Unpopular Opinion

I 90% agree, I swapped to wireless earbuds about a decade ago when my aux port on whatever phone I had then broke, and I immediately preferred it. I went from buying £10 wired earphones from a supermarket what sounded shit and broke every month to £25 wireless earphones that sounded shit and broke every 6 months, so for me it was am improvement. I was also a chronic "catch headphone cable on every handle" victim, to the point that I immediately preferred the wireless solution. Another thing is when my wireless headphones break, they fucking break; I go with one earbud for about a month then inevitably buy a new pair. When my wired headphones started to degrade, I always fought it, ending up in a losing battle of finding that perfect way to hold them to make them still work. The only downside I have nowadays is when I'm listening to music or a video and realise I've misplaced my phone, which isn't really an issue, just that it was impossible when it was tethered to my ears.

But I'm probably part of a very small minority when it comes to my preference. I carry a compact camera any day I leave the house intending to take photos, so my ideal phone would have one rear camera that prioritises efficiency over quality. I'd have no headphone port, and to be honest, I could live with no ports and wireless charging and data transfer. I've had two smartphones in the last that had their USB-C ports fail as chargers (both galaxy S8s), and I could go years without needing to use the port for anything else. My dream phone would have no ports, one rear camera without a bump, no front camera, minimal tactile side buttons, be pretty slim, have a swappable battery and run a FOSS OS and mostly FOSS apps.

I respect the voices that want a smartphone equivalent to a ThinkPad a lot, but I don't really think it's anywhere near as necessary as a ThinkPad would be, because for most tasks that need something like that, I'd just use that.

That being said, there's two reasons I don't 100% agree. The first is to do with the fairphone specifically. More battery space and better waterproofing don't really apply to a phone where I can swap the battery and it comes apart so much that it's not really competitively waterproof. The second is larger, which is that I can just not use a headphone jack if I prefer wireless, while people who prefer wired are having increasingly few options available on the market.

Yeah.. I disagree. One only thing that I got to give to bluetooth headphones is dealing with the cable - sometimes it's just more preferable to have no wires, especially during sport activities.

I'm still on the lookout for the next phone with a headphone jack. I was so hoping for it to be the next fairphone, but sadly that's not it. (Old small ZenFone was perfect but software support of Asus is ass)

that space could be used for a bigger battery

This is the truly bizarre part. Removing thr 3.5mm port is about thinness.

It is the antithesis of increasing battery life.

STRING THEM UP, FELLAS

Dafuq kind of take is this?

notices what sub we're in

oh, I see. Carry on.

I like having a separate connector for audio because it gets a lot of use and this lots of wear from the constant plugging and unplugging, and I'm often moving around with the headphones plugged in. I don't want to have to worry about breaking something from doing this.

Small USB connectors tend to be the first point of failure in most of my devices, and a broken USB port would render a phone completely unusable. I don't want to take that risk.

Aux jack is much more reliable than usb-c and can be plugged into any orientation. It is a superior connector. The size difference is negotiable and phones should be made a few mmm larger anyway to fit peoples hand better.

Counterpoint:

External DACs on multiple recent generations of Pixel devices frequently experience severe distortion and Google seems to not give a shit about fixing that.

I literally cannot use wired headphones or speakers with my phone even with relatively high end equipment without horrific audio glitches.

I ended up bying a phone without a jack. I got 2 dongles that split into a jack and a charging port, so i can charge in bed while watching videos. One of the jacks has static noise and whine, the other has i think some kind of digital to analog interface that cuts the sound conpletely when the audio is too low.

So i hear static or when i watch a video or listen to an audiobook, when there is a pause in speech i hear the sound cut out completely, or if a video has soft background music on it, it might not pick up on it at all.

It's very distracting.

And if you go online to buy a dongle, they dont really say what they have in them, or you dont know how your phone handles the conversion etc.

So I don't think "just buy a dongle" is the solution. It works but now i have all these problems i didnt have with my old phone that had a jack...

Extremely misinformed post. Upvoted.

Not enough room for a 3.5mm audio port, but we absolutely must have a 50MP dual camera plus TOF sensor!

it should be 2.5mm Aux and not the usual 3.5

true

that space could be used for a bigger battery

for what? for like 10 minutes of extra time?

I disagree. My phone has perfectly acceptable battery life and a 3.5mm jack, I use it all day and get home with over 40% left every day. I need the jack to use my earbuds at work, and to listen to music in my car - and I'm gonna be honest with you something as small as an adapter WILL get lost by me. Everyone's got a different use case, and it might not be important for you, but your use case isn't everyone's.

My 2yo phone is still virgin on his aux jack port.

I disagree, truly unpopular well done.

I don't understand how people like Bluetooth earbuds.

You have to constantly clean them because of ear wax for starters, and they're much more uncomfortable if you're sweaty. Not to mention all the years of doctors saying don't use Q-tips because it pushes ear wax into your ears just for everyone to start shoving buds in there anyway. To bad the younger generation didn't get to learn about wired clip-ons or flat cables. Wish they still make them but I suppose bonephonesoike Shokz are safer for when cycling.

Then there's the battery issues. That just feels like a downgrade. Not only is it yet another thing you have to remember to charge, but they can run out of battery. Aux version literally never runs out of battery. Maybe if we had a new gen of battery that lasted months sure, but we don't yet.

And lastly battery on phone isn't an issue. I have an Xperia 1 V and can easily use the phone all day without running out of battery, and it has a headphone jack.

I'm with you.

Fuck you, well done.

Well, that's definitely an unpopular opinion.

For me, there are two reasons losing the aux port sucks. First, it means I have to pay extra for functionality I want. It's not like the phone is cheaper without the aux port so it's just more money out of pocket for me. Second, it means I have to keep track of a dongle. Something I'd be using nearly everyday.

The funny thing about battery size; they could make the phone 1mm thicker and you'd get way more battery capacity from that than removing an aux port.

Also, wireless sucks dick. May as well give my own unpopular opinion.

Once again, remember folks, this is unpopular opinions. Which means this is a good post, not a bad one.

Wouldn‘t a second USB-C outlet make sense? One for charging, one for audio/data/external devices. Or is that still too much space wasted?