I’m so fucking sick of AirPod designs. It’s fucking stupid. I lose them frequently and they’re never comfortable, and they’re expensive as hell.
[Edited grammar]
Ah so they’re making money because you’re replacing them because that’s how they designed them, to get lost. I just never used them. At this point, I’d rather enjoy honking headphones over those troublesome nuggets.
I want them to bring back more buds that are connected to each other, so it’s harder to lose them.
I still have my wired, lightning earbuds; of course, now, iPhones use USB-C so… what was the point, geesh.
Can we get back the headphone jacks instead?
Its over. The jack is dead
I don’t care, I still won’t use overpriced earbuds with subpar converters and speakers, just because techbros really liked an anime cyberpunk girl art who happened to have them, and then reposted it to 9gag million times with the text “Apple needs to make this now!”.
Gotta defend wireless earbuds a bit. They do add a lot of convenience for everyday activities. I’d never want to go back to wired for running, the cable flapping around is just too annoying. I also like them more for commuting and (grocery) shopping, I just kept getting tangled up when putting a bag or backpack on and off.
But nobody is forced to use them. If you’re on a budget, get an adaptor that isn’t clunky. For audiophile needs, adaptors, different cables, mobile DACs or dedicated music players are usually used, the latter usually with headphone jacks.
I used to share this opinion but grew out of it tbh.
From an engineering perspective headphone jacks are: a) a huge waste of space for no real functionality as the function is integrated in USB-C or lightning.
b) an unnecessary weak point in water- and dustproofing.
If you need an audio jack, specialised models still have it or a dedicated android audio player (fiio make great ones) will serve you better.
I say this as an audiophile btw.
I wouldn’t miss the audio jack, if phones had two usb-c ports, one for charging and one for audio. But all adapter I tried that allowed charging the phone while listening to audio where very flimsy and/or unhandy.
I just would like not every device to have is own built-in or custom battery. Them being changeable is good, but I would also live if we start having a smaller set of standardized formats.
There were water- and dustproofed jacks.
There are, but they’re even more bulky, and they are waterproof in the sense that the water wouldn’t damage the device, but the port itself is still vulnerable, and very much so. Unless it has a flap, but no regular phone used that ever.
I’m OK with flaps.
That’s what she said.
There are several models that still have it. When I bought my most recent phone it was one of my personal requirements. I think there were 6 or 7 models to choose from that were all essentially the same as any other modern phone, but had a 3.5 jack. That was a while ago, but there are still some new models rocking it. I use it all the time.
I have a cheap, perfectly serviceable 2026 Motorola that has one.
When I just bought a Fairphone a few weeks ago, I just barely missed the free fairbuds deal. I inquired about it and they gave me a $100 discount code for each phone. I held off buying them because I had a feeling there were about to drop new earbuds. Glad I did.
Elgin Rebels. You’re fucking welcome.
Those don’t look very repairable to me.
How hard is it for them to include a DAC and aux port in their phones? They’re tiny! I tried using Bluetooth headphones with the OnePlus 5 but the poor sound quality and constant need to recharge and replace due to their batteries dying every few months was exhausting. That experience was enough to drive me back to the exceptional reliability of plug and play traditional headphones with a Galaxy Xcover 6 Pro.
I don’t care how easy it is to replace the batteries in Fairphone’s new headphones. Their ethos should compel them to include a jack for those who don’t want to waste rare earth metals.
An audio jack is anything but tiny in a mobile phone form factor… Theres just no way to keep it without sacrificing something else.
It already has a dac, so the only thing missing is the 3.5mm jack. Otherwise, where do you think the signal for the speaker comes from?
Why not just use usb-c if you want wired headset?
I ruined my iPhone 15’s usb-c port by using an adapter. I used it when I cut the grass with my phone in my pocket. Now the port doesn’t grip cables right. Not being able to use the adapter while my phone is in my pocket eliminates most use cases for me.
I don’t want to have to buy and think about bringing jack to USB-C adapters whenever I want to plug into a speaker at a party or a car stereo, and I want to be able to charge my phone in these situations, or while I listen to podcasts to help me fall asleep at night with some battery-heavy sleep tracking activated
I wasn’t trying to say you wanting a wired headset is somehow not valid. I just always felt that a $3 C to 3.5 adapter you can permanently attach to your wired headphones is a weird hill to die on. For about $15 you can buy enough for that to never again be a consideration when buying a new phone.
I see it as a question of convenience, economics, and waste. It’s so easy to plug and play a jack without worrying about your headphones’ charge level or pairing them. No aux ports also means you have to pay a USB C adapter tax for one that may eventually break or get lost and it forcing you to pick between quietly listening to your audio and charging your phone. I’ve personally saved about $60 USD a year on average by not having to swap out dead Bluetooth headphones as well.
I get it if you like the convenience but it really wouldn’t kill these phone manufacturers to keep such a useful legacy component in the hopes you’d buy some additional accessories from them to fix a problem they created.
If waste and efficiency are real concerns you should be against the old headphone jacks. They waste a lot of space and are an entrypoint for water and dust, for redundant functionality that already exists in usbc or lightning
They may be an entry point for water and dust yet my current 3.5mm jack equipped Xcover 6 Pro is IP68 rated at 1.5m of water for 35 minutes according to GSMArena. I’m not exactly looking to go snorkeling with my phone any time soon either so it’s not like it’ll be a concern for anyone in the vast majority of use cases. I’ve had water splash on it occasionally over the years and it never caused any harm either.
I can’t really talk about what the PCB footprint of a 3.5mm jack is but if it’s something that already comfortably existed on most previous phones along with micro SD and Sim card holders until very recently then I doubt it actually matters. Keep in mind phone manufacturers are incentivized to hold back on as many features as possible if it means they can cut down on BOM costs and make an additional sale through apps or accessories down the line.
Techbros have mastered their hardware enshittification skills with the headphone jack fiasco.
Agreed 100%. I’d buy a Fairphone instantly if it had a headphone jack.
I agree that phones should just come with an aux port, but I’ve also never experienced the issues with wireless earbuds that I see other people talk about.
In fact I think my original airpod pros lasted longer than any pair of wired earbuds I’ve owned. I had them for years and they were still working fine when I lost one. Currently I use wired earbuds to help keep track of them.
Damn. The original fairbuds came with my fairphone and I was a big fan from the start. Zero issues with hardware or software, or sound quality. Sure glad I opened this thread to understand how lousy they actually are.
Guess there was a reason why they handed the old ones out
Seeing all the moderately negative reviews for the 1st gen earbuds they made, I just want to add, if you are in the market for over ear headphones, the fairbuds xl (I think that is what they are called), are pretty good in my opinion.
They also released a 2nd gen model of these like last year, I had mine since February or so, I really like them. I am no audiophile but they sound good to me.
The 1st gen model had some issues with stability of some plastic parts for some customers, I haven’t had any issues with these 2nd gen ones and I use them almost every day.
I love the build quality of my gen 2 XLs but the ANC is garbage.
👀
Just give me a fucking headphone jack. I’d buy one of these phones in a heartbeat for a headphone jack dude.
I used to agree; but I haven’t had to deal with cord noise in the same amount of time as has passed since the headphone jack went away. Inexpensive Bluetooth earbuds are a dime a dozen now. Besides having to charge my earbuds in addition to my phone, I’m struggling to find the inconvenience here.
For me personally, charging is the inconvenience. That and having to buy new earbuds over and over when I shouldn’t have to.
To each their own though
Why are you buying new earbuds over and over when you shouldn’t have to? I’ve got a pair of Skullcandy Dime 2’s that cost around $25 and I’ve been using for at least four years now. My wired earbuds didn’t last any longer, and it was usually the cord that would get messed up first.
I’ve got a pair of Skullcandy Dime 2’s that cost around $25 and I’ve been using for at least four years now
Same. I have some Anker model for 5 years now or maybe even longer. All of the previous wired earbuds (I even bought an expensive pair) didn’t last this long. I use them regularly as well. Battery seems to last ok even now, enough for most tasks.
People who also miss aux, could you share what you use it for?
I mean, for headphones.
I did buy the fairphone 6, and it does in fact work in the US (with some finagling).
The lack of a headphone port is a disappointment, but it’s fine as long as you get a GOOD dac. A shitty one will be the worst audio experience you’ll ever have. I use this: generic dac (sorry for the Amazon link, I’m sure they’re available other places.)
My everyday earbuds are essentially cheap studio monitors. I like these because the sound is great and if the cable breaks I can just replace the $10 cable and keep the high quality headphones. And there’s no battery to fuss with, you just plug them in and they work.
I can see the benefits not having another battery to take care of, or for long trips. I guess it depends what you hate more, extra battery or cables.
Yeah 100%. So hey, if the cable bothers you more, then the audio port doesn’t really matter. But I just hate the battery management, so that’s where I stand.
Connecting it to a mixing station and doing a sound check before the band.
From their website:
Why newer Fairphone models do not have an audio jack
Removing the traditional 3.5mm audio jack gives us space inside the phone to make key hardware improvements. Without this opening, we can fit a larger battery, design a slimmer smartphone, and preserve room for repairable spare parts. Removing the port also helps seal the phone against water and dust, allowing modern models to reach IP ratings like IP55 on Fairphone 4 and IP68 on Fairphone 5. Moving audio to the USB-C port and Bluetooth connections lets us build a more durable phone that lasts as long as possible.
I still call Bullshit though. So annoying. And the PP NTS that the make are not even really true. Its not like you can’t do this things with a headphone jack.
It’s not bullshit. I deal with the repair and engineering side of 1/8” phone jacks and they’re fucking stupid ass miniaturized versions of designs from 70 years ago that have to maintain mechanical backwards compatibility with several profiles and conductor arrangements, literally cannot be reliably implemented in a high IP way, cost a bunch, are worse to clean than even usbc and provide a very high leverage thing to torque on your board as well as necessitate additional pcb space for the dac and its power conditioning, shielding and other stuff.
And people who like 1/8” will just buy a dongle anyway.
Lmao same 🥲
I literally had it in my shopping cart ready to buy when I discovered they removed the headphone jack.
I went with Motorola instead
I too just bought a Motorola. My pixel 8 developed a line in the screen. I missed the headphone jack so much I decided I care more about that than I do the privacy of grapheneos. I did put /e/os on it though.
What Motorola did you buy? I went with a moto 5g 2024.
Lmao my Pixel 8 also developed the line. I had the screen replaced once, but it happened again within a year and by then it was out of warranty.
I’ve had so many different Nexus/Pixel devices over the years, but Pixel 8 was a much worse experience than a Motorola and I had to pay 2x more for the privilege.
Now I’m on a Moto g power 2025.
This was released on Tuesday and I ordered already.
I bought the original fairbuds at launch. I’m not gonna pretend they are good sound quality for music - bass especially is terrible - but they are fine for podcasts and the like.
I’ve had to have one bud - right iirc - replaced under warranty, no hassle beyond the obvious annoyance of it breaking.
When they break again, I’ll likely replace them with whatever version of fairbuds exist then. Ultimately I care more about how fairphone source their materials, the reparebility, and setting a precident, than if a pair of buds I use for maybe 3 hours a week are a bit crap.
Not a glowing review, but yknow.
AFAIK there’s an upper limit to how good can they sound anyway because Bluetooth is kinda crap for audio.
Bluetooth can support lossless.
Only if both your device and your earbuds both support aptX Lossless, which in practice means it almost never gets used because Samsung (holder of most of the market) does not pay for the licence or enable it in their phones, and the Chinese brands only do so for specific tiers and processors.
I’ve tried telling apart 256 kbps compressed music from uncompressed. I couldn’t do it using wired headphones
Most people cannot. Anyone using Spotify has probably never even gotten into the audio quality settings to change the bitrate as it defaults to Auto. Auto shifts the bitrate down unless you’re on WiFi and you’ve set it to max quality. If you’re on mobile data it goes way down. I’ve had friends who are listening and it sounds awful, you can hear the aub-mp3 quality compression. They never care when I point it out.
Depends upon the codecs supported by all hardware involved. If your sending device supports it, these new buds support decent quality.
The modern Bluetooth 6.0 chip is also intended to contribute to the improved sound, as it supports LC3 and the Sony LDAC hi-fi codec in addition to SBC and AAC.
The new Fairbuds sounds like (pun intended) itsy going to have a better audio quality.
Check mate to all the major players.
Too bad they look ugly with the step
They don’t support aptX LL, so they are useless for video. The high latency will cause the audio to be very noticeably out of sync with the video.
aptX LL sounds like some made up gobbledygook. Or like sudo aptx -ll bluez-utils
Welcome to technology?
Why is your video not syncing itself with your bluetooth?
I tried with my TV and at max latency adjustment it’s still desynced in Bluetooth. Also other sources of video like from games are not synced, especially like video call delays
I use headphones and a bluetooth transmitter that support aptX LL. The latency is less than 40 milliseconds, which is barely noticeable. With other codecs, the latency is hundreds of milliseconds, so you have to mess with sync settings in the video player.
Most video players or operating systems just handle that for you…
What players and operating systems handle that automatically? I have to adjust it manually in VLC and Kodi. It’s usually around 500-600 ms on Android phones and FireTV sticks. Linux isn’t as bad, but it’s still around 100 ms.
I’ve never had to think about it on iOS, macOS, or Windows. The video just holds for a few frames until the audio buffer catches up to it and then it resumes playing the video frames.
