Fairphone 5 - The Ars Technica Review

Rade0nfighter@lemmy.world to Android@lemmy.world – 354 points –
Fairphone 5 sets a new standard with 8-10 years of Android support
arstechnica.com
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Yeah. I actually went from usb c only phone to one with a headphone jack again, and I've decided I'm not even considering devices without a headphone jack. The dongles suck from either a usability perspective or a software one, and they just add another point of failure rather than just using a very simple aux jack. I get why a lot of manufacturers stopped supporting them (it costs some money, and the dongle make them some), but it's still very, very dumb.

This is a case though where your other sound systems you guys are also trying to plug into are outdated. Because your phone is not among your outdated productsl, doesn't mean it's a manufacturers' fault. They are simply catering to the market.

Newer head units (stand alone audio sources) have Bluetooth and other connectivity features plus a jack anyways.

So because you're using outdated shit it's the phones fault? Let me ask you, so you think more devices in the future will have jacks or less? Answer: less. The sooner you change your equipment the less heartache you'll have.

Bluetooth gets outdated. A headphone jack does not. Bluetooth is constantly updating its codec so are phones. I have wireless speakers from 5 years ago that refuse to work because the Bluetooth version is too old.

I use a Bluetooth dac or just Bluetooth headphones most of the time. But occasionally, I have issues with battery life or Bluetooth and just want to use a headphone jack (a technology that is simple in part because it has been around for over a century in various iterations), and not having one is incredibly frustrating from a usability standpoint. I'm not projecting my issue with "using outdated shit, " I'm stating that I actually tried to move on, and when I went back (temporarily at first) the increase in usability was frankly notable.

Yeah man and they said that with the horse and buggy as well which had been around for thousands of years, and DVD and laser disk, and mp3's and jet flight.

Yeah, there's still a niche if you're wanting to "win" your argument. But you may as well shout at the wall.

Manufacturers don't care about your niche use cases especially since arguably better alternatives have come about.

It's not. There's no reason why headphone jacks would be outdated. They carry an analog signal to drive the headphones. With a dongle, you're just converting that signal from USB-C. USB-C headphones carry the exact same signal and bluetooth is garbage for audio quality. 3.55mm TRS is the de facto standard for headphones in the consumer market. It really doesn't get any simpler or cheaper.