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
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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.

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.