 in parts.