Help Headphone Splitter not working

[ElusiveByte]

I just ordered three of these HTC headphone/usb splitters. (One for work, home, car, so I can charge the G1 and play Pandora at the same time.)

http://www.ecrater.com/product.php?pid=4314395

I opened two of them and the standard 3.5 mm headphone jacks aren't working. Audio does not stop playing from the G1 speaker, and does not play from the headphones.

My phone came with the standard headphone adapter. It's a long cord with a mic, 3.5mm jack, and a button to answer calls. Interestingly, if I plug that into the USB headphone jack on this device and plug in a pair of headphones it works.

However, using an ordinary pair of headphones in the 3.5mm jack does not work at all. I tried two pair.

Does anyone else own one of these things? Does it work for you?

 

[ElusiveByte]

I contacted HTC and they told me to call T-Mobile, so I did. They had no idea what device I was talking about, so I contacted HTC again and asked for support. They told me to call the accessories sales line, so I did. They don't even sell this device. It's branded "HTC" with their logo, but it's possibly a forgery.

I'm going to contact the seller and complain about the devices. Of the three, I opened two. I don't know if they will accept a return on opened product. Maybe they will since it's defective.

If any one else has experience with any kind of USB splitter for the G1 please let me know! I'd like to get a splitter that provides a standard 3.5mm headphone jack along with a USB port for charging. I don't feel like spending more money on another random device, just hoping it works.

 

[ElusiveByte]

What the heck...? I was demonstrating to a friend how the adapter doesn't work, and then it magically did!

Here are the exact things I did recently. I have no idea what would have caused it to suddenly work.

• Wiped my phone and installed CyanogenMod 4.0.4
• Listened to music several times with the double-adapter solution. (explained above.)
• Borrowed a monaural headphone with inline mic from friend to test out. Worked fine in the 2.5mm jack. (Came with his Blackberry) At this point I figure whatever headphones I plug in have to have an inline mic to work in the adapter.
• Installed the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) at work. Started ADB, and added a port forwarding to get tethering to work with Tetherbot.
• Another friend brings over a stereo headphone set to test. he had never seen the adapter or my phone before, so I explain it to him, and show him how normal headphones don't work, and to my amazement it works this time.

I tried these headphones several times before, and tried other headphone-like devices like my car adapter, and my iHome radio at home with a normal 3.5mm audio cable in the AUX jack. Nothing ever worked.

Maybe plugging in a headphone with a mic just once made Android think about mic versus no mic and change something in it's software to allow non-mic headphones to work.

Maybe installing CyanogenMod 4.0.4 made it work. I can't recall if I did any tests since installing it. I don't think I did. One thing I know for sure, CyanogenMod shows a headphone icon in the notification bar when I connect headphones using the microphone adapter that came with the G1. the stock Android version never did that. (It doesn't show an icon now with just normal headphones plugged in.)

Maybe messing with debugging over USB did something to the software to allow it to work.

Maybe just plugging a 2.5mm pin into the adapter physically altered it and now headphones work. Something may have been out of alignment or something.

I have three of these adapters. I will try the other two when I get home. If they work, then it's probably something software related. My best guess is that CyanogenMod fixed the issue. I'll poke around on xda-developers and see if this was a known issue that was explicitly fixed.

EDIT: Why isn't my list above displaying bullets or numbers? I tried both.

 

[ElusiveByte]

It was definitely nothing physical regarding the 2.5mm jack. I tried another of the splitters and it works too now, and I've never plugged anything into its 2.5mm jack.