As things stand, though, it is hard to recommend these AirPods for anyone but the most hardcore of Apple users who are living in the ideal Apple ecosystem and thus be able to extract the full value from these headphones. When it’s plugged in, the case becomes a Bluetooth audio transmitter for anything, including (especially) airplane infotainment terminals.
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Apple is already ahead of this one apparently, as it has also introduced a line of Beats headphones, which use the same chip and are designed for exercise. Apple spent a great deal of time detailing the design and engineering that had gone into making these headphones a quality product. The device thankfully still has a 3.5mm headphone jack, allowing you the luxury of charging and playing music at the same time. It’s definitely not elegant or simple. This means up to 15 hours of batter on Wi-Fi, or up to 60 hours of wireless video playback. Most people hear about the announcement and they assume they can just get it right away.
The strap also misses the point of the AirPods entirely, which was to create truly wireless earphones that you can use independently. If we are to have a guess, we would expect Apple to charge around £100 for one of them.
Anyway, maybe it’s a dumb idea. “The courage to move on to do something new that betters all of us”.
The iPhone 7 has come out and has confirmed what has always been rumored, that it doesn’t have a 3.5 mm jack for headphones.
If you’re interested in buying the AirPod Strap, then you’ll be pleased to learn you can pre-order them immediately. That kind of sucks, too. CNET reports Apple’s own website was unavailable to some users for an hour last year when the iPhone 6S launched and up to two hours the year before when the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus went on sale.
Apple’s decision to kill off the headphone jack was courageous.
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Spigen calls its new accessory as the AirPods Strap. A Bluetooth bridge, basically. But I guess I don’t know anybody who says “headphone port”.
