With completely wireless earbuds, the rule is: when the battery fails, they have to be disposed of. Not so with the Fairbuds, that allow you to replace batteries in just a few seconds. Combined with a repairable design, the earbuds should therefore have an extremely long lifetime.
I imagine phones no longer having headphone jacks isn’t helping the wired headphones market. I’d gladly use wired headphones if it meant I didn’t need to charge mine or worry about them dying on me. Aside from working out, it’s not like the wire is exactly in the way…
Towards the end of my DJ’ing career, I was to the point of showing up to a venue (that had an existing sound system) on my motorcycle with my controller, headphones, microphone (that didn’t smell like beer breath) and laptop in a backpack. I’d just plug in and go. But even then the idea of DJ’ing from just a phone or tablet seemed weird to me. I understood the appeal of it but…
The sticking point for most people is stereo. When you throw on AC/DC, you expect to hear the guitar out of the just one speaker but when DJ’ing a large room that doesn’t work. Half the room hears the guitar and the other half just hears high hat. So you end up flipping the mono switch, ya know, just for that one song. Then eventually you’ve done three gigs in a row and realize that it’s been mono the whole time and no-one noticed, not even you.
Headphones jacks have two audio out channels. We typically think of them as left and right, but they aren’t, that’s just how most people use them. Once you get past the mono idea, you realize you have two distinct audio outputs on your phone or tablet. If the music software can do the mono summing instead of the mixer, then then you can hook the “left” output cable to mixer ch 1, and the “right” to ch 2, and play different songs out each. Make sure the same output of the mixer goes to both speakers and you’re in business. You just need dj’ing software that can play two different songs at the same time on your phone and interface with a controller, probably via bluetooth.
Now you can show up to a party with just your phone that you were already carrying anyway, plug in to their controller, and make a surprise appearance.
It still weirds me out, but modern phones have the horsepower to do this. They certainly don’t have the disk space for a terabyte library, so you aren’t going to work a six hour wedding with an iphone, but there are TB SD cards so certain Androids could certainly do this.
There’s probably also software that will do everything over bluetooth so a completely wireless phone could work.
I’ve been out of the game for over a decade. I can’t imagine how far the controllers and software have come and don’t want to find out because I’m sure my poor wallet can’t handle it.
Excellent points, appreciate the write up. Better said than I could myself.
I will also note that in my personal experience phone was more of a hail mary when I’d be doing like a wedding reception or private party and needed a tune for client that wasn’t already in my USBs. When the tip depends on it, yes, I absolutely DJ with the phone.
I agree modern phones have the horsepower to do a full on audio production; how does a 3.5mm jack help in this setup that a multi-bus USB-C DAC or mixer can’t do a better job than a driver that’s confined to 5mm of space?
A DAC is definitely the better option in my opinion, especially if your phone doesnt have great audio quality.
When the controllers first came out, they’d cheap out by making the computer process the audio. My first Bherringer controller would convert the mic input to digital and send it to the computer to mix on the sound card. If the computer was disconnected you couldnt use the mic or hook up a cd player.
Some people are just cheap and manufactures will make whatever people will buy. The phone already has audio, so the controller is just that: a bunch of buttons. You dont have speakers built into a keyboard or mouse. A controller is just an HID.
My experience of Bluetooth has always been settings that I can’t change, security issues, and devices that run different implementations on both ends. See ‘barely a standard’, even when the box for each reads the same standard number.
Which is why I’m so reluctant to call it a standard; it isnt standardized.
Rhythm game enthusiast use wired headphones & kernel+pipewire settings to further reduce latency—as do musicians for recording on playback. Pro gamers use wired peripherals too for inputs & some even go analog for monitors for lower latency. Is it a stretch to say “wireless” is shorthand for “casual”? 🤔
I mean for working out and on the go I use Bluetooth ear buds.
But damn do I sometimes wish I still had a headphone jack on my phone. Like just grabbing my nice pair of open ear headphones, throwing down on the couch and listening to music for example.
And of course I always had backup wired ear buds with me, just in case the battery ran out.
But eh, I can live without the headphone jack, now I just wish they would have used the space for a bigger battery.
I use both wireless and wired, depending on what I’m doing. The earbuds fall out when I’m exercising, but have better call-quality because of the noise canceling.
And I use wired for chatting, when playing games with friends on playstation. And I still have an ipod I use occasionally… so I just kinda have both.
I prefer to have a headphone jack on my phone, but I have a dongle adapter for usb-c, if I want to use my wired ones. I would just prefer not to use the adapter if I didn’t need to, because I’ve already had issues with my phone’s charging port trying to crap-out on me. The charging port isn’t as robust, and you do lose some quality with the dongle. I deal with it just fine; but a headphone jack on a phone might tip me towards purchasing that one, if I were looking to buy a new phone. It depends for me, but it’s not the end of the world, just an inconvenience that could easily be avoided
Some devices cannot use Bluetooth audio devices, or it’s buggy or laggy af. I don’t mind wireless buds for the gym, but they sound worse and die before a flight across the US is complete. Wired headsets so don’t have to be charged, or if they do have ANC, its usually a replacable battery instead of a rechargeable battery.
I dunno if it’s just my Fold 4, but when I ride the train or visit an apartment, I get bombarded by pairing requests from Bose headphones and other bluetooth devices like home speakers. It’s probably some setting that Samsung quietly flipped on in a recent patch, but it’s really annoying. Fuck off, 𝙳𝚊𝚟𝚎’𝚜 𝙱𝚘𝚜𝚎 𝚀𝚞𝚒𝚎𝚝𝙲𝚘𝚖𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚝 𝟺𝟻 𝙷𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚙𝚑𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚜, I don’t need pairing notifications every 10 seconds.
I still have 200 euro wired in ear headphones that are my favorite pair so I need to 3,5mm port. But I never got the loud commotion over the disappearance of the port, because you can easily use a 3,5mm to USB-c cable. Having said that,I do still appreciate such a port in my phone because sometimes I forget to take the cable with me or I lose it.
Pretty sure the market would be bigger if manufacturers didn’t remove the feature in order to push to wireless.
What I like about them is not having a battery, meaning they have a lot less impact on the climate. And it isn’t needed when they are always connected to an other device with a battery that is less than 1m away.
Exactly how I bought mine. Only pair I could find in my house were insufferably cheap and hurt to use. Realized I could get a very decent wired pair for like $20. Love those things now
The low-end Chinese IEMs from the likes of MOONDROP, TRUTHEAR, etc. in that $20 range are surprisingly good if anyone is interested in picking up a spare.
I ended up getting a CCA CRA pair, and they’re surprisingly good too. Currently $22 for a pair with a mic. It was either those, or MOONDROP, but I think either of them would be well worth the 20 bucks
Now I just wish that they would bring their phone to a US provider that is not T-Mobile. I can’t buy their phone until it runs on a network that I can use.
Yeah most phones in the us are locked to a network. Some of them are unlocked to certain network vendors but won’t work with others (for example if a phone works on Verizon its a near guarantee even if its an unlocked phone it won’t work on any other networks)
It is a pretty simple thing to look up the bands that the phone supports. All of the providers publish the bands that they work on. This is not difficult. This is a manufactured problem.
It’s true. Its not a coincidence the most hostile telecom (Verizon) is also the one that had a former CEO as chairman of the FCC during the Trump administration. It would be very easy for OEMs to introduce more multiband phones to the market but Verizon has some sweet licensing deals on their network brands.
iPhone batteries are covered under warranty if they drop below - I think - 80% of original capacity. Using that as a benchmark, something between that and 50% is going to be frustrating for the average user. Perhaps frustrating enough to replace.
“Brick” caught me off guard too. When thinking about a product that can’t be used while simultaneously charging has a battery that’s nearly shot, though, it struck me as a fair description.
I think that’s an issue of semantics. If someone needs their device to last all day and it doesn’t anymore, then it is effectively bricked. Could one find a workaround to the issue? Oh probably, something as simple as lugging around a battery bank should do the trick, but ultimately users being able to just swap the battery in their device themselves isn’t a big ask. It gives a modicum of ownership back to the person who actually bought the device.
Replaceable batteries are coming to the EU in general, at least for portable devices, via the EU Batteries Regulation, which is in force already and requires all portable batteries to be easily removable and replaceable by the end user from 2027
Well I do like FDAs, and roads though. But I’d rather have healthcare as well, and I’d like way less of it to go toward it cops and wars. Mainly I want a lot more of the taxes coming from the billionaires.
The EU is a relatively large market, and it wouldn’t make economic sense to develop and produce EU-specific devices. I’m pretty sure you’ll also be seeing replaceable batteries.
Starting to notice a trend with these “specialty” device companies, crap specs and high (relatively) prices.
The FP5, released last year has a SoC that performs worse than the Tensor. The TENSOR, a chip widely regarded as shitty, and can be had on a phone 200$ cheaper. :/
The workers literally get paid bonuses for each phone that gets made. The phone’s parts all get certified for sustainability. They need to find manufacturers willing to fulfill their requirements, for which they will obviously charge more.
I’m not saying that they’re for everyone or should be free from criticism. I personally decided against buying one due to the size, performance and camera. But if you’re complaining about a sustainable product costing more than a regular one, you’re missing the point and were never in the target audience in the first place.
You can be “fair” and pricey, just put a better competitive SoC, rn it’s near budget tier for upper mid range money
And then they expect someone to use it for 10 years? LMAO, that thing is gonna be sluggish AF in another 1 or 2 tops, can’t imagine trying to use it in 10 lolol
You can be “fair” and pricey, just put a better competitive SoC, rn it’s near budget tier for upper mid range money
That’s the thing, fair SoC’s aren’t cheap because they aren’t available everywhere nor is a fair supply chain easy to setup. Do you think somebody just snapped their fingers or trusted the words written in a contract?
"This supplier says they’re fair and ethical, so I’ll believe them 🤷 "
Who do you think has to verify suppliers claims? Do you think they are free? Do you think a manufacturer will simply throw out an unfair supplier to be ethical and fair if that meant loss of business or revenue?
Think about it from the extreme: are slaves cheaper than paid employees? Then continue the thoughts from there and the impacts they have on the cost and availability of products.
Just walk through the logistics yourself and compare the cost of doing business ethically vs not. Maybe even write it down to get a better picture.
Hard disagree that earbuds negate codec importance. I love open-back over-ears, but one of my best pairs of headphones are Moondrop IEMs, and I can hear differences in audio quality more noticeably on them than a lot of speakers. I very often plug them into a Bluetooth receiver for semi-wireless convenience, and I can absolutely hear the difference between LDAC and SBC.
However, yeah definitely agreed that $150 is fair for what’s being offered here. Limited codec support is common (if unfortunate) enough in similarly priced gear without the other benefits these bring, so I’d say it’s fair enough unless the drivers themselves are bad.
It’s not just about quality (AAC is perfectly fine quality-wise), it’s IMHO more about the extreme latency, and the fact that they have to to drop down to terrible-sounding HSP/HSP when using the microphone, since A2DP is monodirectional. Sucks that they don’t support LE Audio.
Turning your nose up at SBC isn’t being a codec snob; it’s having functioning ears.
And if you’re on Android, AAC is not well implemented compared to on iOS / MacOS. Maybe this has changed in the past couple years but it was immediately noticeable to me when I upgraded from the WH-1000XM3s to the XM4s, I could immediately tell that the audio was worse if they weren’t using LDAC. And these don’t have LDAC.
Unlike with competent compression codecs (mp3 vs AAC vs FLAC), where most people genuinely cannot tell the difference between a well-compressed song vs a lossless one, many people can immediately tell the difference between AptX and AAC or SBC on Android.
There are plenty of true wireless headphones out there that support LDAC or AptX for less than $100. It’s not surprising to me that people in their target audience would think $150 for something that sounds terrible to them isn’t reasonable.
Running sbc at higher bitrates than default sound subjectively better than most existing codecs. I use 552 kbit/s regulary and it sound great. Unfortunately the support for higher sbc bitrates is terrible.
I’ve not been able to listen to high bitrate SBC myself, but that tracks with my understanding, too. I read this article - https://habr.com/en/articles/456182/ - recently, when trying to confirm my understanding of why there’s such a huge difference in sound quality from codec to codec.
What setup do you have where you’re able to listen to 552 kbps SBC?
You don’t think the Bluetooth codec makes a difference when you’re using Bluetooth headphones? When else would it make a difference?
I feel like you’re just confusing the codec used for compressing audio for storage and wireless transmission with the codec used for transmission via Bluetooth. That or you’ve just never experienced a setting where a better codec was being used.
SBC can sound okay, but see here for a breakdown of why it almost never actually does. Basically, it’s capped at only using a fraction of the available bandwidth, even though it could use more if not for arbitrarily imposed limitations.
In-ear phones have the potential of having the highest fidelity of all headphone types. So, no, being a “codec snob” is completely justified. Though I personally won’t be using BT phones before we get lossless connection as a standard. Wired are cheaper, last longer and have less environmental impact during production and after EOL.
Nothing to do with ADA conversions (and digital-to-digital, eg SRC or bitdepth conversion, is completely transparent if done even remotely adequately). Small drivers close to eardrum with good seal just seem to be easier to manage when it comes to frequency response and distortion. Most open circumaural headphones, for example, seem to have deficiencies in lower end no matter the price.
No, they’re saying accurately reproducing sounds for people to listen to has much more to do with the vibrating membrane to eardrum interaction than anything that happens between the source material and the vibrating membrane.
Theoretically, yes. Practically, bluetooth has been way funkier than cable ever has for me. It drops, loses packets, and sometimes tries to catch up on whatever shit it was doing to suddenly have the audio sound like it’s fast forwarding. My ears aren’t the best, but that’s the kind of shit I do hear. Membranes can’t protect you from that.
Sorry, what? They are obliged to buy them, if not today, they will be when their phone stops working and they have to buy a new one, because that won’t have a jack connector.
Except of course if they don’t use a smartphone.
Yes. and why it’s wildly complicated on Windows machines where you have an audio output device for headphones and for headset, and once something starts using the mic the output device itself changes.
So joining team chat in a game will either make audio sound horrible or break it entirely if you had specified the output device instead of using default device.
There’s a lot of things that make the Bluetooth experience better… it’s just almost all focused on mobile phones, maybe apple laptops if you stay in their walled gardens, but definitely not stock windows.
I say stock because if you do use windows and want to use Bluetooth you can improve things with a third party driver https://www.bluetoothgoodies.com/a2dp/
it’s still not great but at least you can use better codecs than default
Still critical of lack of audio jack but praises FairPhone for including list of all components and board view of where each part is located and a complete schematic. In comparison to other phones manufacturers that’s night and day of repair-ability.
I have yet to use a USB-C to 3.5mm dongle for my phone that hasn’t gone bust in my pocket in a few months. Probably time to see about a cable for the earphones that terminates in USB-C on the phone end, but that was difficult to search for.
I love my wired ones, and have been nursing some BT earbuds for years, but it’s hard to use wired and not to move to BT anymore without buying a phone specifically for the 3.5mm jack.
I’m the same, those dongles don’t last, and are annoying to use. I picked up one of these cables from aliexpress to use with my iems and it works a treat. There’s better quality cables out there, but for 10 bucks these are solid.
I did for a long time settle for adjusting the phone in the pocket, even putting things in there to change the position of the phone, but no, it never helped much. I’ll look in to getting it or something like it, thanks so much!
It was sad, yes, but I found that the dongle I already used for my laptop worked a charm with my phone. Sometimes plug in a keyboard and SD cards. Somehow handles it. I only really used an SD card for cameras and portable recording devices.
I think my needs in audio are mostly driven by my career. If I was not a music-person I would not need wired earphones. The driving factor of my having them is that I could pull them out of my phone and work on my laptop very quickly. BT headphones just had too much latency and not the best soundstage or frequency response…
Hyperbole aside, I’d still be worried that any cable physically connected to my phone would break the port over time - mostly because that has happened to me in the past with multiple devices.
I guess there is no way to escape the extra stress to the port. Maybe using this kind of detachable magnetic adapter can help with reducing the strain? They don’t conform with usb specification though, so while it may reduce strain to your port, it may carry another risk like making it easier to accidentally shorting some exposed pins.
Nice, I did not know such a connector existed - that will be useful for completely different and unrelated use cases.
While I had toyed with the idea of a portable, Japanese - made DAC for a while, I switched to Bluetooth headphones years ago. Started out with a cheap Philips headset for $50, later on got the Bose QC 35 II (still my daily driver when outside) and finally worked my way up to the Sony WH-1000XM5.
I did not realize how nice active noise cancelation is. Plus, the frequency reproduction of the XM5 with LDAC enabled is absolutely fine.
On the cons side, you’re walking around with $300 - $400 on your head, which is an absolutely luxury, plus you’ll get headphones that perform equally well in the sound department (minus the excellent ANC and freedom from cables) for a lot less.
I wouldn’t trade my wireless stuff for wired ones at this point. Wireless earbuds have gotten so good that dealing with a wire would be a downgrade in most cases. When I work with mixing I always use my monitors with a wire, for obvious reasons.
Also as an aside; any company that claims to do anything “green” is profiteering off of greenwashing. Of course making stuff environmentally friendly would become trendy in the cringe corpo world. I think the most egregious example is Apple’s autumn 2023 iPhone event. Just thinking back on it is making me cringe.
The “greenest” product is the one that is never made to begin with.
I like wired headphones it has nothing to do with modernity but the functionality I prefer. I dislike dealing with battery life. Same reason I have a wired keyboard. Also I’ve been in power outages that lasted long enough I wished I had a wall phone to do things like let my family know I hadn’t frozen to death or to call into work to update them so I was less likely to be fired. Me wanting a company to sell wired devices doesn’t affect your ability to buy wireless devices this isn’t a zero sum game, no need to be hostile.
Fair enough. Im just tired of all the backwards rhetoric on Lemmy, wasn’t fair to direct at you. I swear this place is stuck in a time warp sometime in the 90s or early 2000s. It’s frustrating.
Bluetooth headphones are not modernity, they should of course be an option, but increasingly they are the only game in town. Wired is still king for loads of things, not the least of which is reliability.
You wanna know how many times my wired Sennheiser’s have been unable to put music in my ear holes? Never. They always work. Care to guess how many wireless headphones have been able to provide sound every time I’ve wanted it without delay or failure? None. I’ve owned more than 2 dozen wireless this, that, and the other, headphones & earbuds, and none of them have been even a shadow of the reliability offered by my old wired headphones. Which is to say nothing of the fact that the wired experience usually sounds better (Still don’t think you can get any comfortable phat 600ohm monster cans that don’t have a wire) and has no issues with making sound when you’re in a space that is saturating the 2.4Ghz band (my Costco is usually so full of idiots on Bluetooth that you can’t get a reliable experience for anything from any wireless audio device.)
You seem to think it’s “backwards rhetoric” to want a feature that will never be offered in a wireless setup, and that’s just fucked man. There are a wealth of reasons why wireless does not fully replace wired. It’s why anything that doesn’t have to move generally gets a fixed connection, it’s just more reliable and often more efficient. That’s not backwards, it’s just a priority that you don’t value above others. If landlines or floppy disks offered any advantages over anything else they’d still be around today (and arguably they are in some limited niches,) but the replacements for those technologies have had no downsides against their replacements while wireless tech still has some significant downsides (again, maybe you don’t weight the pros and cons the same, so this may not apply to you) against the technology they are meant to replace, and will likely never see 100% capture of their role as a result.
TL;DR: Stop trying to frame this as some sort of crusade against the future, there are legit cases where wired is just better than wireless.
Idk what exactly causes this, but I definitely have headphones that never do that. I reckon it’s only on my pricier pairs, so maybe it’s a cable insulation thing?
It depends on the proximity of metal to skin mostly. If you use giant cans with huge ear pads, you’re fine. If you use in-ear reference headphones, the metal mesh over the speaker is close enough to the earhole to jump the gap. It also depends if the headphones are plugged into a device on your person versus say, a desktop DAC. And if you use a chair with wheels that roll across plastic, etc. etc. A lot of variables. I still enjoy using wired for audio quality, I just have to make sure I don’t plan on moving and/or discharging my bodily static periodically on a grounded surface.
ESD is such an hilarious annoying thing, I once touched a cell phone and the entire display oozed to black starting from the point I touched and then oozed back to picture. Another time, I ESD’d a wall thermostat so hard that it reset back to factory defaults. I may actually be a Van De Graaff generator.
Edit: Just remembered a third, touched a light switch screw one day and static snapped me with enough juice that 200 nearby LED lights blinked on for a split second, and then back off.
Would wearing one of those grounded ESD leashes prevent this? It’s kinda silly, but if it works I’ll absolutely put one of those lil fuckers at my desk.
Funny you mention, I just recently got some ESD shoe harnesses to try out and see if they’ll drain it enough to reduce the shock. May have to go full ESD lab with grounded work pads and everything at some point hahaha.
People keep whining about this but honestly people who listen to music with wired headphonea are a small fraction of a 1%. And they probably have this data from their telemetry.
Don’t wanna be a whiner but wireless in ears never last long enough for me. I’m forced to stop using them after a while because they need to be charged. Even a 2 and a half hour phone call is enough to deplete them. This is a non existing problem with wired ones
Yep. I refuse to buy a FairPhone for this simple reason: I hate bluetooth. It means I have to buy a new expensive device to get audio quality that’s worse than before and requires batteries again. Fuck that.
I also find it ridiculous that they call themselves “fair” but making bluetooth buds probably increases pain and suffering, because more materials have to be used to make them than a simple jack headphone.
I don’t know about the fairness of this particular company but by that rationale nothing can ever be fair, just by existing we increase the suffering. Its how the world is.
Think headphones jacks don’t cause suffering at some point in the chain?
Not that I’m disagreeing, just not sure how things would get named under this specific scheme.
Does it assume that it’s generally understood that everything is a little harmful in some way, so as long as you don’t claim otherwise, it’s cool or would everything need to be measured on some sort of average harmfulness scale and then include the rating in the title.
Like “Horrendously harmful Apple” or “Mildly harmful Colgate”
A bit hyperbolic perhaps.
Genuinely not trying to start a fight, actually interested in what you think would be a good way of doing this, as I’ve occasionally pondered it myself and never come up with a good answer.
Incidentally, this is one of the core plotlines to later seasons of “The good place”
Incidentally, this is one of the core plotlines to later seasons of “The good place”
Aaaay! Was going to say that too 👍
My only point is that we can work to minimize suffering. Making it necessary to purchase a new accessory adds more suffering than using an old accessory.
I can’t be bothered with the inconvenience of wires. Bluetooth quality is good enough for what I need it for, and the convenience of simply putting them on gives me sound is hard to beat.
I have a pair of noise-canceling Bluetooth headphones (not buds) from 2008 that still work. Battery life isn’t what it was, but whatever - they work fine for how I use them (as one pair of several). I could replace the battery if I felt like it, just not worth the effort.
But I get that some people prefer the wired for their use-case.
And in the case of Fairphone it is just simply hypocritical.
I agree. I get that they’re a business and all but I haven’t seen a legitimate explanation for them removing headphone jacks and, like every other manufacturer, simultaneously introducing expensive Bluetooth ones.
They also sell headphone to USB cable. I’m not saying the lack of a headphone jack is good but if their goal was really to sell wireless earbuds then selling a USB to headphone cable was a bad move, no?
As Louis Rossmann also said, using a single port for both charging/moving data and listening music increases the wear on the port. They’re just made to wear down faster with the absence of the audio jack port.
Plus it’s impractical, as it occupies the type c port.
YUP! I’m sorry, Apple earned more money than Spotify purely based on their airpod market. I refuse to believe otherwise.
If they truly cared about repairability/maintainability they’d give me a headphone jack phone with a replaceable module in case it wears down.
I freaking hate dongles, I always have one when I don’t need one and can never find one when I don’t. They randomly don’t work or I don’t know if this AliExpress one I bought is actually stealing my data. Just give a built-in jack, please!
I velcro’d dongles to some wired pairs of headphones, but haven’t been using them.
AirPods have been great for stockholders and bad for our planet’s inhabitants. But I cannot deny the flexibility, seamlessness (even across devices), speed to don & doff, and convenience are powerful factors.
People will deny this but this is the only real reason for doing that. The other reason is copying apple, which isn’t really another reason as apple removed it for the first reason.
Fairphone just went the extra mile to claim that headphones are wasteful, in essence they’re making an excuse to cover up their reason why and also trying to force others to do it as well.
You can get 3.5mm to (whatever usb port) that will as far as I know work in every phone. Just because it doesn’t have a dedicated port doesn’t mean you can’t wire in your headphones.
I much prefer it this way, if you want to wire you can, if you don’t you don’t have to have an extra useless port on your device.
Edit
Lol, bring on your down votes. I bet if you surveyed a hundred random people on the street if they really want a headphone port on your phone and are committed to using it you’d get less than ten people. It’s not realistic to support every legacy hardware function on a modern device because a few tech enthusiasts want it, especially when there’s a very easy way to support it.
You’re supposing every tech/audio enthusiast here wants the same shitty setup as the masses? The fact is there is basically one brand still offering headphone jacks in a flagship that you can unlock … where the point of Android was all the delicious innovations of each OEM. But they saw how profitable selling branded earbuds could be so now you have next to 0 options.
You can get 3.5mm to (whatever usb port) that will as far as I know work in every phone. Just because it doesn’t have a dedicated port doesn’t mean you can’t wire in your headphones.
not if you want to charge it as well.
Lol, bring on your down votes. I bet if you surveyed a hundred random people on the street if they really want a headphone port on your phone and are committed to using it you’d get less than ten people, definitely less than 20. It’s not realistic to support every legacy hardware function on a modern device because a few tech enthusiasts want it, especially when there’s a very easy way to support it.
If you’re the only option with a headphone jack that’s a guaranteed 10% of the market buying your device. More if you also include other things tech enthusiasts want that are no longer widely available.
Simply put, if companies determined the market need for 3.5mm port was valuable enough they’d leave it on there.
The reason it’s not “valuable” is that they want to force people to buy expensive earbuds every year when they crap out. This is demonstrated by the fact that none of these phones that have removed it have added anything new in it’s place and they’ve only gotten more expensive. Practically every phone on the market is just a copycat phone, camera, social media browsing device. Maybe a few have a stylus. The only thing that differentiates them is specs. My 6 year old phone has more features than anything available today and I dread finally reaching the point where my work apps stop functioning due to it’s age and I have to downgrade to some garbage that can’t do half the things I used to.
If you buy crappy headphones they might crap out every year. I’ve got the same pair of Jabra 65t that I bought in 2018 and they work amazing 6 years later. If Apple or Samsung or Google forced you to use their buds I’d agree with your position of being forced but they don’t and saying all buds die in a year is absurd.
It’s not just a hole, you need to reserve the space to house the inserted jack, you need to source or build the housing and build something to convert the signal to digital. That costs money and space for a feature hardly anyone uses. These resources are simply better used elsewhere.
It’s a very small amount of space. When it was first removed the space was still there just empty. There’s phones that do exist that have SD card slots and headphone jacks. The hardware required is very very cheap, especially at scale, so cost is a non-factor. For such minimal resources, who wouldn’t want the option of more features? There’s plenty of features of smartphones that most people don’t use, it doesn’t mean we should remove them to the detriment of the people who do.
No one’s disputing the utility of wireless. But it’s not harming anyone to have a device with both mini-jack and bluetooth; the way it was for nearly 2 decades without any complaint.
Fair, that’s your choice, and please don’t be aggressive about it, because it gets very annoying very quickly. Tried not to type out this second part, but couldn’t.
But our preference is not a choice. Because phone manufacturers have decided for ourselves.
I didn’t reply to the insulin pump part, sorry. It was toward the other part, which implied to me that there are people who don’t want to deal with cables, so no one should be about to use them.
They proclaim to value open source and it seems they’ve tried to do some stuff in the past. I think software freedom is a natural conclusion of hardware repairability but it seems their priority is instead on being green and workers up the chain getting a fair pay.
I never understood wireless charging either, you still can’t move your device around (well if we ignore the fact you can move it around somewhat with a cable). It requires a charging pad too, so it also takes up more space.
for earbuds it’s useful as many modern phones can share their battery to wirelessly charge another device, so you can top up your earbuds off of your phone while you’re out somewhere and not need to lug around a charger and cable.
For wirelessly charging phones, I agree the pad style chargers defeat a lot of the point, but I am a fan of the dock-style wireless chargers. I have one at my desk and can just glance at my phone to see notifications, and I have to set my phone somewhere anyways, so this lets me top up my phone without really thinking about it.
That’s the only benefit I can think of, the reverse charging on phones (which is very slow). They could add that feature to the usb port though. I mean the dock thing sounds alright I guess, but I just plug my phone in, then it’s charging on desk and in hand and it only needs to be in for like 30 mins and it’s full charged.
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. I’m a person with ears that do not work with silicone tips either. I love the fit of AirPods. Tried AirPods Pro, and for my ears, they suck. Doesn’t matter what size tips I use, they seal poorly and fall out constantly. Regular AirPods fit great.
Edit: grammar
Edit 2: that being said, I want to try these because I really want replaceable batteries for my earbuds. It may be moot for me though as I live in the US and currently they aren’t shipping to the US.
These in-ear things never worked for me either until they started making custom hearing protection with removable filters which are compatible with most in-ear headphones. And the best thing is that you don’t need active noise canceling (depending on the openness of the headphones) because the thing is made to cancel noise. Downside is that they usually amplify bass much more than regular tips so you need to use an EQ.
Btw, it’s possible to get some custom in-ear headphones where everything, including the tip, is one piece of plastic, which is supposed to sound fantastic, if you’re willing to spend a ridiculous amount of money.
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Please, just give us back the headphone jacks!
Or let us amputate the legs of techbros (they’re obsolete in the world of cars and electric wheelchairs).
(Downvotes incomming) People still use wired headphones? It’s a very small market these days and Lemmy users are simply bubbled power users
I imagine phones no longer having headphone jacks isn’t helping the wired headphones market. I’d gladly use wired headphones if it meant I didn’t need to charge mine or worry about them dying on me. Aside from working out, it’s not like the wire is exactly in the way…
As a DJ and audiophile in general, yeah I’m not thrilled on headphones using batteries and Bluetooth. I’ll give up my hard-line when I’m dead.
Sure, some wireless for exercise or casual use is fine. Full deal breaker if I’m performing though.
You’re doing DJ performance from a phone?
Towards the end of my DJ’ing career, I was to the point of showing up to a venue (that had an existing sound system) on my motorcycle with my controller, headphones, microphone (that didn’t smell like beer breath) and laptop in a backpack. I’d just plug in and go. But even then the idea of DJ’ing from just a phone or tablet seemed weird to me. I understood the appeal of it but…
The sticking point for most people is stereo. When you throw on AC/DC, you expect to hear the guitar out of the just one speaker but when DJ’ing a large room that doesn’t work. Half the room hears the guitar and the other half just hears high hat. So you end up flipping the mono switch, ya know, just for that one song. Then eventually you’ve done three gigs in a row and realize that it’s been mono the whole time and no-one noticed, not even you.
Headphones jacks have two audio out channels. We typically think of them as left and right, but they aren’t, that’s just how most people use them. Once you get past the mono idea, you realize you have two distinct audio outputs on your phone or tablet. If the music software can do the mono summing instead of the mixer, then then you can hook the “left” output cable to mixer ch 1, and the “right” to ch 2, and play different songs out each. Make sure the same output of the mixer goes to both speakers and you’re in business. You just need dj’ing software that can play two different songs at the same time on your phone and interface with a controller, probably via bluetooth.
Now you can show up to a party with just your phone that you were already carrying anyway, plug in to their controller, and make a surprise appearance.
It still weirds me out, but modern phones have the horsepower to do this. They certainly don’t have the disk space for a terabyte library, so you aren’t going to work a six hour wedding with an iphone, but there are TB SD cards so certain Androids could certainly do this.
There’s probably also software that will do everything over bluetooth so a completely wireless phone could work.
I’ve been out of the game for over a decade. I can’t imagine how far the controllers and software have come and don’t want to find out because I’m sure my poor wallet can’t handle it.
Excellent points, appreciate the write up. Better said than I could myself.
I will also note that in my personal experience phone was more of a hail mary when I’d be doing like a wedding reception or private party and needed a tune for client that wasn’t already in my USBs. When the tip depends on it, yes, I absolutely DJ with the phone.
For a while, youtube was a life saver for new songs.
I agree modern phones have the horsepower to do a full on audio production; how does a 3.5mm jack help in this setup that a multi-bus USB-C DAC or mixer can’t do a better job than a driver that’s confined to 5mm of space?
A DAC is definitely the better option in my opinion, especially if your phone doesnt have great audio quality.
When the controllers first came out, they’d cheap out by making the computer process the audio. My first Bherringer controller would convert the mic input to digital and send it to the computer to mix on the sound card. If the computer was disconnected you couldnt use the mic or hook up a cd player.
Some people are just cheap and manufactures will make whatever people will buy. The phone already has audio, so the controller is just that: a bunch of buttons. You dont have speakers built into a keyboard or mouse. A controller is just an HID.
I’m not a DJ, but I can listen to high end audio from 3.5mm, even a phone, and you just can’t over Bluetooth. Its lossy janky and barely a standard.
AptX over Bluetooth is lossless and has been available since 2016. Android only though.
My experience of Bluetooth has always been settings that I can’t change, security issues, and devices that run different implementations on both ends. See ‘barely a standard’, even when the box for each reads the same standard number.
Which is why I’m so reluctant to call it a standard; it isnt standardized.
No, it isn’t. It just has higher bitrates, but still not enough for lossless.
If that’s true it seems like the name is fooling people
https://www.whathifi.com/advice/aptx-lossless-what-is-the-breakthrough-bluetooth-codec-how-can-you-get-it
There is also the latency if you are playing games with audio cues.
Oh. Oh god ive never even tried that. That sounds horrible.
Rhythm game enthusiast use wired headphones & kernel+pipewire settings to further reduce latency—as do musicians for recording on playback. Pro gamers use wired peripherals too for inputs & some even go analog for monitors for lower latency. Is it a stretch to say “wireless” is shorthand for “casual”? 🤔
I mean for working out and on the go I use Bluetooth ear buds.
But damn do I sometimes wish I still had a headphone jack on my phone. Like just grabbing my nice pair of open ear headphones, throwing down on the couch and listening to music for example.
And of course I always had backup wired ear buds with me, just in case the battery ran out.
But eh, I can live without the headphone jack, now I just wish they would have used the space for a bigger battery.
Nah I like em because I’m paranoid. I had paranoiac family who weren’t power users who behaved similarly at the dawn of this shit.
I use both wireless and wired, depending on what I’m doing. The earbuds fall out when I’m exercising, but have better call-quality because of the noise canceling.
And I use wired for chatting, when playing games with friends on playstation. And I still have an ipod I use occasionally… so I just kinda have both.
I prefer to have a headphone jack on my phone, but I have a dongle adapter for usb-c, if I want to use my wired ones. I would just prefer not to use the adapter if I didn’t need to, because I’ve already had issues with my phone’s charging port trying to crap-out on me. The charging port isn’t as robust, and you do lose some quality with the dongle. I deal with it just fine; but a headphone jack on a phone might tip me towards purchasing that one, if I were looking to buy a new phone. It depends for me, but it’s not the end of the world, just an inconvenience that could easily be avoided
Some devices cannot use Bluetooth audio devices, or it’s buggy or laggy af. I don’t mind wireless buds for the gym, but they sound worse and die before a flight across the US is complete. Wired headsets so don’t have to be charged, or if they do have ANC, its usually a replacable battery instead of a rechargeable battery.
I dunno if it’s just my Fold 4, but when I ride the train or visit an apartment, I get bombarded by pairing requests from Bose headphones and other bluetooth devices like home speakers. It’s probably some setting that Samsung quietly flipped on in a recent patch, but it’s really annoying. Fuck off, 𝙳𝚊𝚟𝚎’𝚜 𝙱𝚘𝚜𝚎 𝚀𝚞𝚒𝚎𝚝𝙲𝚘𝚖𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚝 𝟺𝟻 𝙷𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚙𝚑𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚜, I don’t need pairing notifications every 10 seconds.
Nowadays there is an earbuds with USB C wireless adapter like Anker Soundcore P10 or JBL Quantum. that is good and no pairing
I still have 200 euro wired in ear headphones that are my favorite pair so I need to 3,5mm port. But I never got the loud commotion over the disappearance of the port, because you can easily use a 3,5mm to USB-c cable. Having said that,I do still appreciate such a port in my phone because sometimes I forget to take the cable with me or I lose it.
There’s no way I’m spending a lot on a headphone I need to toss in the garbage when the battery becomes useless.
Pretty sure the market would be bigger if manufacturers didn’t remove the feature in order to push to wireless.
What I like about them is not having a battery, meaning they have a lot less impact on the climate. And it isn’t needed when they are always connected to an other device with a battery that is less than 1m away.
Nobody knows what they’re missing out on after the early mp3 era conditioned people to be used to shitty audio quality.
no one uses wired headphones until they suddenly really wish they had wired headphones
Exactly how I bought mine. Only pair I could find in my house were insufferably cheap and hurt to use. Realized I could get a very decent wired pair for like $20. Love those things now
The low-end Chinese IEMs from the likes of MOONDROP, TRUTHEAR, etc. in that $20 range are surprisingly good if anyone is interested in picking up a spare.
I ended up getting a CCA CRA pair, and they’re surprisingly good too. Currently $22 for a pair with a mic. It was either those, or MOONDROP, but I think either of them would be well worth the 20 bucks
Well, I do.
Yep. Lots.
Less than you think
Probably not. I’m curious about actual number and not just anecdotes though.
My 3.5mm AUX says hello
Now I just wish that they would bring their phone to a US provider that is not T-Mobile. I can’t buy their phone until it runs on a network that I can use.
Can you not buy the phone and then get whatever sim you want?
Jesus your country is so messed up :(
wat? you cannot buy the phone and then choose the provider yourself?
Yeah most phones in the us are locked to a network. Some of them are unlocked to certain network vendors but won’t work with others (for example if a phone works on Verizon its a near guarantee even if its an unlocked phone it won’t work on any other networks)
It is a pretty simple thing to look up the bands that the phone supports. All of the providers publish the bands that they work on. This is not difficult. This is a manufactured problem.
It’s true. Its not a coincidence the most hostile telecom (Verizon) is also the one that had a former CEO as chairman of the FCC during the Trump administration. It would be very easy for OEMs to introduce more multiband phones to the market but Verizon has some sweet licensing deals on their network brands.
It’s mega gross!
Fairbuds: replaceable batteries
Fairerbuds: open source app
Fairestbuds: open source firmware
looks kinda cool. will probably get them
They going to get all my business.
“I want my two dollars!”
Really happy to see replaceable batteries! It’s a wear item and guaranteed to brick your device after a number of years if they aren’t replaceable.
But what’s the number? Also, a battery not lasting all day is hardly bricking.
Do you not know that batteries stop being able to charge eventually?
Yeah. Eventually…
Lol
iPhone batteries are covered under warranty if they drop below - I think - 80% of original capacity. Using that as a benchmark, something between that and 50% is going to be frustrating for the average user. Perhaps frustrating enough to replace.
“Brick” caught me off guard too. When thinking about a product that can’t be used while simultaneously charging has a battery that’s nearly shot, though, it struck me as a fair description.
I think that’s an issue of semantics. If someone needs their device to last all day and it doesn’t anymore, then it is effectively bricked. Could one find a workaround to the issue? Oh probably, something as simple as lugging around a battery bank should do the trick, but ultimately users being able to just swap the battery in their device themselves isn’t a big ask. It gives a modicum of ownership back to the person who actually bought the device.
Which Bluetooth headphones last all day without topping up at all? I’m curious what a use case is that would require someone need them.
Nah I’m thinking of phones in this scenario. That said, both benefit from having user replaceable batteries.
Replaceable batteries are coming to the EU in general, at least for portable devices, via the EU Batteries Regulation, which is in force already and requires all portable batteries to be easily removable and replaceable by the end user from 2027
EU has single handedly done more to improve
myselfmy life than my own government with this one law.Damn, how much do you pay your government?
Low income American here, upwards of 24% of everything I make.
And every penny of it used to fund fresh boots for your neck.
Well I do like FDAs, and roads though. But I’d rather have healthcare as well, and I’d like way less of it to go toward it cops and wars. Mainly I want a lot more of the taxes coming from the billionaires.
Okay so look up the name of the guy who was point man for the business plot.
Look up his son’s and grandson’s names.
And then, after doing that; explain how that’s ever gonna happen.
i hope this eu law makes it happen elsewhere, if anything for them to take better advantage of the economy of scale.
and if they dont ill be coveting some eu devices.
They probably calculate cost saved by economy of scale, vs profit generated from planned obsolescence in other markets.
Might be more profitable to run different SKUs.
The EU is a relatively large market, and it wouldn’t make economic sense to develop and produce EU-specific devices. I’m pretty sure you’ll also be seeing replaceable batteries.
I don’t believe the EU will make earbuds batteries serviceable. Phones and laptops, sure.
> only support AAC and SBC codecs
> available for 149
Eh.
Starting to notice a trend with these “specialty” device companies, crap specs and high (relatively) prices.
The FP5, released last year has a SoC that performs worse than the Tensor. The TENSOR, a chip widely regarded as shitty, and can be had on a phone 200$ cheaper. :/
The high prices at least should be obvious, a product using fairly sourced components will always be more expensive.
Mmm, ok…
The workers literally get paid bonuses for each phone that gets made. The phone’s parts all get certified for sustainability. They need to find manufacturers willing to fulfill their requirements, for which they will obviously charge more.
I’m not saying that they’re for everyone or should be free from criticism. I personally decided against buying one due to the size, performance and camera. But if you’re complaining about a sustainable product costing more than a regular one, you’re missing the point and were never in the target audience in the first place.
Other’s make it cheaper because they don’t care about “fair”. How do you think cheap products become cheap? Think about it for a second.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
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You can be “fair” and pricey, just put a better competitive SoC, rn it’s near budget tier for upper mid range money
And then they expect someone to use it for 10 years? LMAO, that thing is gonna be sluggish AF in another 1 or 2 tops, can’t imagine trying to use it in 10 lolol
That’s the thing, fair SoC’s aren’t cheap because they aren’t available everywhere nor is a fair supply chain easy to setup. Do you think somebody just snapped their fingers or trusted the words written in a contract? "This supplier says they’re fair and ethical, so I’ll believe them 🤷 "
Who do you think has to verify suppliers claims? Do you think they are free? Do you think a manufacturer will simply throw out an unfair supplier to be ethical and fair if that meant loss of business or revenue?
Think about it from the extreme: are slaves cheaper than paid employees? Then continue the thoughts from there and the impacts they have on the cost and availability of products. Just walk through the logistics yourself and compare the cost of doing business ethically vs not. Maybe even write it down to get a better picture.
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Hard disagree that earbuds negate codec importance. I love open-back over-ears, but one of my best pairs of headphones are Moondrop IEMs, and I can hear differences in audio quality more noticeably on them than a lot of speakers. I very often plug them into a Bluetooth receiver for semi-wireless convenience, and I can absolutely hear the difference between LDAC and SBC.
However, yeah definitely agreed that $150 is fair for what’s being offered here. Limited codec support is common (if unfortunate) enough in similarly priced gear without the other benefits these bring, so I’d say it’s fair enough unless the drivers themselves are bad.
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Bluetooth headphones are unusable for videos and games if they only support high latency codecs.
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It’s not just about quality (AAC is perfectly fine quality-wise), it’s IMHO more about the extreme latency, and the fact that they have to to drop down to terrible-sounding HSP/HSP when using the microphone, since A2DP is monodirectional. Sucks that they don’t support LE Audio.
Turning your nose up at SBC isn’t being a codec snob; it’s having functioning ears.
And if you’re on Android, AAC is not well implemented compared to on iOS / MacOS. Maybe this has changed in the past couple years but it was immediately noticeable to me when I upgraded from the WH-1000XM3s to the XM4s, I could immediately tell that the audio was worse if they weren’t using LDAC. And these don’t have LDAC.
Unlike with competent compression codecs (mp3 vs AAC vs FLAC), where most people genuinely cannot tell the difference between a well-compressed song vs a lossless one, many people can immediately tell the difference between AptX and AAC or SBC on Android.
There are plenty of true wireless headphones out there that support LDAC or AptX for less than $100. It’s not surprising to me that people in their target audience would think $150 for something that sounds terrible to them isn’t reasonable.
Running sbc at higher bitrates than default sound subjectively better than most existing codecs. I use 552 kbit/s regulary and it sound great. Unfortunately the support for higher sbc bitrates is terrible.
I’ve not been able to listen to high bitrate SBC myself, but that tracks with my understanding, too. I read this article - https://habr.com/en/articles/456182/ - recently, when trying to confirm my understanding of why there’s such a huge difference in sound quality from codec to codec.
What setup do you have where you’re able to listen to 552 kbps SBC?
asfasf
You don’t think the Bluetooth codec makes a difference when you’re using Bluetooth headphones? When else would it make a difference?
I feel like you’re just confusing the codec used for compressing audio for storage and wireless transmission with the codec used for transmission via Bluetooth. That or you’ve just never experienced a setting where a better codec was being used.
SBC can sound okay, but see here for a breakdown of why it almost never actually does. Basically, it’s capped at only using a fraction of the available bandwidth, even though it could use more if not for arbitrarily imposed limitations.
In-ear phones have the potential of having the highest fidelity of all headphone types. So, no, being a “codec snob” is completely justified. Though I personally won’t be using BT phones before we get lossless connection as a standard. Wired are cheaper, last longer and have less environmental impact during production and after EOL.
How so? Isn’t converting from digital to analog better than from digital to digital to analog?
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Nothing to do with ADA conversions (and digital-to-digital, eg SRC or bitdepth conversion, is completely transparent if done even remotely adequately). Small drivers close to eardrum with good seal just seem to be easier to manage when it comes to frequency response and distortion. Most open circumaural headphones, for example, seem to have deficiencies in lower end no matter the price.
Are you saying the length of the cable from my phone to my ears has an impact on audio quality?
Also, is there no loss when converting from the digital audio format to whatever bluetooth uses?
This seems unrelated to jack vs bluetooth.
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No, they’re saying accurately reproducing sounds for people to listen to has much more to do with the vibrating membrane to eardrum interaction than anything that happens between the source material and the vibrating membrane.
Theoretically, yes. Practically, bluetooth has been way funkier than cable ever has for me. It drops, loses packets, and sometimes tries to catch up on whatever shit it was doing to suddenly have the audio sound like it’s fast forwarding. My ears aren’t the best, but that’s the kind of shit I do hear. Membranes can’t protect you from that.
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My most expensive earbuds were $75.
At $150, I’d rather buy multiple “lesser” ear buds and not worry about battery lifespan.
I have 2 pairs of hang-on-ear type I use for the gym/exercise, that were $35 each. That’s less than 1/4 the price of these.
Then these aren’t for you and that’s fine. You don’t value what they offer, and you’re not obligated to buy them. Some of us do.
Sorry, what? They are obliged to buy them, if not today, they will be when their phone stops working and they have to buy a new one, because that won’t have a jack connector.
Except of course if they don’t use a smartphone.
I had at least hoped for FastStream. (Essentially bidirectional SBC for good quality audio while using the microphone)
I mean even Sony didn’t get it working on my XM4s, I don’t know why people expect it from $150 earbuds.
Hang on, is THAT why call quality is abysmal with practically every bluetooth device?
Yes. and why it’s wildly complicated on Windows machines where you have an audio output device for headphones and for headset, and once something starts using the mic the output device itself changes.
So joining team chat in a game will either make audio sound horrible or break it entirely if you had specified the output device instead of using default device.
How in the fuck is bluetooth even a competing standard? If it’s “good enough” than so is SD video and VHS tapes.
Bluetooth turns twenty-six this year, maybe we’ll be closer to good integration once it hits it’s thirties.
There’s a lot of things that make the Bluetooth experience better… it’s just almost all focused on mobile phones, maybe apple laptops if you stay in their walled gardens, but definitely not stock windows.
I say stock because if you do use windows and want to use Bluetooth you can improve things with a third party driver https://www.bluetoothgoodies.com/a2dp/ it’s still not great but at least you can use better codecs than default
If only they shipped to the US…at least, I didn’t see that option.
First thing I looked at as well. Shame. I’ll buy them when my AirPods die if they offer shipping to the us.
Let’s not forget this here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRdL0StldJM
Wired headphones do not have the need for replaceable batteries.
A follow-up video “Why I was wrong about fairphone” by Louis Rossmann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAogtqyN22M
Still critical of lack of audio jack but praises FairPhone for including list of all components and board view of where each part is located and a complete schematic. In comparison to other phones manufacturers that’s night and day of repair-ability.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=EAogtqyN22M
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I have yet to use a USB-C to 3.5mm dongle for my phone that hasn’t gone bust in my pocket in a few months. Probably time to see about a cable for the earphones that terminates in USB-C on the phone end, but that was difficult to search for.
I love my wired ones, and have been nursing some BT earbuds for years, but it’s hard to use wired and not to move to BT anymore without buying a phone specifically for the 3.5mm jack.
I’m the same, those dongles don’t last, and are annoying to use. I picked up one of these cables from aliexpress to use with my iems and it works a treat. There’s better quality cables out there, but for 10 bucks these are solid.
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For the moment I’m on a budget so DACs are not in my budget. They seem fun though, and I do love my hi-fi so, who knows, may be worth?
The latter image, I used dongles like that. They broke within months and I had tried multiple brands, I soured on them a few brands deep.
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I did for a long time settle for adjusting the phone in the pocket, even putting things in there to change the position of the phone, but no, it never helped much. I’ll look in to getting it or something like it, thanks so much!
It was sad, yes, but I found that the dongle I already used for my laptop worked a charm with my phone. Sometimes plug in a keyboard and SD cards. Somehow handles it. I only really used an SD card for cameras and portable recording devices.
I think my needs in audio are mostly driven by my career. If I was not a music-person I would not need wired earphones. The driving factor of my having them is that I could pull them out of my phone and work on my laptop very quickly. BT headphones just had too much latency and not the best soundstage or frequency response…
Get a portable dac amp so you can connect your wired headphone over usb-c and upgrading its sound quality at the same time.
Hyperbole aside, I’d still be worried that any cable physically connected to my phone would break the port over time - mostly because that has happened to me in the past with multiple devices.
I guess there is no way to escape the extra stress to the port. Maybe using this kind of detachable magnetic adapter can help with reducing the strain? They don’t conform with usb specification though, so while it may reduce strain to your port, it may carry another risk like making it easier to accidentally shorting some exposed pins.
Nice, I did not know such a connector existed - that will be useful for completely different and unrelated use cases.
While I had toyed with the idea of a portable, Japanese - made DAC for a while, I switched to Bluetooth headphones years ago. Started out with a cheap Philips headset for $50, later on got the Bose QC 35 II (still my daily driver when outside) and finally worked my way up to the Sony WH-1000XM5.
I did not realize how nice active noise cancelation is. Plus, the frequency reproduction of the XM5 with LDAC enabled is absolutely fine.
On the cons side, you’re walking around with $300 - $400 on your head, which is an absolutely luxury, plus you’ll get headphones that perform equally well in the sound department (minus the excellent ANC and freedom from cables) for a lot less.
Actually, get one with more pins. The one above is for charging only.
I wouldn’t trade my wireless stuff for wired ones at this point. Wireless earbuds have gotten so good that dealing with a wire would be a downgrade in most cases. When I work with mixing I always use my monitors with a wire, for obvious reasons.
Also as an aside; any company that claims to do anything “green” is profiteering off of greenwashing. Of course making stuff environmentally friendly would become trendy in the cringe corpo world. I think the most egregious example is Apple’s autumn 2023 iPhone event. Just thinking back on it is making me cringe.
The “greenest” product is the one that is never made to begin with.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Apple’s autumn 2023 iPhone event
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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Why the fuck use wireless phones? Just use a classic wall phone you fucking dummies! Why use SSDs? Just use good ole floppies!
Fuck sakes man, pull your head out of your ass. It’s called modernity and it’s okay
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I like wired headphones it has nothing to do with modernity but the functionality I prefer. I dislike dealing with battery life. Same reason I have a wired keyboard. Also I’ve been in power outages that lasted long enough I wished I had a wall phone to do things like let my family know I hadn’t frozen to death or to call into work to update them so I was less likely to be fired. Me wanting a company to sell wired devices doesn’t affect your ability to buy wireless devices this isn’t a zero sum game, no need to be hostile.
Fair enough. Im just tired of all the backwards rhetoric on Lemmy, wasn’t fair to direct at you. I swear this place is stuck in a time warp sometime in the 90s or early 2000s. It’s frustrating.
Bluetooth headphones are not modernity, they should of course be an option, but increasingly they are the only game in town. Wired is still king for loads of things, not the least of which is reliability.
You wanna know how many times my wired Sennheiser’s have been unable to put music in my ear holes? Never. They always work. Care to guess how many wireless headphones have been able to provide sound every time I’ve wanted it without delay or failure? None. I’ve owned more than 2 dozen wireless this, that, and the other, headphones & earbuds, and none of them have been even a shadow of the reliability offered by my old wired headphones. Which is to say nothing of the fact that the wired experience usually sounds better (Still don’t think you can get any comfortable phat 600ohm monster cans that don’t have a wire) and has no issues with making sound when you’re in a space that is saturating the 2.4Ghz band (my Costco is usually so full of idiots on Bluetooth that you can’t get a reliable experience for anything from any wireless audio device.)
You seem to think it’s “backwards rhetoric” to want a feature that will never be offered in a wireless setup, and that’s just fucked man. There are a wealth of reasons why wireless does not fully replace wired. It’s why anything that doesn’t have to move generally gets a fixed connection, it’s just more reliable and often more efficient. That’s not backwards, it’s just a priority that you don’t value above others. If landlines or floppy disks offered any advantages over anything else they’d still be around today (and arguably they are in some limited niches,) but the replacements for those technologies have had no downsides against their replacements while wireless tech still has some significant downsides (again, maybe you don’t weight the pros and cons the same, so this may not apply to you) against the technology they are meant to replace, and will likely never see 100% capture of their role as a result.
TL;DR: Stop trying to frame this as some sort of crusade against the future, there are legit cases where wired is just better than wireless.
I hope you enjoyed typing all that out because I’m not reading it
I live in a low humidity climate, there is no pain quite as obnoxious as wired headphones static shocking you right across your brain.
Idk what exactly causes this, but I definitely have headphones that never do that. I reckon it’s only on my pricier pairs, so maybe it’s a cable insulation thing?
It depends on the proximity of metal to skin mostly. If you use giant cans with huge ear pads, you’re fine. If you use in-ear reference headphones, the metal mesh over the speaker is close enough to the earhole to jump the gap. It also depends if the headphones are plugged into a device on your person versus say, a desktop DAC. And if you use a chair with wheels that roll across plastic, etc. etc. A lot of variables. I still enjoy using wired for audio quality, I just have to make sure I don’t plan on moving and/or discharging my bodily static periodically on a grounded surface.
ESD is such an hilarious annoying thing, I once touched a cell phone and the entire display oozed to black starting from the point I touched and then oozed back to picture. Another time, I ESD’d a wall thermostat so hard that it reset back to factory defaults. I may actually be a Van De Graaff generator.
Edit: Just remembered a third, touched a light switch screw one day and static snapped me with enough juice that 200 nearby LED lights blinked on for a split second, and then back off.
Would wearing one of those grounded ESD leashes prevent this? It’s kinda silly, but if it works I’ll absolutely put one of those lil fuckers at my desk.
Funny you mention, I just recently got some ESD shoe harnesses to try out and see if they’ll drain it enough to reduce the shock. May have to go full ESD lab with grounded work pads and everything at some point hahaha.
But also see:
https://piped.video/watch?v=EAogtqyN22M
You just need replaceable wires that are bound to get replaced more often and more expensive instead
People keep whining about this but honestly people who listen to music with wired headphonea are a small fraction of a 1%. And they probably have this data from their telemetry.
Don’t wanna be a whiner but wireless in ears never last long enough for me. I’m forced to stop using them after a while because they need to be charged. Even a 2 and a half hour phone call is enough to deplete them. This is a non existing problem with wired ones
They are now a small fraction cause this trend is already 8 years old.
Yep. I refuse to buy a FairPhone for this simple reason: I hate bluetooth. It means I have to buy a new expensive device to get audio quality that’s worse than before and requires batteries again. Fuck that.
I also find it ridiculous that they call themselves “fair” but making bluetooth buds probably increases pain and suffering, because more materials have to be used to make them than a simple jack headphone.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
I don’t know about the fairness of this particular company but by that rationale nothing can ever be fair, just by existing we increase the suffering. Its how the world is.
Think headphones jacks don’t cause suffering at some point in the chain?
Not that I’m disagreeing, just not sure how things would get named under this specific scheme.
Does it assume that it’s generally understood that everything is a little harmful in some way, so as long as you don’t claim otherwise, it’s cool or would everything need to be measured on some sort of average harmfulness scale and then include the rating in the title.
Like “Horrendously harmful Apple” or “Mildly harmful Colgate”
A bit hyperbolic perhaps.
Genuinely not trying to start a fight, actually interested in what you think would be a good way of doing this, as I’ve occasionally pondered it myself and never come up with a good answer.
Incidentally, this is one of the core plotlines to later seasons of “The good place”
Aaaay! Was going to say that too 👍
My only point is that we can work to minimize suffering. Making it necessary to purchase a new accessory adds more suffering than using an old accessory.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
That’s reasonable
if you hate bluetooth. USB C dongle earbuds are quite impressive nowadays like JBL or anker. no pairing
That’ll have to be the middle ground should I ever be forced to buy a phone without an audio jack.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=bRdL0StldJM
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
And get caught on everything.
I can’t be bothered with the inconvenience of wires. Bluetooth quality is good enough for what I need it for, and the convenience of simply putting them on gives me sound is hard to beat.
I have a pair of noise-canceling Bluetooth headphones (not buds) from 2008 that still work. Battery life isn’t what it was, but whatever - they work fine for how I use them (as one pair of several). I could replace the battery if I felt like it, just not worth the effort.
But I get that some people prefer the wired for their use-case.
The simple point is, no one forces you to use wires. Bluetooth has been a thing for decades.
But basically every (yes some exceptions) company that makes phones forced you to use wireless ones.
And in the case of Fairphone it is just simply hypocritical.
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I agree. I get that they’re a business and all but I haven’t seen a legitimate explanation for them removing headphone jacks and, like every other manufacturer, simultaneously introducing expensive Bluetooth ones.
The only reason the headphone jack was ever removed is to sell you wireless earbuds.
They also sell headphone to USB cable. I’m not saying the lack of a headphone jack is good but if their goal was really to sell wireless earbuds then selling a USB to headphone cable was a bad move, no?
Yes… they sell an adapter.
A master plan to make more money selling a cable than a port on an already bulky phone?
As Louis Rossmann also said, using a single port for both charging/moving data and listening music increases the wear on the port. They’re just made to wear down faster with the absence of the audio jack port.
Plus it’s impractical, as it occupies the type c port.
What’s the lifetime of those ports you think?
YUP! I’m sorry, Apple earned more money than Spotify purely based on their airpod market. I refuse to believe otherwise.
If they truly cared about repairability/maintainability they’d give me a headphone jack phone with a replaceable module in case it wears down.
I freaking hate dongles, I always have one when I don’t need one and can never find one when I don’t. They randomly don’t work or I don’t know if this AliExpress one I bought is actually stealing my data. Just give a built-in jack, please!
I velcro’d dongles to some wired pairs of headphones, but haven’t been using them.
AirPods have been great for stockholders and bad for our planet’s inhabitants. But I cannot deny the flexibility, seamlessness (even across devices), speed to don & doff, and convenience are powerful factors.
or a adapter at greater than 20x cost
People will deny this but this is the only real reason for doing that. The other reason is copying apple, which isn’t really another reason as apple removed it for the first reason. Fairphone just went the extra mile to claim that headphones are wasteful, in essence they’re making an excuse to cover up their reason why and also trying to force others to do it as well.
You can get 3.5mm to (whatever usb port) that will as far as I know work in every phone. Just because it doesn’t have a dedicated port doesn’t mean you can’t wire in your headphones.
I much prefer it this way, if you want to wire you can, if you don’t you don’t have to have an extra useless port on your device.
Edit
Lol, bring on your down votes. I bet if you surveyed a hundred random people on the street if they really want a headphone port on your phone and are committed to using it you’d get less than ten people. It’s not realistic to support every legacy hardware function on a modern device because a few tech enthusiasts want it, especially when there’s a very easy way to support it.
You’re supposing every tech/audio enthusiast here wants the same shitty setup as the masses? The fact is there is basically one brand still offering headphone jacks in a flagship that you can unlock … where the point of Android was all the delicious innovations of each OEM. But they saw how profitable selling branded earbuds could be so now you have next to 0 options.
not if you want to charge it as well.
If you’re the only option with a headphone jack that’s a guaranteed 10% of the market buying your device. More if you also include other things tech enthusiasts want that are no longer widely available.
Yes you can: https://a.co/d/dvX8HjP
That’s the beauty of usb, it’s capable of expanding to suit your needs
Simply put, if companies determined the market need for 3.5mm port was valuable enough they’d leave it on there. They want to sell product and 3.5mm is not a feature enough customers care about to justify it’s existence. If you really want it, you have USB options or some phone models that support it: https://www.phonearena.com/news/Best-phones-with-a-headphone-jack-Google-Pixel-Samsung-Galaxy-LG-and-more_id124459
The reason it’s not “valuable” is that they want to force people to buy expensive earbuds every year when they crap out. This is demonstrated by the fact that none of these phones that have removed it have added anything new in it’s place and they’ve only gotten more expensive. Practically every phone on the market is just a copycat phone, camera, social media browsing device. Maybe a few have a stylus. The only thing that differentiates them is specs. My 6 year old phone has more features than anything available today and I dread finally reaching the point where my work apps stop functioning due to it’s age and I have to downgrade to some garbage that can’t do half the things I used to.
If you buy crappy headphones they might crap out every year. I’ve got the same pair of Jabra 65t that I bought in 2018 and they work amazing 6 years later. If Apple or Samsung or Google forced you to use their buds I’d agree with your position of being forced but they don’t and saying all buds die in a year is absurd.
Or the port could exist and you just don’t use it, then we don’t need adapters!
It’s not just a hole, you need to reserve the space to house the inserted jack, you need to source or build the housing and build something to convert the signal to digital. That costs money and space for a feature hardly anyone uses. These resources are simply better used elsewhere.
It’s a very small amount of space. When it was first removed the space was still there just empty. There’s phones that do exist that have SD card slots and headphone jacks. The hardware required is very very cheap, especially at scale, so cost is a non-factor. For such minimal resources, who wouldn’t want the option of more features? There’s plenty of features of smartphones that most people don’t use, it doesn’t mean we should remove them to the detriment of the people who do.
Strange how I’ve been using wired headphones with my phones until two years ago, even though I haven’t had a phone with a headphone jack since 2017…
No one’s disputing the utility of wireless. But it’s not harming anyone to have a device with both mini-jack and bluetooth; the way it was for nearly 2 decades without any complaint.
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More options is always better.
There was no reason to remove them back then and there is no reason to remove them now.
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Fair, that’s your choice, and please don’t be aggressive about it, because it gets very annoying very quickly. Tried not to type out this second part, but couldn’t.
But our preference is not a choice. Because phone manufacturers have decided for ourselves.
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I’m sorry you have to deal with that.
But our point is that having a little extra hole in your phone isn’t going to matter to you.
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I didn’t reply to the insulin pump part, sorry. It was toward the other part, which implied to me that there are people who don’t want to deal with cables, so no one should be about to use them.
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I’ve been looking for buds with replaceable batteries ever since my first pair degraded. Good to see FairPhone offering one that does it this time!
Is their app open source?
Their website has a page that says they “embrace open source”
I couldn’t find the source code specifically for their app. Maybe this?
https://github.com/fairphone/android_device_fairphone_FP5
Honestly have no clue what I’m looking at there. There seems to be no iOS equivalent, so who knows.
Otherwise, their app permissions seem pretty reasonable:
• discover and pair nearby Bluetooth devices
• Access Bluetooth settings
• Pair with Bluetooth devices
• connect to paired Bluetooth devices
But yeah, if no open source, that can definitely be a deal-breaker for the market they seem to be targeting.
FairPhone’s is not really the open source crowd though?
They proclaim to value open source and it seems they’ve tried to do some stuff in the past. I think software freedom is a natural conclusion of hardware repairability but it seems their priority is instead on being green and workers up the chain getting a fair pay.
This seems like part of their android os for FP5, TWRP is a common open source android recovery image: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWRP_(software)
Probably a attempt to open source the component they can, in the release note, they list the components that are not working.
This is 2024, right? Heckling aside, I’ll look for the next release.
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I never understood wireless charging either, you still can’t move your device around (well if we ignore the fact you can move it around somewhat with a cable). It requires a charging pad too, so it also takes up more space.
for earbuds it’s useful as many modern phones can share their battery to wirelessly charge another device, so you can top up your earbuds off of your phone while you’re out somewhere and not need to lug around a charger and cable.
For wirelessly charging phones, I agree the pad style chargers defeat a lot of the point, but I am a fan of the dock-style wireless chargers. I have one at my desk and can just glance at my phone to see notifications, and I have to set my phone somewhere anyways, so this lets me top up my phone without really thinking about it.
That’s the only benefit I can think of, the reverse charging on phones (which is very slow). They could add that feature to the usb port though. I mean the dock thing sounds alright I guess, but I just plug my phone in, then it’s charging on desk and in hand and it only needs to be in for like 30 mins and it’s full charged.
Did you guys notice how many ventors that website shares your data with??
816, oof. The internet is unusable without the proper precautions
Bluetooth is okay. But, I wish they offer USB c dongle connection like JBL or Anker. I hate pairing
that’s cool, ill never buy silicon tips again tho. why is apple the only one making real ear buds?
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. I’m a person with ears that do not work with silicone tips either. I love the fit of AirPods. Tried AirPods Pro, and for my ears, they suck. Doesn’t matter what size tips I use, they seal poorly and fall out constantly. Regular AirPods fit great.
Edit: grammar
Edit 2: that being said, I want to try these because I really want replaceable batteries for my earbuds. It may be moot for me though as I live in the US and currently they aren’t shipping to the US.
These in-ear things never worked for me either until they started making custom hearing protection with removable filters which are compatible with most in-ear headphones. And the best thing is that you don’t need active noise canceling (depending on the openness of the headphones) because the thing is made to cancel noise. Downside is that they usually amplify bass much more than regular tips so you need to use an EQ.
Btw, it’s possible to get some custom in-ear headphones where everything, including the tip, is one piece of plastic, which is supposed to sound fantastic, if you’re willing to spend a ridiculous amount of money.
yah, luckily airpods 1:1 clones are like $20.
i have downvotes completely hidden so i wouldn’t have noticed.
I haven’t used the clones yet, but I’ll likely go with something like that when these die.