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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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.

comfortable headsets, audio without batteries

These are both solved via USB headsets tho?

Downsides of usb-c headphones:

  1. Bluetooth security risk surface, exposes your phone to more attacks.

  2. Most/all phones have a single usb-c port. Charging and using headphones difficult

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. Bluetooth audio is delayed compare to wired

  6. 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.

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

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

Did you forget to mention that fixing a headphone jack costs a few bucks and can be done by pretty much anyone with a soldering iron?

No, because in practice that isn't a thing that regularly happens, and as the tech continues to die out it will be less and less possible.

Most people do not own and cannot use a soldering iron.

"cannot use"? Where you born without hands? Also, that "practice" is not an ancient tradition. It's an extremely simple process that takes 15 minutes. Also no, normal headphones will not "die out".

I'd be willing to bet on the latter point there. Laserdiscs are similarly dead technology. Niche collectors may enjoy them, but they will not be catered to for the average consumer.

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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.

That it should be there in the first place and that the reassons given for not including it are completely false.

At this point I'm not sure if you're trolling or just plain dumb. Either way, I'm not wasting any more of my time. Bye.

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