Fairphone 5 - The Ars Technica Review
Fairphone 5 - The Ars Technica Review
The Fairphone 5 will keep on trucking until at least 2031.
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Hate to be that person but no headphone jack for a sustainable phone?
Environmentally friendly and fairly sourced, except for the consumable blue tooth earbuds we will sell you as a consumable to push our profits while creating e-waste.
Or the dongles you'll lose. It's the only reason I didn't buy the Fairphone 4 and will never get the next one. I don't understand how you can market sustainability and fixable stuff without the headphone jack.
am i seriously the only one that uses usb-c headphones? why is everyone immediately jumping to bluetooth?
I know it's a crutch, but there's always a USB-C to 3.5mm converter. There are some versions sold that still keep the charging port.
Then give me 2 usb c ports on the phone.i can compromise with that
Exactly. I don't care if it's 3.5mm or usb-c, it's the quantity of ports that matters.
My phone came with usb-c earphones.
Is that not an acceptable compromise?
Works fine for me.
No, because I own earphones and cables and don't want to create more waste if I can help it. Plus, I may want to connect the audio out to an existing stereo system, and plug it in to charge at the same time.
I appreciate that more cables equals more waste and inconvenience. But your situation is more than likely not an issue for the majority. The options are out there. The arguments from some in here that a usbc to Aux is easy to lose is subjective. I've never lost mine, and it's been just fine whenever I've needed it.
If you want something to connect your phone to a stereo whilst retaining the ability to charge then there are adapters that have an auc outpit and usbc input that can work as well as systems, like one called wiim, that you connect to your wifi and aux into your stereo/speakers that can play music from most wifi enabled devices losslessly. Both of these options would be fairly futureproof as they would work with any new phone, stereo/speakers, or other device, regardless of which you upgrade.
I know that it's another thing to add on and costs kore money, but frankly, being angry about the lack of aux outputs on phones isn't going to change anything.
You can either complain and achieve nothing or adapt and make any phone you choose to buy work for you and your specific needs.
If the audio output on this phone is the only concern you have, then i think it's a small price to pay to support the many aspects of this phone that prevent explotation of workers and sustainability of materials etc.
That's only one concern I have for this phone. The biggest concern is value to cost ratio. I'm willing to pay a premium for replaceable parts and longer support, but not if the design is substandard and the components are not there.
There are headphones that use the USB port. Headphone jacks are kinda dead tech at this point.
Hard disagree, you might not use them, but they are critical in many settings.
Credit card reader, comfortable headsets, hooking up to other systems, audio without batteries, etc. There are a good number of people who still use headphones! (Including most people in South Asia....)
Credit card reader hooked into headphone jack is a dead tech too now that the rest of the world have moved on from mag stripe to chip and pin.
The rest of the world isn't America.
comfortable headsets, audio without batteries
These are both solved via USB headsets tho?
Downsides of usb-c headphones:
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Bluetooth security risk surface, exposes your phone to more attacks.
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Most/all phones have a single usb-c port. Charging and using headphones difficult
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Usb-c port placement is awkwardly on bottom of phone while must headphone jacks are on top of the phone. Plugging in your headphones on the bottom of the phone with a dongle is awkward.
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The entire process of using a usb-c dongle or using Bluetooth headphones makes the entire system more complicated. KISS (keep it simple). The more complexity there is that can go wrong, the worse the experience. If I'm taking a important conference call, I want my audio to just work.
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Bluetooth audio is delayed compare to wired
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Bluetooth Microphone standard is quite poor, the sound quality when talking on a group calls is bad compared to wired.
Not directly related: the whole point of removing the headphone jack was to sell airpods. First apple, then android, and even fair phone. Each time the jack is removed to push sales of the branded Bluetooth ear buds. It's a user hostile move.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/apple-airpods-success
The excuse may be to save money, Space, water rating, but the reason is increased sales.
I personally still use a pixel 5A which had a headphone jack only because it's the B tier phone for markets where people are less likely to also buy the airpods.
If you buy this phone, you're exclusively buying it for sustainability, so you're already accepting an inferior product.
There's no reason to cling to headphone jacks as if those are somehow a worthwhile technology.
I just outlined my use case, very concisely I thought. It may not be your use case. But please don't dismiss my use case because you don't use it yourself. Its only polite.
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For dead tech they sure do sell a shit ton of dongles
You can still buy DVD players, which means people still buy DVD players, but that doesn't make it not dead tech
But how many though?
Idk hopefully not many. I'm not enthused by dead tech.
I’ve gone through 3 of these on my iphone, they’re flimsy as hell
All headphones you plug in are.
I’ve never had a 3.5mm connector break on me. Those little lightning jacks though? You drop your phone once and it’s over. I can’t imagine USB C is any better
USBC is so much better though, never had one break on me ever.
Audio quality loss and latency are built into Bluetooth. Its only advantage is not having a wire.
I'm not talking about Bluetooth at all tho
Oh, you mean USB headphones? TBH, way overly complex compared to analog with (albeit negligible) audio quality loss, which still works with legacy tech going back decades. It's like arguing a bicycle is obsolete because motorcycles exist.
If bicycles and motorcycles competed for the exact same role, with an opportunity cost allowing only one, how would bicycles not be obsolete?
What a dumb analogy.
I didn't choose the analogy.
You did, because you're assuming that you can only choose one or the other. Even though it's been demonstrated that the headphone jack does not require much space, can even be added to phones that don't have it (check out Strange Parts on yt) and does not have any drawbacks.
That opportunity cost is not a thing.
If you can add it to a phone that doesn't have it already, I'm not sure what the problem is, in your view.
Dude. The only difference between a normal headphone with a 3.5mm jack and a "usb" headphone is that the latter needs to have its own dac/amp. Guess what? YOUR PHONE ALREADY HAS THAT. Usb headphones are more complex, more expensive and not guaranteed to work indefinitely.
Removing the jack makes 0 sense.
In my experience, 0 headphones are guaranteed to work indefinitely, and I've been using headphones jacks since like '87
The only problem I have ever had with headphones are pad/eartip degradation and cable issues. It's rare for the driver to fail.
That's in stark contrast to battery powered headphones, given thart batteries will 100% fail given a few years and they're (in most cases) not user replaceable.
At the bottom of your phone (probably? Idk like iPhones and shit), you have a USB-C (or some letter) port. There are headphones that plug in there.
They are no more battery powered than your phone.
Kind of shocked this isn't well known, as this is a tech forum.
Ok, then you're talking only about usb headphones.
If you have a dongle and it breaks, good luck fixing the cable. God forbid the dac is integrated to the headphone itself. Also, if the dac fails you're also sol. So yeah, I wouldn't call having a more expensive set up that's also more likely to fail and doesn't have any added benefits a good alternative.
This is all also true about traditional headphones jacks, which have failed quite often for me over the decades
My favorite headphones of all time failed in this way, and requires I have the jack in exactly the right spot/depth