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Fairphone 5 Launch
(inv.tux.pizza)
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this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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No headphone jack no sale, it makes zero sense not having one
Genuine question, but for the common user, why should a phone have a headphone jack?
Can't speak for everyone but here are the reasons I prefer an actual jack:
3.5mm headphones are extremely universal and can be used for any audio device. USB-C and Bluetooth headphones cannot
Bluetooth is extremely inconsistent when paired with multiple devices and often gets disconnected because of competing devices
I can't charge my phone and listen to USB c headphones at the same time
Manufacturers claim the removal of the jack was to improve the water resistance. I have never dropped my phone in water and would be willing to risk it.
I already have too many wireless things to charge
I have a small stockpile of broken wireless headphones. Meanwhile my 10 year old wired headphones are collecting dust
I have never lost something more often than that tiny ass USB to 3.5mm dongle adapter
I distrust large corporations with incentive to get consumers to buy more stuff from them
Don't forget Bluetooth has absolutely shit audio quality while using the microphone with how it handles call audio (although I'm praying BLE audio fixes this). Also true wireless earbuds can't compare at all to wired earbuds microphones in the slightest.
Well TBH, I have been exclusively using Bluetooth headsets for like 7 years now and I've had a good experience with that.
I would recommend either big clamshells (I use a rather expensive but awesome Bose 700) or necklace designs like my LG tone 800 hbs headsets (I got like 4 of those over the years). I bought a pair of extremely expensive Sony WM-1000XM 4 that suck donkey balls for a long list of reasons, but not Bluetooth.
Barring some connection issues sometimee, Bluetooth is really quite nice and allows me to walk around freely. I haven't missed the jack plugs ever, really.
Genuinely, good for you. I don't want to switch to something more expensive, that probably wheighs more on the environment (batteries tend to do that), that I'll lose more easily, that can catch connecticity issues, that force me to turn on bluetooth... And that's okay we just have different priorities. What bugs me is only yours ever seem to be catered to nowadays, even though mine don't seem particularly rare and you can ignore jack plugs easier than I can listen to music while plugged on my external battery
Good point there. Bluetooth works well for me but it sucks that you don't get to use your option anymore.
I guess it has to do with jack plugs being really old (were talking over 50 years here) ND whilst that shouldn't matter, manufacturers want to appear new and improving even though there is little to improve on that plug....
I've been using the same (comparatively) cheap Sony WIC100 in-ear Bluetooth headset every day for several (over four?) years now. It's lasted longer than basically any of the cheap wired earbuds I kept replacing before ever did, and still has all-day battery life too. I haven't been particularly careful with it; Generally, I've just crumpled it up and stuffed it in my pocket with my keys, and probably semi-regularly snagged and yanked it on stuff pretty hard. Losing it is not really a concern; It's all one flexible piece, and it's basically the same profile or even slightly bulkier and heavier than wired earbuds when coiled up (but still more convenient when worn, because it doesn't run the length of the torso). Plus they can just dangle safely from my neck when I need to hear stuff around me, which neither wired headphones nor "true wireless" headphones can do.
I agree with all your points in principle, and I still pay attention to the headphone jack when evaluating phones. But the corporations that make our consumer electronics have decided this is the trend they're going with. Ultimately, you can either adapt, stop using the technology, or make your own with Raspi and SLA or whatever.
Are you a plant? You legally have to tell me if you're a plant
…No. It seems like a bad time to be a plant. Too many wildfires, weird things are kinda happening to atmospheric composition, plus invasive species everywhere— Ugh, pine beetles crawling all up in my skin, hogweed taking my nutrients? No thank you. Maybe later— Definitely want the autotrophy eventually, but taking like a 95% hit to metabolic rate and being unable to go indoors obviously wouldn't be acceptable either…
Seriously though, the comment you replied to also mentioned a few products by name, so I thought I'd reflect that hey, Bluetooth hasn't been quite as bad as I'd expected it would be, even if most headsets are either overpriced or garbage.
Let us not forget that S7 and S7 Edge had headphone jack and were waterproof.
Not user-disassemblable, much less Lego-style modular, though. Easy to make something "waterproof" when you can just seal it shut with "gooey black adhesive".
I personally think the headphone jack is a wonderful truly universal and effectively completely open standard that's very good at what it does, and which furthermore is doubly useful as a generic power and analog signal delivery mechanism, while mandating its supposed successors like Bluetooth and USB-C needlessly and massively inflates the technical and material cost of just playing a dang sound file. You could get serviceable wired headphones that last forever for like $5 if you were lucky; Nowadays, you pay at least ten times that for fragile lithium batteries and circuitry that will break in a couple years, and I really don't like this trend of taking away capabilities for less robust alternatives while portraying it as innovating.
But I also actually use my Bluetooth headphones way more than my wired ones, and I appreciate the potential engineering and market challenges in what Fairphone is trying to do here.
I meant the argument of removing 3.5mm to make it everything waterproof is not holding because there are phones out there which are perfectly waterproof with 3.5mm jack.
Your point is generally well taken, but your first point about 3.5 mm jacks being universal isn’t really true any more. It’s nearly impossible to find a device these days with a 3.5 mm audio Jack. It sucks but it’s true.
Only if we're talking about phones. My computer, work laptop, steamdeck, and my monitor all have audio out via 3.5mm jack.
I have a speaker set and a pair of headphones, and I can mix and match when and where I want to use them, which is great.
I hope removal of headphone jacks stays limited to phones (and reverses course eventually)
Other than the 3.5mm still being universal basically everywhere except for phones, it's also universal in a purist physical sense.
Any old piece of scrap copper wire connected to a 3.5mm jack, wrapped vaguely into a coil, and placed next to something magnetic, should form a working speaker compatible with the 3.5mm jack. It won't sound hi-fi, but it will work, because unlike Bluetooth or USB-C where you have to read hundreds of pages of standards and do a bunch of engineering just to figure out how to understand the signal, the signal in the 3.5mm jack basically is the sound.
This has direct practical implications as well: The transparent simplicity vs opaque complexity is why wired headphones can be so cheap and yet so reliable, or as hi-fi as your DAC and the speaker cone will allow, whereas Bluetooth devices are comparatively expensive, a mess to connect, fragile, bandwidth-limited, and environmentally and ethically dubious.
Bluetooth, and even USB-C, is basically black magic— Which wouldn't be so bad, except that it's also glitchy black magic. And this remains true regardless of device availability, because it's determined by the physics of the technology itself is implemented.
TBH good sounding IEM/Headphones actually worth keeping for years today are almost all modular. IEM/Headphones worthy of playing from a jack will not sound great from a trash built-in one and will need extra AMP/DAC anyway.
Funnily enough, the best AMP/DACs you can get today all use bluetooth. They are even good after the battery dies since they are also wired DAC/AMPs. There are some where a battery change is also likely. IEMs have TWS converters as well.
It is all pretty convenient without a builtin jack, unless you are really running dry on cash and/or dont even care about the most important part which is audio quality.