Don't Mourn the 3.5mm Jack

A year ago I was lamenting on the rumors on the 3.5mm audio jack being dropped from iPhones. Now it is no longer available on the latest Android devices either. And guess what? It does not seem to be affecting us at all.

The void, if created, is immediately filled. This time the most prevalent wired personal audio connectivity standard, 3.5mm jack, has been complete replaced with the most prevalent wireless personal audio connectivity standard, Bluetooth. And fear not - it just works.

I have the Apple AirPods paired with my iPad AND the BlackBerry KeyOne at the same time. Despite all the marketing pitch behind the "W1", Apple has done a great job sticking to the standard specifications, as defined by the Bluetooth SIG. The AirPods not only play music, but they also properly pause / resume when touched. And of course I can use them (or just one of them) to have hands free calls - all using a stock Android phone. Switching back and forth between the BlackBerry and the iPad is seamless too.

The same applies to the Bose QC35 (now even available with Google Assistant) i carry on long distance flights. Also capable of maintaining multiple connections, with handsfree calls, pause/play and volume controls. It all works, with multiple devices, seamlessly.

This Bluetooth ecosystem is way more interoperable today than the 3.5mm jack had been ever before. The jack was only standard as long as two output channels were considered. Pause / play feature worked only on some devices while volume controls were completely incompatible - some vendors were giving the option of selecting an "Apple compatible" or "Android compatible" variant, some were not. And if you still remember Nokia - the Nokia - compatible microphones never worked on anything else, due to conflicting TRRS wiring between OMTP and CTIA. I still have in my drawer a Jabra 3.5mm to 3.5mm converter pigtail designed to combat this very problem...

So fear not. Bluetooth works with everything.

Now some people say it doesn't. Nilay Patel in his article points to a number of Bluetooth - related annoyances. And while his observations can be shared by many, he is really pointing his finger in a wrong direction. All the problems he mentions are implementation problems. Many Bluetooth implementations are far from perfect. And the sad thing is the leading ones are often very poor, hurting both the experience and the brand of the standard.

My car radio (Pioneer) handles Bluetooth contexts way better than a typical speaker or a phone. For example, on an incoming call it mutes the music, and offers two conversation options: handsfree (via the car audio) or private (via the handset). My phone has never asked me for such thing! The phone, after pairing a new Bluetooth audio device, never tries to figure out the context of this... has it paired with my private car, a rental car, a personal headset, a shared conference room speaker.... Such basic profiling would help the UX enormously and would eliminate most of the issues mentioned by Nilay.

There is a huge gap between specifications of a standard and how they are implemented in products. There are limits on what a standard's body can do about things like a proper UX for example. Although Bluetooth is probably way ahead of everybody else in making sure the interoperability and user experience are great. But in the end it is down to a particular product. Hey, even  the simplest thing like a 3.5mm jack could be poorly designed resulting in a cracking sound or a connector cable falling off...