Wired headphones are back?
Are there any other friends using wired headphones?
To tell the truth, Lao Hu is a loyal fan of wired headphones, commuting usually has two pairs of headphones in the bag, a Sony wired headphones, an Apple AirPods Pro second generation, in addition, there is also a 7.9 yuan original earphone in the company.
The original headphones, the god of cost performance...
If you look at the whole company, except for the later colleagues who need wired headphones to monitor, the rest of the colleagues only see that Guozi is still using wired headphones.
The back waves of the Yangtze River beat the front waves, and the wireless headphones shot the wired headphones to death on the beach.
Recently, Lao Hu saw a topic, called "I unilaterally think that people who use wired headphones are very good", of course, as a heavy user of wired headphones, this sentence, Lao Hu very much agrees.
This topic comes from Xiaohongshu, and when you search for keywords on Xiaohongshu, the popularity of related posts is not low, with the highest "likes" reaching 30,000, and other posts also have hundreds of interactions.
Therefore, some people believe that wired headphones are coming back. The old fox disagreed.
From the style of these pictures, it can be seen that the reason for wearing wired headphones is not how good the wired headphones are, but the decorative functions brought by the wired headphones.
In the picture, there are celebrities or Internet celebrities with outstanding appearances, with exquisite outfits, wearing a pair of wired headphones, and with an ins filter, creating a retro and charming atmosphere... Headphones became decorations, not electronics.
What is embarrassing is that the reason why wired headphones can become the clothing choice of hipsters is precisely because it is becoming niche under the squeeze of wireless headphones, and niche retro is always one of the attributes of hipsters' favorite items.
The last digital product that has a high appearance rate in the hands of many celebrities and Internet celebrities and is also popular on Xiaohongshu is the CCD camera.
It is also a product that has been eliminated by the times, CCD cameras were also all the rage in the 90s, but after the emergence of CMOS technology, the imaging quality of CCD cameras is not as good as that of CMOS cameras, and there is more noise and high cost at high ISO, and it is gradually eliminated by the market.
However, it is precisely because of the poor imaging quality of CCD cameras that at a time when photos are becoming clearer, they create a unique retro atmosphere and become an expression of personality.
*CCD cameras that are also popular on Xiaohongshu
The trend is a circle, and wired headphones have also stepped into this circle.
In the last century, with the rise of Walkman devices, wired headphones were also one of the favorite items of hipsters.
However, with the popularization of mobile phones, wired headphones have become extremely ordinary, and for celebrity hipsters who pursue individuality, Bluetooth headsets have become a single item with a high appearance rate.
Although the Beats headphones of the time were often ridiculed by earphone enthusiasts for their poor sound quality, it did not prevent them from becoming a fashion item, and its function was not only a headphone, but also a necklace.
Nowadays, wired headphones have once again become a fashion item, which confirms the embarrassing reality that it is no longer mainstream and has become niche.
It doesn't even matter if you have headphones or not, as long as it's wired, it's trendy enough.
Therefore, in this context, "people who use wired headphones have quality" is by no means a signal for wired headphones to come back, on the contrary, it is a sign of the decline of wired headphones.
This conclusion may be a bit cruel to many users, because most users still want wired headphones to come back.
Under the most popular posts, there was a poll, the question "Do you prefer wired headphones or wireless headphones?", nearly 60,000 people participated, and 65% voted for wired headphones, with a nearly 2:1 ratio of choosing wired and choosing wireless.
It is worth mentioning that there was a similar vote on Weibo, and the result was still the "wired party" winner, which shows that users still prefer wired headphones.
There are many reasons why people choose wired headphones, such as no need to charge them, use them anytime, anywhere, better sound quality, connect cables for a more secure sense of security, and plug them in and use them without having to pair them repeatedly.
But no matter how many reasons there are, we have to face a cold reality - most of today's phones don't have a 3.5mm headphone jack.
In addition to that, Bluetooth headphones have no wires and will not be entangled, making them more convenient when worn.
* Knotted original earphones
Since users prefer wired headphones, can mobile phone manufacturers comply with user requirements and re-set aside a 3.5mm headphone jack on the phone?
The old fox can only say that it is unlikely.
On the one hand, it is the economic considerations of mobile phone manufacturers.
Before Apple launched AirPods in 2016, there were many professional brands of wired headphones to choose from, such as Sennheiser, Beyerdynamic, Audio-Technica and Goethe, which are known as the four major brands of headphones, as well as AKG, domestic Visonic ...
*Sennheiser IE800
And with the rise of true wireless earbuds, they are almost disappearing in the mass consumption field, and only Sennheiser will appear in the videos of digital bloggers when they release new Bluetooth earphones... Industry turnover is often not earth-shattering, but silent.
Only Sony is the only audio company that used to play HiFi on wired headphones, and it still attracts a lot of attention when the WF-1000XM and WH-1000XM series are updated.
Fans, please shout those 5 words.
After the mobile phone manufacturers eliminated the headphone jack, users had to be forced to accept Bluetooth headsets, and the best experience is undoubtedly the same brand of Bluetooth headsets supported by the software ecosystem.
Bundling users with ecology has been done on wireless headphones.
On the other hand, it is the mobile phone manufacturer for design considerations, the internal space of the mobile phone is precious, since the Bluetooth module has been retained, the user can connect the headset through Bluetooth, then the headphone jack has become a hardware that can be discarded.
*iPhone 15 Pro structure diagram, source Weibo @Lou Bin
The space left is used for other hardware that can influence consumers' purchasing choices, such as increasingly large camera modules, such as larger batteries.
So after Apple took the lead in cutting off the headphone jack, other manufacturers followed suit (the first to remove the headphone jack was LeTV, but Apple led the way in the entire mobile phone industry).
Today, only Sony and Red Devil are left on high-end flagship phones, and they also have "advanced" headphone jacks.
* Red Magic Mobile
Although we often complain about the lack of headphone jacks on mobile phones, it is worth noting that in fact, many brands retain headphone jacks on low-end models, such as Redmi 12C, some models of vivo's Y series, OPPO's A series, Honor's Play series...
The camera module of these phones is relatively ordinary, and the space requirements for the phone are not as high as those of the flagship phone, so they can be plugged into the headphone jack.
However, another commercial explanation can also be sought, that is, the low-end model users have insufficient spending power, and will not buy hundreds of yuan of Bluetooth headsets of the same brand, leaving the headphone jack, which can win more consumers.
As for what the reason is, the mobile phone manufacturers themselves know in their hearts that the answer they give can only be the former.
The only possibility is that the headphone jack will become the competitiveness of mobile phones again, users no longer pay attention to mobile phone photography, and begin to care about music quality.
However, vivo proved a decade ago that this was not the way to go.
*See watermark for source image
Back to the topic at the beginning, it is indeed "productive" to use wired headphones, but without the support of mobile phones, wired headphones will no longer be as popular as before, and it is impossible to come back.
Lao Hu, as a remnant of wired headphones, also looks forward to the headphone jack reappearing on high-end flagship phones, but mid-to-high-end mobile phones are no longer the "ship" that will carry them.
The argument that "people who use wired headphones have quality" will only make wired headphones and wired headphone manufacturers more embarrassed.
Resources:
Xiaohongshu, Weibo, JD.com
Editor: Mu Yi