Thursday, 27 December 2018

Phones without headphone jacks suck

Techcrunch's Greg Kumparak started agitating for phones to have standard 3.5mm jacks in the 2000s, rejoicing when the original Iphone shipped with one; now, two years after Apple took away the phone jack (and after most of the major phone manufacturers followed suit), he's still lamenting the loss: my original Pixel finally died (I can no longer find charging cases to make up for its limping battery) and I've ordered a Pixel Three and the stupid dongle that lets you charge your phone while plugging in standard headphones -- it hasn't arrived yet and I already hate it. As a heavy traveler who is very reliant on a phone for translation, itinerary management, mobile hotspot, etc, the last thing I needed was another dongle to manage, another device-class to charge, another charger to carry, and another hard-to-source component to lose or break while I'm between cities. (Image: Bribass)