True wireless earbuds don't necessarily have to end up as electronic waste when their batteries reach the end of their lifespan. Fairphone demonstrates this with the Fairbuds 2, whose batteries can be easily replaced. The earbuds also offer active noise cancellation and support for Sony LDAC.
How hard is it for them to include a DAC and aux port in their phones? They’re tiny! I tried using Bluetooth headphones with the OnePlus 5 but the poor sound quality and constant need to recharge and replace due to their batteries dying every few months was exhausting. That experience was enough to drive me back to the exceptional reliability of plug and play traditional headphones with a Galaxy Xcover 6 Pro.
I don’t care how easy it is to replace the batteries in Fairphone’s new headphones. Their ethos should compel them to include a jack for those who don’t want to waste rare earth metals.
An audio jack is anything but tiny in a mobile phone form factor… Theres just no way to keep it without sacrificing something else.
It already has a dac, so the only thing missing is the 3.5mm jack. Otherwise, where do you think the signal for the speaker comes from?
Techbros have mastered their hardware enshittification skills with the headphone jack fiasco.
Agreed 100%. I’d buy a Fairphone instantly if it had a headphone jack.
I agree that phones should just come with an aux port, but I’ve also never experienced the issues with wireless earbuds that I see other people talk about.
In fact I think my original airpod pros lasted longer than any pair of wired earbuds I’ve owned. I had them for years and they were still working fine when I lost one. Currently I use wired earbuds to help keep track of them.
Why not just use usb-c if you want wired headset?
I ruined my iPhone 15’s usb-c port by using an adapter. I used it when I cut the grass with my phone in my pocket. Now the port doesn’t grip cables right. Not being able to use the adapter while my phone is in my pocket eliminates most use cases for me.
I don’t want to have to buy and think about bringing jack to USB-C adapters whenever I want to plug into a speaker at a party or a car stereo, and I want to be able to charge my phone in these situations, or while I listen to podcasts to help me fall asleep at night with some battery-heavy sleep tracking activated
I wasn’t trying to say you wanting a wired headset is somehow not valid. I just always felt that a $3 C to 3.5 adapter you can permanently attach to your wired headphones is a weird hill to die on. For about $15 you can buy enough for that to never again be a consideration when buying a new phone.
I see it as a question of convenience, economics, and waste. It’s so easy to plug and play a jack without worrying about your headphones’ charge level or pairing them. No aux ports also means you have to pay a USB C adapter tax for one that may eventually break or get lost and it forcing you to pick between quietly listening to your audio and charging your phone. I’ve personally saved about $60 USD a year on average by not having to swap out dead Bluetooth headphones as well.
I get it if you like the convenience but it really wouldn’t kill these phone manufacturers to keep such a useful legacy component in the hopes you’d buy some additional accessories from them to fix a problem they created.
If waste and efficiency are real concerns you should be against the old headphone jacks. They waste a lot of space and are an entrypoint for water and dust, for redundant functionality that already exists in usbc or lightning
They may be an entry point for water and dust yet my current 3.5mm jack equipped Xcover 6 Pro is IP68 rated at 1.5m of water for 35 minutes according to GSMArena. I’m not exactly looking to go snorkeling with my phone any time soon either so it’s not like it’ll be a concern for anyone in the vast majority of use cases. I’ve had water splash on it occasionally over the years and it never caused any harm either.
I can’t really talk about what the PCB footprint of a 3.5mm jack is but if it’s something that already comfortably existed on most previous phones along with micro SD and Sim card holders until very recently then I doubt it actually matters. Keep in mind phone manufacturers are incentivized to hold back on as many features as possible if it means they can cut down on BOM costs and make an additional sale through apps or accessories down the line.