this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
106 points (63.1% liked)

Technology

60084 readers
4914 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] flossdaily 51 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I think they would have been a lot better off if they had included a fully functional phone. Who wants to carry around TWO bricks for slightly better audio?

I think the real missed opportunity is that they didn't create a super hi-fi wireless headphone protocol and absolutely best-ever wireless headphones sell them together with the walkman.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They did. It's called LDAC. Many would also agree that they make the best headphones and earbuds, I swear by their WH1000s and WF1000s

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I swear by their WH1000s and WF1000s

Its a good thing lots of people do, cause they make my Xperia purchases $250 cheaper. The freebie buds go right to eBay.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I made the awful decision to go with Bowers & Wilkins over the Sonys. They sound okay, but the design is absolute garbage. Next time it's Sony.

[–] himbocat 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I’m the audience for this. I’ve bought previous android portable standalone players and it being a phone is actually a negative.

There are already plenty of good smartphone dacs so there’s no need to make a super high end battery chugging, chunky phone for a niche audience, when most people are just going to use Bluetooth headsets anyway and have a good experience doing so.

Im not just carrying these things around like a phone because the types of headphones I’ve run with these devices are not the type that I would bring with me on a bus or to the store. Portability really doesn’t matter to the target audience of these.

I pull my standalone player out when I want to sit in front of my my garden and listen to an album all the way through. Getting a call or a notification would kill that for me.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hell, even the ability to connect multiples. Instant silent rave box

[–] Tandybaum 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why is this not more of a thing? I should be able to connect 3 headphones to my iPhone. Is it a limitation of Bluetooth somehow?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

BT is generally a 1:1 secure connection. Very inaccurate description but serves our purpose. BT was originally designed waaay before smartphones as a way of maintaining low power wireless connectivity to stuff like keyboards and mouses.

It's increased in ability since then, but a lot of the focus has understandably been on increasing the capacity of the 'host' of the party rather than the guests. More people can join the party (devices connected to your phone/pc), but they're doing different activities at different times.

The challenge with audio is they all have to receive the exact same data at the exact same time otherwise humans notice - which the protocol wasn't really designed for. There's been some inroads, but it's a bit of a protocol limit. This is why most BT headsets are a single unit - one receiver (guest), receiving the data then disseminating to its family group. Airpods get around this by having one that actually connects to your phone, then the second one syncs to the first pod. (Someone at the party chatting with a friend elsewhere on the phone, to stretch the analogy)

When you start mixing multiple guests of varying hardware wanting the same thing at the same time with varying latencies from the one host, it can get real messy, and we're really good at picking up audio discrepancies

[–] kautau 1 points 1 year ago
[–] MaxVoltage 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

720 x 1280 pixels. The device runs Android 12 and also gets 64 GB of onboard storage

😂😂😂😂

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Because I imagine it's for old people sitting around their house

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago
  • Separate batteries. Using a device for music and a standard phone drains from the same battery. You could carry a power brick, but then you’re carrying two bricks for worse audio.
  • No camera. Certain work assignments won’t allow me to bring a device with a camera into those zones. Or, if I do, the transition process is so intrusive that it’s not worth it.

Those are the only unique characteristics. You can compensate other differences on a phone like adding an additional DAC and/or amp.