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Fairphone 4—the repairable, sustainable smartphone—is coming to the US
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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I love Fairphone's mission, but no headphone jack equals no purchase from me.
Does anyone know why they don’t have a headphone jack?
The fact that even they don’t include one actually makes me respect the existing phone manufacturers a lot more. I always assumed that Apple did it to sell airpods, and then the others did it just to copy Apple or sell their own dongles/headphones.
But if even an organization like this chose not to include one, then maybe not including it really does make the phone a lot smaller or cheaper or waterproof or whatever.
That being said, I can’t believe cars don’t have aux ports anymore. Surely the cost and size isn’t significant on that scale.
Disclaimer: both for cars and my phone, I’m generally happy with Bluetooth. But I want the option to use a headphone jack without needing to buy or remember a dongle. It’s insidious because the kinds of things that you would need a headphone jack for are uncommon enough that you won’t get into the habit of bringing a dongle for them (e.g. road trips, full day of phone interviews)
The CEO claimed it's because the USB C port can withstand more than the 3.5mm so it's more sustainable to use that. I honestly don't buy that argument because now you're putting all of that load from 2 ports into 1. Also, if they were truly Fairphone, I should be able to buy a replacement headphone jack if it does break.
I think he eventually admitted it was a mistake, but it turned from a definite purchase to a zero for me.
I though the official response was that they couldn't fit one without making the phone larger than it already is and that it was a hard decision.
For me, this doesn't ring true. My USB 3 port got to the point where it couldn't hold a cable (not lint or dirt, the tiny little bit that holds the cable firmly got worn down). I have rarely had a headphone jack break. Maybe twice in my life, on old battered walkmans or mp3 players that suffered years of use.
This is the current state of my S21. I only used the usb-to-aux adapter a handful of times, as I ended up getting a BT headphone pair because of the hassle. I think whoever manufactured the USB-C jacks screwed people over.
They offer a 5 year warranty and I can imagine that the lifetime of the jack would be below that