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Thread: Microsoft patents expanding 3.5mm headphone jack

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    Microsoft patents expanding 3.5mm headphone jack

    Will it spark the return of the old audio port to the slimmest smart devices?
    Read more.

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    Oh Crumbs.... Biscuit's Avatar
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    Re: Microsoft patents expanding 3.5mm headphone jack

    Just stop making things pointlessly slim and you dont need to create complex micro-hinged designs with flexible polycarbonite coated aluminum compound blah blah blah

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    Re: Microsoft patents expanding 3.5mm headphone jack

    Why not just move to the 2.5mm audio jack? Adapters for 2.5mm to 3.5mm are cheap...

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    Re: Microsoft patents expanding 3.5mm headphone jack

    Personally I think that it's the water proofing trend that is forcing the headphone jack to get rejected... could be wrong though

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    Re: Microsoft patents expanding 3.5mm headphone jack

    My water proof Xperia has a 3.5mm jack on it. I don't see the problem.

    I think 3.5mm is thin enough as it is, I'd rather they shrunk the insanely large screen sizes instead of slowly creeping up to what will eventually just be a portable TV.

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    Re: Microsoft patents expanding 3.5mm headphone jack

    Quote Originally Posted by jab701 View Post
    Why not just move to the 2.5mm audio jack? Adapters for 2.5mm to 3.5mm are cheap...
    One of old HTC phones (back in the mid 2000s) had a 2.5mm port. Bit of a pain to have an adaptor sticking out as the bundled headphones were awful, but at least you could listen to music and charge it at the same time! And if they become standard then headphones can come with a 2.5mm port by default and an adaptor to make them larger...

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    Re: Microsoft patents expanding 3.5mm headphone jack

    Quote Originally Posted by SciFi View Post
    Personally I think that it's the water proofing trend that is forcing the headphone jack to get rejected... could be wrong though
    I thought waterproofed headphone jacks have existed a while, didn't the Sony Z4 tablet have a waterproof headphone jack? (I owned one a while back but cant remember).

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    Re: Microsoft patents expanding 3.5mm headphone jack

    Quote Originally Posted by Biscuit View Post
    Just stop making things pointlessly slim and you dont need to create complex micro-hinged designs with flexible polycarbonite coated aluminum compound blah blah blah
    I was having a rant about this just today. They make them thin and glassy so the journos rave about how amazing they feel but every bugger else has to put them in a case or they'll end up with a smashed screen or whatever. The end result is the case makes it thicker and makes the looks and feel in the hand pointless because you have it in the case all the time. Might as well make it 1mm thicker, have the battery bigger, the ports we want and not make it out of the most delicate material you can find. The other option is to do like Samsung do with the S8 and the Active (I think it's called that) phone. One is the pretty boy version for people who wear Armani and Hugo Boss and the other is the practical, robust longer lasting version for those of us who get our jeans from Asda.

    I'd also be less annoyed about the headphone jack if they gave is two USB ports - they solve the problem with it needing to be thin and also solve my problem of needing to charge whilst listening which is a regular occurrence (because the battery life is shat).

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    Re: Microsoft patents expanding 3.5mm headphone jack

    Quote Originally Posted by SciFi View Post
    Personally I think that it's the water proofing trend that is forcing the headphone jack to get rejected... could be wrong though
    Nah, Samsung worked around this on the S8. It's not an issue. Possibly makes it harder but not impossible.

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    Re: Microsoft patents expanding 3.5mm headphone jack

    Quote Originally Posted by jimbouk View Post
    One of old HTC phones (back in the mid 2000s) had a 2.5mm port. ...
    I think it might have been more than one. I certainly had an HTC-made smartphone on orange (yes, a proper smartphone, in 2006 ) that had a 2.5mm 4 pole socket for the headset. Nothing wrong with it at all, IMNSHO, although that device wasn't really thin enough to need it.

    A flexible expanding port that could take both 2.5mm and 3.5mm plugs would be pretty cool, although I suspect the different pin-pitch might make that tricky.

    Then again, this whole "need to make the device thinner" shtick is clearly nonsense, because a USB-C port is maybe 0.5mm narrower than a 3.5mm socket. If you can get a USB-C on your chassis you can get a 3.5mm headphone port. Be honest and admit that you actually want to reclaim that space to squeeze a slightly larger battery in....

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    Re: Microsoft patents expanding 3.5mm headphone jack

    This has already been done... By the vagina.

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    Re: Microsoft patents expanding 3.5mm headphone jack

    Quote Originally Posted by SciFi View Post
    Personally I think that it's the water proofing trend that is forcing the headphone jack to get rejected... could be wrong though
    I have a waterproof iPod nano that I use for swimming. It gets immersed in 2 meters of water at the local swimming pool several times a week, and is working just fine. It does not need any fragile port covers or the like either.

    Clearly it is perfectly possible to make a waterproof 3.5 mm headphone socket. The phone manufacturers who say they can't are just making excuses.

    Product link: http://www.underwateraudio.com/waterproof-ipod/

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    Re: Microsoft patents expanding 3.5mm headphone jack

    You know, thinking about this you don't even need the expanding section of this design. There's no good reason you need to fully enclose the 3.5mm plug; as long as the curved depressions on either side are sufficient to prevent the plug from wobbling excessively, you could simply leave the sides exposed. Sure, Microsoft's "expanding" version looks a bit prettier, but functionally it's completely unnecessary.

    Although to go back to my "not about thinness" point, it's worth remembering that the narrowest iPhone so far was still over 7mm deep, so plenty of space to fit a 3.5mm socket...

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    Re: Microsoft patents expanding 3.5mm headphone jack

    Quote Originally Posted by scaryjim View Post
    You know, thinking about this you don't even need the expanding section of this design. There's no good reason you need to fully enclose the 3.5mm plug; as long as the curved depressions on either side are sufficient to prevent the plug from wobbling excessively, you could simply leave the sides exposed. Sure, Microsoft's "expanding" version looks a bit prettier, but functionally it's completely unnecessary.

    Although to go back to my "not about thinness" point, it's worth remembering that the narrowest iPhone so far was still over 7mm deep, so plenty of space to fit a 3.5mm socket...
    As long as the user doesn't short the connections with their fingers as they hold the device

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    Re: Microsoft patents expanding 3.5mm headphone jack

    Quote Originally Posted by scaryjim View Post
    You know, thinking about this you don't even need the expanding section of this design. There's no good reason you need to fully enclose the 3.5mm plug; as long as the curved depressions on either side are sufficient to prevent the plug from wobbling excessively, you could simply leave the sides exposed. Sure, Microsoft's "expanding" version looks a bit prettier, but functionally it's completely unnecessary.

    Although to go back to my "not about thinness" point, it's worth remembering that the narrowest iPhone so far was still over 7mm deep, so plenty of space to fit a 3.5mm socket...
    I'm still amazed we can fit all that power into a 7mm "deep" device.
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    Re: Microsoft patents expanding 3.5mm headphone jack

    Quote Originally Posted by Xlucine View Post
    As long as the user doesn't short the connections with their fingers as they hold the device
    Oh, I'm sure Apple are competent enough to NEVER have that kind of problem with one of their devices....

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