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Fairphone announces the €599 Fairphone 6, with a 6.31" 120Hz LTPO OLED display, a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chip, and enhanced modularity with 12 swappable parts

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  • Alright what phone are you using with a jack?

    Sony Xperia 5V

  • Headphone jack is e-waste

    you can use the usb C headphones

    What the absolute fuck are you talking about? What am I supposed to do with the dozen wired headphones I already have? Some of them decades old? Throw them in the garbage? Sounds real eco-friendly.

    bluetooth audio is great

    It is. We had it on phones since before the original iPhone. No one wants to take that away.

    Problem is BT headphones last 2 years then they go in the garbage because the batteries are dead. How eco-friendly is that!?

    Yes if they've lasted decades thats their job done. Now people are buying usb C headphones and there is no need to continue to support decades old standards. The ewaste from a pair of headphones is tiny so its not worth fretting over.

    Also BT headphones last longer than 2 years. Mine are 1st gen samsung buds and going on 5 years at this point and still hold enough charge to listen to music during my work day. If im going to be using them all day I have 1 in and 1 charging in the case and then I can easily have music for 10+ hours on a 5 year old device. If I threw them away today I would consider them to have not been ewaste.

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    One plus did the same thing. Now they're no different then all the expensive brands out there.

  • Fair enough, feel free to buy USB-C headphones then.

    Edit: Time for the real reply.

    I never have to charge my wired headphone.

    But you still have to charge your phone. When I charge my phone I also charge my headphones. Most wireless headphones notify you in advance when they're running low, in my experience enough in advance to not run out before charging again. And finally, charging even once a day is still less overhead than having to manage wires every single time you use the headphones.

    Nor do I have to buy new batteries or new headphones when they die

    Yeah, you only buy new headphones when the wire gets damaged because that one time you didn't take good enough care of the wire. I personally had to buy a new set of headphones every year because I'm bad with wires. I'd either store them poorly because I was in a hurry or they'd get stuck on something and get yanked. My first BT headphones lasted me 5 years before starting to have noticeable battery issues and then I still used them for another 3 years before the battery was so dead it wouldn't live my daily commute.

    overall my response boils down to "just use wired then" because the arguments are silly personal preference arguments and the wider consumer market has already decided that wireless is better. But if you want wired nothing is stopping you from getting USB-C wired headphones.

    No consumer decided it would be better without it, there's literally no reason to defend it's removal. It doesn't exist because the phone companies wanted to sell their wireless earbuds, that's it. Anything else they tell you is bullshit.

    Why are you trying to justify not having it? You can still use your wireless buds if you want if the port exists, you can still use your USB-C earphones or adapter if you'd like. It can exist in harmony along with other features, like it did for decades before capitalism called for more profits.

  • Yes if they've lasted decades thats their job done. Now people are buying usb C headphones and there is no need to continue to support decades old standards. The ewaste from a pair of headphones is tiny so its not worth fretting over.

    Also BT headphones last longer than 2 years. Mine are 1st gen samsung buds and going on 5 years at this point and still hold enough charge to listen to music during my work day. If im going to be using them all day I have 1 in and 1 charging in the case and then I can easily have music for 10+ hours on a 5 year old device. If I threw them away today I would consider them to have not been ewaste.

    Yes if they've lasted decades thats their job done

    No it means they'll essentially last indefinitely, unlike BT buds.

    Now people are buying usb C headphones and there is no need to continue to support decades old standards

    No, what's happened is that we went from a single open standard for audio jacks to competing standards (actually 3 of them before the EU stepped in and forced Apple to quit their bullshit). And gained nothing in the process.

    The ewaste from a pair of headphones is tiny so its not worth fretting over.

    It's not a pair of headphones, it's millions of audio devices.

  • Sony Xperia 5V

    I didn't know sony made phones

  • Wait... have you actually lost your mouse? Hilarious if true 😂

    Well not actually lost... I just haven't found under which furniture it rolled yet 😅

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    love fairphone but i cant go bacl from graphene os. its so nice not having google attacjed to everything.

  • LOL, 10m extension cord. I mean you've already established that you don't give a crap about sound quality with your first point but that's just ridiculous. Not to mention the 10m cord that your dragging around the house.

    I don't really care about sound quality when using earphones at home because I only use them when there's a lot of ambient noise so the sound will be bad either way. When doing vacuum cleaning, or the dishes, stuff like that. When I still had a smartphone I used a 1,5m extension cord so it wouldn't pull on the jack each time I move, but since it died I'm using a much longer one plugged to my PC (not actually 10m, that was hyperbole, more like 5m). It's not very convenient I'll admit, but it does the job.

  • I didn't know sony made phones

    They've always made phones...

  • Maybe you could start a competitor that produces a similar spec phone for $100?

    Obviously not, the poor spec choices led to the price. Perhaps the company claiming to focus on ethics could focus on ethics instead of bezel-less design and 120 Hz screens, thus bringing it in at a lower price point. Feel free to critique me now

  • They've always made phones...

    Not in the US apparently

  • how many times does the average person use wireless charging? Seriously, I haven't seen anyone do that yet, or know of someone who uses that.

    and yet that's still a major feature in lots of phones

    If I've asked a question twice and you've danced around it both times, that tells everyone what your answer is.

  • love fairphone but i cant go bacl from graphene os. its so nice not having google attacjed to everything.

    If you want something not Google, I used to have Ubuntu Touch on a Fairphone before Australia's 3G network was switched off. It would have to be an older Fairphone however.

  • You are completely and utterly wrong. I'm pretty sure that a $700 phone's dac is better than what you can find on a $5 dongle from god knows where. Also, by design there should be no "noise" or "interference" causing issues with the internal dac. If there is, you bought an extremely shitty device.

    You know you've got not argument when you have to compare a $700 dollar phone to a $5 dongle for your argument to even make sense.

    First of all, I seriously doubt any $700 phone without a 3.5mm port is going to have a decent DAC, because there's no reason for it. In those phones the DAC is used primarily for phone calls. If those phones had a a 3.5mm port and they were flagship phones then maybe they would have higher quality DACs in them, but then they'd also cost more. And secondly, I wasn't talking about some cheap $5 dongle, I specifically said quality headphones.

  • No consumer decided it would be better without it, there's literally no reason to defend it's removal. It doesn't exist because the phone companies wanted to sell their wireless earbuds, that's it. Anything else they tell you is bullshit.

    Why are you trying to justify not having it? You can still use your wireless buds if you want if the port exists, you can still use your USB-C earphones or adapter if you'd like. It can exist in harmony along with other features, like it did for decades before capitalism called for more profits.

    Why aren't you complaining about the removal of a keyboard? Or the removal of SD card slots? Or the removal or the IR light? Or the notification light? or something else that used to be there but isn't now. Why is the 3.5mm port so special it deserves constant complaining about almost A DECADE LATER? Why must you be these grumpy old men who can't fucking move on with the times.

    I don't really care if the port is there or not, I'm just fed up with the constant whining about it. It's gone, the ship has sailed. The majority are more than happy to use wireless headphones, 3.5mm is a niche in the mobile space. There are alternatives if you really like wired headphones. What makes 3.5mm such fucking hill to die on? Nothing. It's just petty conservatism of people unwilling to move on with the times.

  • You're vastly overestimating the space required for a 3.5mm jack, and the reasons for its removal.

    The jack takes up some internal space, but not much at all. The components required internally like the DAC chip are insignificant. It is a potential source of water ingress, but that can be mitigated and has been done many times before.

    The reason for removal is two fold, first you simply don't have to deal with any of the above, so from an engineering perspective it's always easier to not do something. The second, and most important, **is to sell wireless headphones. **

    You'll notice that Fairphone came out with their own earbuds at the same time they removed the headphone jack. You could of course use Bluetooth headphones with the Fairphone 1, 2, and 3, but you weren't forced to think about it and could just use your existing headphones. Removing the jack ads inconvenience and breaks user habit, causing people to re-evaluate their headphones and consider a new purchase, which the manufacturer just happens to have and likely in a bundle deal.

    Apple, Google, and Samsung have seen huge uplift in earbud sales with the removal of the jack. So the anger of some power users is of no consequence to them. Seeing Fairphone follow in this behaviour what's disappointing.

    I made the mistake of believing that Fairphone is an enthusiast company, like the Framework of phones maybe. There is some overlap, sure, with the repair-ability aspect and available parts and schematics, but that's about it.

    Other than that, FP wants to be a mainstream brand, the eco-friendly Samsung or Apple; the power users can get shafted with their audio jacks for all they care. While Framework has actual hardware modularity and release updated HW modules so you don't buy the whole device again for an upgrade.

    Looking at FP's financial statements, I get the impression they aren't doing too hot lately, so I get it if they need bigger margins to continue operating. Just don't be a fucking hypocrite and lie about the reason of the jack removal ffs.

  • What about headphones with a replaceable cable? Higher quality cables usually last longer aswell

    Yeah, my current bluetooth headset has that option, and i keep a cable in reserve. the ones i had to replace were mostly in my teens/tweens, and were still cabled in-ear style - easier to hide under clothes and hair, but also no cable replacing if you don't know much about how to solder. TBH, if i had to decide i would not go back to cabled headphones at all - it's simply too limiting and irritating to deal with, especially with multiple audio sources. When listening to music the latency is not important (and has improved a lot in comparison to the humble start), and it's been a while since i had phones which had sound quality issues because of bluetooth.

  • This is thing with not understanding how statistics work. The point is that your personal experience is biased.

    These people are not passionate about phone thickness. They won't start or even have conversations about it. Specially since, for the most part, the companies are already catering to their tastes. But, if placed in front of a survey and asked to rank phone features by their importance for their purchase decisions, the overwhelming majority will rank other phones features way above a headphone jack. Most people on the planet are not audiophiles, and the majority of people perceive wires as an annoyance and an inconvenience.

    That is the point of surveying and market research. To check with the actual potential buyers what is worth making. Of course it isn't a guarantee, looking here at the recent flop of the Samsung Edge. But otherwise, a single person's perception of the market will never be complete or accurate.

    Are we forgetting that companies also have their own bias to make the decisions that increase overall profits? They lost buyers (me included) by this change, but they made up the difference by selling higher margin accessories. Companies will only cater to users if it aligns with turning a bigger profit. If adding an anti-feature is better for the bottom line, then that's how it goes. Enshittification doesn't happen accidentally, but by pushing the boundaries of what the users tolerate.

  • headphone jackn't 😞

    This this this.

    They want to sell their buds and headset.

    don't misunderstand me, those are great repairable bluetooth devices, but if i were to not have a headphone jack and just a "long lasting repairable phone" , i'm sticking to my Google pixel.