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Fairphone Fairbuds launch with replaceable batteries, titanium drivers and ANC
(www.notebookcheck.net)
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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And get caught on everything.
I can't be bothered with the inconvenience of wires. Bluetooth quality is good enough for what I need it for, and the convenience of simply putting them on gives me sound is hard to beat.
I have a pair of noise-canceling Bluetooth headphones (not buds) from 2008 that still work. Battery life isn't what it was, but whatever - they work fine for how I use them (as one pair of several). I could replace the battery if I felt like it, just not worth the effort.
But I get that some people prefer the wired for their use-case.
The simple point is, no one forces you to use wires. Bluetooth has been a thing for decades.
But basically every (yes some exceptions) company that makes phones forced you to use wireless ones.
And in the case of Fairphone it is just simply hypocritical.
I agree. I get that they're a business and all but I haven't seen a legitimate explanation for them removing headphone jacks and, like every other manufacturer, simultaneously introducing expensive Bluetooth ones.
The only reason the headphone jack was ever removed is to sell you wireless earbuds.
People will deny this but this is the only real reason for doing that. The other reason is copying apple, which isn't really another reason as apple removed it for the first reason. Fairphone just went the extra mile to claim that headphones are wasteful, in essence they're making an excuse to cover up their reason why and also trying to force others to do it as well.
or a adapter at greater than 20x cost
YUP! I'm sorry, Apple earned more money than Spotify purely based on their airpod market. I refuse to believe otherwise.
If they truly cared about repairability/maintainability they'd give me a headphone jack phone with a replaceable module in case it wears down.
I freaking hate dongles, I always have one when I don't need one and can never find one when I don't. They randomly don't work or I don't know if this AliExpress one I bought is actually stealing my data. Just give a built-in jack, please!
I velcro’d dongles to some wired pairs of headphones, but haven’t been using them.
AirPods have been great for stockholders and bad for our planet’s inhabitants. But I cannot deny the flexibility, seamlessness (even across devices), speed to don & doff, and convenience are powerful factors.
They also sell headphone to USB cable. I'm not saying the lack of a headphone jack is good but if their goal was really to sell wireless earbuds then selling a USB to headphone cable was a bad move, no?
Yes... they sell an adapter.
A master plan to make more money selling a cable than a port on an already bulky phone?
Ah yes the 3.5mm port, known for its bulk. Perhaps we should remove cameras as they have actually bulked out phones in recent years.
If I had the option I would have chosen a smaller camera module and included an audio jack. I genuinely think they choose to not include it as a compromise, rather than to sell a cable you can get cheap elsewhere.
As Louis Rossmann also said, using a single port for both charging/moving data and listening music increases the wear on the port. They're just made to wear down faster with the absence of the audio jack port.
Plus it's impractical, as it occupies the type c port.
What’s the lifetime of those ports you think?
I dont know, but if you also use it to plug in earphones you may double the use.
Im using my type c port phone for about 3.5years so far (I rarely plug headphones in it though) and the port seems ok.
But either way, this extra wear down is simply another negative aspect of this move and I think so far the disanvantages outweigh the advantages (also I think it's just so that they can sell their wireless earphones and on a lower degree support planned obsolesence).
When you plug in in to charge, the device is at rest. When you plug in headphones, there’s a high chance it is in a pocket or otherwise in a state where the device is moving which will be a lot more wear than just idling charging.
Wow - would never have considered that! Great insight.
All my phones always had headphone jacks, even though I prefer wireless and put those rubber nub dust protectors in them, so they don't get filthy. Nobody forced me to do anything. I had multiple brands. Wiko, Samsung, Honor, etc..
Strange how I've been using wired headphones with my phones until two years ago, even though I haven't had a phone with a headphone jack since 2017...
You can get 3.5mm to (whatever usb port) that will as far as I know work in every phone. Just because it doesn't have a dedicated port doesn't mean you can't wire in your headphones.
I much prefer it this way, if you want to wire you can, if you don't you don't have to have an extra useless port on your device.
Edit
Lol, bring on your down votes. I bet if you surveyed a hundred random people on the street if they really want a headphone port on your phone and are committed to using it you'd get less than ten people. It's not realistic to support every legacy hardware function on a modern device because a few tech enthusiasts want it, especially when there's a very easy way to support it.
Or the port could exist and you just don't use it, then we don't need adapters!
It's not just a hole, you need to reserve the space to house the inserted jack, you need to source or build the housing and build something to convert the signal to digital. That costs money and space for a feature hardly anyone uses. These resources are simply better used elsewhere.
It's a very small amount of space. When it was first removed the space was still there just empty. There's phones that do exist that have SD card slots and headphone jacks. The hardware required is very very cheap, especially at scale, so cost is a non-factor. For such minimal resources, who wouldn't want the option of more features? There's plenty of features of smartphones that most people don't use, it doesn't mean we should remove them to the detriment of the people who do.
not if you want to charge it as well.
If you're the only option with a headphone jack that's a guaranteed 10% of the market buying your device. More if you also include other things tech enthusiasts want that are no longer widely available.
Yes you can: https://a.co/d/dvX8HjP
That's the beauty of usb, it's capable of expanding to suit your needs
Simply put, if companies determined the market need for 3.5mm port was valuable enough they'd leave it on there. They want to sell product and 3.5mm is not a feature enough customers care about to justify it's existence. If you really want it, you have USB options or some phone models that support it: https://www.phonearena.com/news/Best-phones-with-a-headphone-jack-Google-Pixel-Samsung-Galaxy-LG-and-more_id124459
The reason it's not "valuable" is that they want to force people to buy expensive earbuds every year when they crap out. This is demonstrated by the fact that none of these phones that have removed it have added anything new in it's place and they've only gotten more expensive. Practically every phone on the market is just a copycat phone, camera, social media browsing device. Maybe a few have a stylus. The only thing that differentiates them is specs. My 6 year old phone has more features than anything available today and I dread finally reaching the point where my work apps stop functioning due to it's age and I have to downgrade to some garbage that can't do half the things I used to.
If you buy crappy headphones they might crap out every year. I've got the same pair of Jabra 65t that I bought in 2018 and they work amazing 6 years later. If Apple or Samsung or Google forced you to use their buds I'd agree with your position of being forced but they don't and saying all buds die in a year is absurd.
You’re supposing every tech/audio enthusiast here wants the same shitty setup as the masses? The fact is there is basically one brand still offering headphone jacks in a flagship that you can unlock … where the point of Android was all the delicious innovations of each OEM. But they saw how profitable selling branded earbuds could be so now you have next to 0 options.
No one's disputing the utility of wireless. But it's not harming anyone to have a device with both mini-jack and bluetooth; the way it was for nearly 2 decades without any complaint.
More options is always better.
There was no reason to remove them back then and there is no reason to remove them now.
Fair, that's your choice, and please don't be aggressive about it, because it gets very annoying very quickly. Tried not to type out this second part, but couldn't.
But our preference is not a choice. Because phone manufacturers have decided for ourselves.
I'm sorry you have to deal with that.
But our point is that having a little extra hole in your phone isn't going to matter to you.
I didn't reply to the insulin pump part, sorry. It was toward the other part, which implied to me that there are people who don't want to deal with cables, so no one should be about to use them.