I bought several of those adapters. The issues are these:
0. They don't work on all models. Not product lines, e.g. not "all Pixel phones" or so, no, reviews mention "works with Pixel 3 but not Pixel 3a". You need to either waste a bunch of resources sending various ones back and forth, or scour listings until you find one where a review mentioned it works with the model you have. It turns out that all the ones I ordered work on the two USB-C phones I have by now (one from work, one privately) but...
1. The quality of the mic conversion is so bad that people cannot understand what I'm saying. It's described as though I'm speaking while holding the phone under water. Plugging the headphones into my work laptop makes it clear that the mic itself is not the problem, nor the meeting software or my WiFi or anything
2. Loose contacts in most of the converters, if not from the start then after a handful of uses. The headphone cable itself somehow doesn't have that problem, so I don't think that's a me problem (many reviews also mentioned it)
3. You can't charge at the same time. I've tried wireless charging but that makes the device overheat. There are adapter models that will let you also plug in a power cable, but I didn't buy one for some reason. Probably all of them had bad reviews about all of the aforementioned problems and I didn't find a single one that sounded like it was worth a try
4. You need to plug it in at the right time. One of the converters needed to be plugged in before joining the meeting. Another one after. The OS or meeting software (not sure) wouldn't route the audio correctly otherwise
And cheap phones manage to include headphone jacks somehow. It's just a status symbol when manufacturers exclude it from more expensive models, it doesn't seem to serve any purpose as the Zenphone 10 shows by having it and also being great on all other fronts -- except one.
> a 1000 Euro paperweight
It's actually 700€.
It does everything I want. After searching a few days for what models are small, have a headphone jack, and are capable of running Android 14 or so, I was so happy to find that the Zenphone 10 checked all boxes. Then I found out why it didn't initially show up: Asus was the manufacturer that I had previously excluded because you can't root the device. It's not your device: the manufacturer maintains control over what you can and cannot do with it. You can't make full-system backups, for example, because access to your apps' data folders isn't part of what they allow you. The device was easily worth the 700€ because it sounded like I could finally stop wasting my time on choosing which compromise I wanted to make (huge size, no jack, or old chipset were the main options). Finding out there was a dealbreaker after all felt like an ice bath. I just won't buy something where I can't access my own data and make a fricking backup
The issue with Bluetooth is that these earphones are ear-specific, and headphones cover both ears so you can't lay on an ear
I listen to audio books while falling asleep, having just one earphone in because I don't want to lay on one (they're plenty sturdy, but my ear is not)
Falling asleep is harder if you want to turn around but need to now look on the nightstand (if available, not always the case in a ho(s)tel room) for where you've left the other one, place the one you took out in the right spot, and your model needs to have pause/play available on both sides so you can extend the sleep timer on the audio book player. Ideally, they also work for meetings because you already have a set of earphones so why not dual-purpose them?
This sounds like a tall order when I write the requirements out, but the second-cheapest earphones models, the variant with a mic and button built into the cable for like 15€ when I last bought a pair, worked just fine ever since I was a child (Nokia 6230i) until now (S10e battery is on its last leg and the screen is discoloring pretty badly, idk what's wrong with this unit, I didn't drop it...). There just aren't performant phones with a headphone jack left, only this Asus "not your phone" device, cheap tablet-sized phones, and old models that won't run modern apps after a few years (not for performance reasons, just minSdk)
The pains of growing old and having to go with the times I guess
0. They don't work on all models. Not product lines, e.g. not "all Pixel phones" or so, no, reviews mention "works with Pixel 3 but not Pixel 3a". You need to either waste a bunch of resources sending various ones back and forth, or scour listings until you find one where a review mentioned it works with the model you have. It turns out that all the ones I ordered work on the two USB-C phones I have by now (one from work, one privately) but...
1. The quality of the mic conversion is so bad that people cannot understand what I'm saying. It's described as though I'm speaking while holding the phone under water. Plugging the headphones into my work laptop makes it clear that the mic itself is not the problem, nor the meeting software or my WiFi or anything
2. Loose contacts in most of the converters, if not from the start then after a handful of uses. The headphone cable itself somehow doesn't have that problem, so I don't think that's a me problem (many reviews also mentioned it)
3. You can't charge at the same time. I've tried wireless charging but that makes the device overheat. There are adapter models that will let you also plug in a power cable, but I didn't buy one for some reason. Probably all of them had bad reviews about all of the aforementioned problems and I didn't find a single one that sounded like it was worth a try
4. You need to plug it in at the right time. One of the converters needed to be plugged in before joining the meeting. Another one after. The OS or meeting software (not sure) wouldn't route the audio correctly otherwise
And cheap phones manage to include headphone jacks somehow. It's just a status symbol when manufacturers exclude it from more expensive models, it doesn't seem to serve any purpose as the Zenphone 10 shows by having it and also being great on all other fronts -- except one.
> a 1000 Euro paperweight
It's actually 700€.
It does everything I want. After searching a few days for what models are small, have a headphone jack, and are capable of running Android 14 or so, I was so happy to find that the Zenphone 10 checked all boxes. Then I found out why it didn't initially show up: Asus was the manufacturer that I had previously excluded because you can't root the device. It's not your device: the manufacturer maintains control over what you can and cannot do with it. You can't make full-system backups, for example, because access to your apps' data folders isn't part of what they allow you. The device was easily worth the 700€ because it sounded like I could finally stop wasting my time on choosing which compromise I wanted to make (huge size, no jack, or old chipset were the main options). Finding out there was a dealbreaker after all felt like an ice bath. I just won't buy something where I can't access my own data and make a fricking backup