The Fairphone 5 is a little more repairable and much more modern

hedge@beehaw.org to Technology@beehaw.org – 279 points –
The Fairphone 5 is a little more repairable and much more modern
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I never quite understood the headphone jack thing. It's a nifty thing to have but an adapter is a one time purchase. It seems like nowadays lack of headphone jack is just a minor inconvenience.

Because they removed something that was convenient to try and force people to either spend more money on adapters or buy Bluetooth headphones.

And if you need to charge at the same time? That's yet another adapter.

There's USBC headphones

That is true, and you can get USBC dac cables for existing headphones that have the ability to swap cables.

But it's still yet another thing you have to buy when your existing stuff already worked fine, and it still ties up the USBC port so unless you wirelessly charge you still need an adapter.

It's just less convenient and as far as I am concerned removing the jack has offered no benefits to consumers.

Or just get some wireless headphones and be done with it.

Worth it just so you don't knock the wired ones off your head when you move about, or yank the cables out of them and have to buy new ones.

I can see the point of wired if you've got some nice audiophile kit, but a phone is not that.

Except that wireless headphones have more complexity, points of failure, and usually shorter life. Just avoiding batteries alone should give a longer life and do less environmental harm.

As a counterpoint to that, none of my wired headphones that I used when walking lasted more than about 18 months before they eventually got snagged one too many times on jackets, etc, and constantly cut out unless you hold the cable just right.

My bluetooth ones (£60-ish AKG) I've had for 5 years and they're fine. More than fine. Battery still lasts ages (40 hours ish, means recharging every few weeks, although it gives the low battery warning too early for my liking). No tangles or snags or feeding a cable down my shirt to my pockets. I used the 3.5mm jack for it like once on a plane for my Switch, but even that support BT headphones now.

I even use wireless at my PC now, because surely everyone has tangled a cable under a chair wheel, gone to stand up and just about ripped their ears off. HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless are what I got and the battery life is nuts.

Its not convenient unless you need to use it extremely frequently and can keep track of it because of that.

I barely use my adapter so when I do need it, its another 15 minutes to find it or realize it got thrown out or something. Its just not convenient. Convenience would be leaving both ports, or for headphone companies to split the end of the cable into usbc, lightning, and audio jack

Leave it on your headphones?