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Is the fairphone really worth it?
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this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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There is a good reason to remove it. Especially for a company like fairphone. Why waste resources and money into making a redundant component (USB-C can do audio, also the majority of people have switched to wireless audio) when you're trying to make a planet-conscious product?
There is no good faith argument that can be made for the removal of the headphone jack. Companies removed it to sell overpriced wireless headphones.
They said it was due to size, but new phones are quite chunky these days so that's not true. Waterproofing? Can be done, many phones have waterproofing and a headphone jack.
Costs? Come on it's a very simple, very old, plastic bit.
And sustainability? "planet-conscious"? You must be kidding. It's way better to use regular headphones than the wireless pieces of crap with batteries and an amplifier and a bluetooth receiver in them.
Of course, I'm not denying this. That still doesn't negate my point about audio jacks being redundant ports.
Yes, and those regular headphones CAN be plugged into phones without headphone jack via the USB-C port
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I think phones without a headphone jack should have a second USB C port instead.
I can get behind this
I miss the simplicity of plugging in something that worked reliably well 100% of the time tho
Well good luck then. Because enough of us have absolutely no problem with using the usbc or Bluetooth. I rarely even listen to music anymore anyway so it's not something I use.
Citation needed. Also, just because people have "switched" to wireless doesn't mean that they don't have a pair of old wired headphones still lying around somewhere, unused, eventually turning into e-waste. Also, I suspect a significant portion of Fairphone users are the kind who'd still hold on to wired headphones.
The first rule in making a planet-conscious product is the RRR - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. If people already have wired headphones, then the most eco-friendly solution would be to enable users to continue to use them, and not force them to buy even more new products. And as a manufacturer, there's practically no shortage of 3.5mm jacks around (plenty of old devices where the parts can be recycled from), and there's almost no complexity involved in wiring up or making circuitry for something that's been a standard for several decades.
Another use-case for the headphone jack: I use it to connect my phone to various audio devices, e. g. E-drums for practising playback or the practice room PA tolisten to demos. Nearly all professional equipment uses wired connections.
Not to mention that unlike the wireless buds, headphones I used ten years ago and sat on a shelf that whole time will all still work 100% of the time. Show me wireless battery powered crap that can claim that
I don't have a source ready with me to back up my statement. But at least here in India, almost everyone I see in public transportation use wireless earbuds. Usually I look like the odd one out for wearing wired earphones.
You absolutely don't need to go out and buy a new headphones if your phone doesn't have an audio jack. Just buy a dongle. Yes, I'm aware that this is worse for the planet than just including an audio jack in the phone. But if you buy a dongle once, you don't have to worry about your future phones not having a headphone jack. So in the long run, this move is better for the planet.
How is buying a dongle you shouldn't need better for the planet than a phone manufacturer providing a headphone jack??? The phone already has a DAC in it, they literally only need to include the actual port
your sample is incredibly biased, you're taking 1 demographic and assuming everyone acts like that. Go into a recording studio and see how many wireless headphones they use, Go to a concert and see how they are driving their speakers. Just because a lot of consumers use wireless earphones in an environment that doesn't lend itself to good audio (like public transport), doesn't mean most people are using it.
Did you even read my reply fully?
Recording studios also don't use a smartphone to do their work.
Even if we do assume that the majority of the world still uses wired earphones, it still makes sense to remove the audio jack for reasons I have explained already.
You haven't provided a single good reason. Why are you fighting this so hard? Samsung isn't gonna kiss you.
Ah yes, it is totally unfair to expect consumers who prefer wired audio to make a one time purchase of a 10$ dongle. Instead phone manufacturers should continue to ship every single phone with an audio jack for years to come. And anybody who says it is fine to remove the audio jack because those who prefer wired audio can use a dongle is obviously a samsung shill.
How ironic is it that the guy who makes personal attacks over a debate surrounding freakin headphone jacks calls others a snowflake :)
it's not a redundant component at all. USB-C doesn't carry analogue audio. You need an external DAC to convert that digital signal to analogue to make it usable. You can't plug your headphones into a USB-C port.
Basically you need to buy a 10$ dongle to make it work. How hard is that?
It's not hard. It's wasteful and unnecessary. It means you can't charge your phone and listen to music at the same time. There are no advantages to removing the headphone jack
My FP4 lasts two days on one charge, and charges fully in about 30 minutes. In most cases it shouldn't be an issue finding a 15-30 minute interval within two days where you don't listen to music in order to charge. Not all arguments against the removal are equally good, in my opinion.
However, I agree that dongles are wasteful. I burned through many such 3.5mm to Lightning on my previous iPhone. They had the durability of a snowman in Summer, and also cost about 10 bucks each for the official one. Since Fairphone claims sustainability as the main reason to remove the port, I'd love to see an actual calculation on the impact of broken ports vs broken dongles. I think the dongles will lose.