I’ve recently put to rest an issue that’s bothered me since I first got my Samsung ARM Chromebook in the fall of 2012…why I couldn’t get a headset/microphone that worked on other devices, including on a Samsung Chromebook 5 550 and a Chromebox to work on my Samsung ARM Chromebook.
I’d been trying to find out why it didn’t work, and there was an active thread on the Google Group ChromebookCentral on this topic. There were reports that it was a known bug in the ChromeOS, that Chrome ninjas had been able to reproduce the error, and several folks having problems. There are enough differences between the ARM version of ChromeOS and the Intel version of ChromeOS that I put credence into this. However, time passed, many versions of ChromeOS posted, and no solution arrived. I poked my head up again, and eventually a post surfaced that had the key! It seems that there are two versions of the standard for 3.5mm combo ports, and that the Samsung ARM Chromebook uses the one that’s not compatible with iPhone earbuds. There were reports of boom mics that worked, so I decided to try one. I found the Buddy HeadsetMic Mono – Mobile edition on Amazon, decided to order one since it said it worked with Chromebooks. I’ve been very pleased with this headset/microphone; I’ve had it a couple of weeks, used it several times, and it’s quite nice. Good quality, comfortable, and has a long cord. Supposedly one can get an adapter that switches the ground to make iPhone earbuds work; I tried one without success.
So, if you have a Samsung ARM Chromebook, had tried iPhone earbuds and it didn’t work, now you know why and what to do…
Joel,
Thanks for sharing your blog – fun way to spend Father’s Day. I’m ready to dump cable’s 200 channels of “junk”.