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The Fairphone 5 is a little more repairable and much more modern
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this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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The fact that they don't include a headphone jack that's been an audio standard for decades makes their claims of sustainability seem like marketing bs. And the argument that it's to make the phones thinner is bs too, since most phones now are bricks compared to previous generations. It was all a ruse to sell crappy bluetooth headphones with recharcghable batteries that are going to wind up in a landfill.
I never quite understood the headphone jack thing. It's a nifty thing to have but an adapter is a one time purchase. It seems like nowadays lack of headphone jack is just a minor inconvenience.
Because they removed something that was convenient to try and force people to either spend more money on adapters or buy Bluetooth headphones.
And if you need to charge at the same time? That's yet another adapter.
There's USBC headphones
That is true, and you can get USBC dac cables for existing headphones that have the ability to swap cables.
But it's still yet another thing you have to buy when your existing stuff already worked fine, and it still ties up the USBC port so unless you wirelessly charge you still need an adapter.
It's just less convenient and as far as I am concerned removing the jack has offered no benefits to consumers.
Its not convenient unless you need to use it extremely frequently and can keep track of it because of that.
I barely use my adapter so when I do need it, its another 15 minutes to find it or realize it got thrown out or something. Its just not convenient. Convenience would be leaving both ports, or for headphone companies to split the end of the cable into usbc, lightning, and audio jack
Leave it on your headphones?
Or just get some wireless headphones and be done with it.
Worth it just so you don't knock the wired ones off your head when you move about, or yank the cables out of them and have to buy new ones.
I can see the point of wired if you've got some nice audiophile kit, but a phone is not that.
Except that wireless headphones have more complexity, points of failure, and usually shorter life. Just avoiding batteries alone should give a longer life and do less environmental harm.
As a counterpoint to that, none of my wired headphones that I used when walking lasted more than about 18 months before they eventually got snagged one too many times on jackets, etc, and constantly cut out unless you hold the cable just right.
My bluetooth ones (£60-ish AKG) I've had for 5 years and they're fine. More than fine. Battery still lasts ages (40 hours ish, means recharging every few weeks, although it gives the low battery warning too early for my liking). No tangles or snags or feeding a cable down my shirt to my pockets. I used the 3.5mm jack for it like once on a plane for my Switch, but even that support BT headphones now.
I even use wireless at my PC now, because surely everyone has tangled a cable under a chair wheel, gone to stand up and just about ripped their ears off. HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless are what I got and the battery life is nuts.
So you just invalidate their whole effort to make a phone in 2023 that actually held together by screws, and not glue because it lacks one audio-port?
Yes, because it doesn't just "lack" it. They deliberately chose not to include such a simple thing so they can sell more shitty wireless headphones. I already have good wired ones, so no thank you. And I find this extremely anti-consumer and anti-sustainability.
I agree with the sentiment but at least they sell wireless headphones with similar reparaibility as their phones.
Yes how convenient. They opt out of a port worth cents but luckily they sell hundred dollars headphones with batteries in them. I already have wired pairs and don't need any more.
Idk, I never use headphones jack in phone’s box as I already have mine. And smaller boxes might be a purely economical decision, but it still has an impact on transportation.