No earphone jack again. That’s a bit sad. Even though I mainly use BLT earbuds, I still sometimes wish I could use my wired headphones. It’s just a small inconvenience
I had a phone without before, that one came with a simple cheap passive adapter for USB-C to 3.5mm headset. You lose out on using headphones while charging, but other than that I was never really inconvenienced…
I disagree about this being a good solution. USB-C is not meant to take the strain of being used as an audio port when being used in the go so there is risk of damaging the port while a headphone jack is more stable and allows the plug to rotate. Plus I don’t want to have a dingle I can forget when in a rush.
They should make cases with the adapter built in, the way they used to (still do?) for external battery packs.
Plus I don’t want to have a dingle I can forget when in a rush.
Just have the dongle permanently attached to your earbuds like it’s a part of the cable.
You also have to remember to have that adapter with you
An issue shared with the headphones themselves
If you need to plug the headphones into the adapter, you can just leave them plugged in after disconnecting from the phone
This way, the headphones almost become ones with USB-C connectors than auxiliary barrels.
It’s really a small inconvenience, but using an adapter would mean I’d be prone to misplace it when I use my headphones on anything else, so it hardly makes anything better
The reason for not using a headphone jack is making it simpler for the manufacturer, one less connector to handle which also limits how slim a phone can be.
I’m not saying this is good for the consumer, but there are reasons for integrating the functionality into the USB-C port.
For $700 I’m not interested in compromising my own convenience for theirs.
Fair, though the fact doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
If you want easily replaceable parts and a system that can unlock the bootloader for example, your argument can be made for 99% of phones on the market. The more requirements you add, the smaller the scope gets until there are no devices left to choose from.
These points were all disproved long ago. The jack is a the same thickness as the display.
The reason is because BT headphones have a much higher margin, and need to be replaced every few years because of the battery (if not already replaced because they were lost or damaged).
It’s just a dumb cash grab.
It’s not hard to manufacture a headphone jack. We’ve been doing it since the 80s. Probably costs them a penny BOM.
I don’t think his point was the jack itself but the device around the jack. Physically and electronically.
That’s what I’m also talking about.
one less connector to handle which also limits how slim a phone can be.
The headphone jack is 3.5mm. iPhones are ~7.5mm thick, more than double. The smallest phone available on the market is 4.2mm.
That means the audio still goes through another DAC, lowering the sound quality, compared to an analog 3.5 jack. Also, who wants to further risk wearing out\vreaking their charge port, jack inputs almost seem like they can’t break.
You can find adapters that can charge while still having a 3.5mm back
fast charging / USB-PD may not work, and 3.5mm media controls may not pass through properly
Not having a headphone jack is just a slap in the face from a company whose whole image is supposed to be longevity and eco-friendly.
No one has been using aux cable mobile headphones for the past 10 years. Headphone jack is e-waste at this point. bluetooth audio is great and if you really want to be a boomer you can use the usb C headphones.
Headphone jack is e-waste
you can use the usb C headphones
What the absolute fuck are you talking about? What am I supposed to do with the dozen wired headphones I already have? Some of them decades old? Throw them in the garbage? Sounds real eco-friendly.
bluetooth audio is great
It is. We had it on phones since before the original iPhone. No one wants to take that away.
Problem is BT headphones last 2 years then they go in the garbage because the batteries are dead. How eco-friendly is that!?
Problem is BT headphones last 2 years then they go in the garbage because the batteries are dead. How eco-friendly is that!?
My 7 years old bluetooth headphone would disagree.
It is. We had it on phones since before the original iPhone. No one wants to take that away.
And no one except a vocal minority want to keep it. There are a lot on data on that, and manufacturer make their decision on that data.
But lets ignore that, and let’s take my viewpoint as a customer. I don’t want a port I have no use for. I don’t want a DAC I have no use for. I don’t want the extra weight that comes with them.
My needs conflict with yours, so what’s the only way to make both of us somewhat happy? That’s by making the 3.5mm jack an addon, which is what any manufacturer that does not focus on music listening would do.
And no one except a vocal minority want to keep it. There are a lot on data on that,
I would love to see the data that says everyone wants wired devices only. I don’t believe you.
don’t want a port I have no use for.
Why would you even care!?
I don’t want the extra weight that comes with them.
😆 Buddy if you don’t want extra weight you need to talk to these OEMs about making their phones out of giant slabs of glass. A 1g connector isn’t going to make a difference. You’re being completely ridiculous.
My needs conflict with yours,
No they don’t. They can meet both of our needs by including a jack. Simple as.
I’m voluntarily exagerating my point here for irony sake.
My needs isn’t more important than anyone else, but I wanted to point out the selfishness of the oposite point of view by making mine as selfish. Those in favor of keeping a jack port voluntarily choose to ignore any alternative, while trying to force their need on other people.
But it is true I do not want that port back. It is redundant, has no advantages over a dongle, and it inconveniences could easily be overcome by simply adding a second usb-c port. No need for internal DAC, you’d be able to do far more than you’ll ever be able to do with a 3.5mm jack, and you’ll be able to charge it while listening to your music with a wired headphone. All that with a smaller and more flexible port.
And it would take you 5min searching the web to get good review about usbc DAC with actually good sound, even better than any internal DAC.
But to save you a click, you have the Apple one, which has good review while being able to drive almost all headphones but the most energy intensive of them. It cost a whopping… $10.
As for the precise number, you can find them on market studies. Unfortunately they are quite pricy, and as I’m not in that field, I do not have access to them. But Fairphone does, and if they don’t bother adding that port back, they are most probably basing their decision on them.
My needs isn’t more important than anyone else, but I wanted to point out the selfishness of the oposite point of view by making mine as selfish.
There’s nothing selfish here. Keeping the jack benefits everyone except Apple and other BT headphone OEMs. It doesn’t hurt anyone else.
has no advantages over a dongle
The advantage is that you don’t need a dongle…
and it inconveniences easily be overcome by simply adding a second usb-c port
Still requires carrying a dongle or buying a pair of headphones that only works with phones and computers, and not the vast array of other devices that still use headphone jacks, new and old. So that solves absolutely nothing. As I said elsewhere, we’ve created a competing standard, for no reason.
you’d be able to do far more than you’ll ever be able to do with a 3.5mm jack
What? Do you think we’re suggesting removing the USB port? What are you talking about?
And it would take you 5min searching the web to get good review about usbc DAC with actually good sound, even better than any internal DAC.
I don’t want to search the web. I don’t want a DAC. I just want to plug in my headphones. This is absurd.
It cost a whopping… $10.
$10 to buy something that previously cost me $0. Only it’s inevitably going to get lost so you’d better buy a half dozen of them and replace them every few years, so you’re looking at dozens of $ per year for something that was previously completely unnecessary.
As for the precise number…I’m not in that field, I do not have access to them
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
But Fairphone does
Where? If you know they have it, then you must have it as well?
and if they don’t bother adding that port back, they are most probably basing their decision on them.
No, they’re basing that decision on the same thing everyone else is: money. Greed. Much like Apple they also released their own bluetooth headphones at the same time as they removed their headphone jack. But I suppose that’s just coincidence, right?
Yes if they’ve lasted decades thats their job done. Now people are buying usb C headphones and there is no need to continue to support decades old standards. The ewaste from a pair of headphones is tiny so its not worth fretting over.
Also BT headphones last longer than 2 years. Mine are 1st gen samsung buds and going on 5 years at this point and still hold enough charge to listen to music during my work day. If im going to be using them all day I have 1 in and 1 charging in the case and then I can easily have music for 10+ hours on a 5 year old device. If I threw them away today I would consider them to have not been ewaste.
Yes if they’ve lasted decades thats their job done
No it means they’ll essentially last indefinitely, unlike BT buds.
Now people are buying usb C headphones and there is no need to continue to support decades old standards
No, what’s happened is that we went from a single open standard for audio jacks to competing standards (actually 3 of them before the EU stepped in and forced Apple to quit their bullshit). And gained nothing in the process.
The ewaste from a pair of headphones is tiny so its not worth fretting over.
It’s not a pair of headphones, it’s millions of audio devices.
how else are you supposed to connect it to cars that weren’t made yesterday?
Cars have had bluetooth and usb on their radios for almost 20 years. Even older than that you can replace the stereo for like $30. My car is 2004 and i did a stereo replacement and i’ve got bluetooth, usb C and aux.
“Modularity” but still no headphone jack, couldn’t I just have a backplate with a big bump on it to accommodate a 3.5mm jack?
Big? The headphone jack is not large enough to protrude from a cell phone chassis. Any company telling you they can’t fit it is just lying to sell you BT headphones.
What about the internal connectors of the headphone jack?
What about em?
I’m assuming they are removing the headphone jack cause the internal components take up too much space. I can’t imagine these companies removing the jacks cause they cost too much money.
You’re vastly overestimating the space required for a 3.5mm jack, and the reasons for its removal.
The jack takes up some internal space, but not much at all. The components required internally like the DAC chip are insignificant. It is a potential source of water ingress, but that can be mitigated and has been done many times before.
The reason for removal is two fold, first you simply don’t have to deal with any of the above, so from an engineering perspective it’s always easier to not do something. The second, and most important, **is to sell wireless headphones. **
You’ll notice that Fairphone came out with their own earbuds at the same time they removed the headphone jack. You could of course use Bluetooth headphones with the Fairphone 1, 2, and 3, but you weren’t forced to think about it and could just use your existing headphones. Removing the jack ads inconvenience and breaks user habit, causing people to re-evaluate their headphones and consider a new purchase, which the manufacturer just happens to have and likely in a bundle deal.
Apple, Google, and Samsung have seen huge uplift in earbud sales with the removal of the jack. So the anger of some power users is of no consequence to them. Seeing Fairphone follow in this behaviour what’s disappointing.
I made the mistake of believing that Fairphone is an enthusiast company, like the Framework of phones maybe. There is some overlap, sure, with the repair-ability aspect and available parts and schematics, but that’s about it.
Other than that, FP wants to be a mainstream brand, the eco-friendly Samsung or Apple; the power users can get shafted with their audio jacks for all they care. While Framework has actual hardware modularity and release updated HW modules so you don’t buy the whole device again for an upgrade.
Looking at FP’s financial statements, I get the impression they aren’t doing too hot lately, so I get it if they need bigger margins to continue operating. Just don’t be a fucking hypocrite and lie about the reason of the jack removal ffs.
I never use wired headphones even though I have a jack in my phone. But I have never bought a phone without a jack and probably never will.
Ipersonally think it’s user hostile to remove the jack and also goes directly agains the green profile Fairphone wants to have.
I was just hoping a phone like fairphone would give me the option to buy a small module or something to let me do it.
Yes, yes there’s adapters … yes, yes, you don’t need to use it … I understand. I just want it.
Probably not a popular thing to say on here, but I think you’ve lost the battle for the earphone jack. It probably just requires way too much real estate to be practical on a modern day cell phone.
It absolutely does not require too much space. And you can still buy phones with headphone jacks, just not any of the (ironically) higher end models because OEMs know they can push their first party bluetooth headphones to these customers.
There’s a deGoogled version too!!
I would prefer GrapheneOS (If I can live with the irony of getting a Pixel phone just to deGoogle it…). Sandboxing there is way better. But you lose the Repairability… Gotta check and compare the new EU metrics too.
They are just two different devices.
Just an update, I learnt that GrapheneOS developers are ‘aggressive’ towards other FLOSS projects (following comments on other thread, but you can searx grepheneos+controversy and see for yourselves).
So now, I might just prefer an FP6.
is the bootloader locked with eos?
Is it really de-googled if it still runs Android?
the degoogled roms like eos calyx lineage graphene are not just aosp zero work roms with no gapps inclueded. the devs do work on changing as much google related code as they can even within aosp. nothing is perfect obviously, but im pretty sure there are compatible mobile linux distros even.
It’s too bad they dont ship to Canada. I’m in the market for a new phone and would seriously consider this.
The state of mobile phone market in Canada is so frustrating. Not only is our market dominated by 3 players who refuse to actually compete with each other, but we miss out on half the cool phones that the rest of the world gets too.
deleted by creator
Thanks for the tip!
I had a look at the bands and it is indeed compatible in Canada! 🎉
Source: GSMArena + Fido support
Why does The Fairphone (Gen. 6) not have an audio jack?
After some of the criticism that we received about removing the headphone jack from Fairphone 4, we did consider bringing it back for The Fairphone (Gen. 6). However, we realized it would be at the expense of increasing the phone’s dimensions. We also looked into the consumer data and Fairphone 4’s weight and thickness were more of an issue than the lack of a minijack, so we decided to keep the same approach, although it was a difficult decision. We didn’t want to invest in OLED technology for the display and then not have improved the phone’s dimensions and weight. But just like with Fairphone 4 and Fairphone 5, we will still offer an adapter, which has had overall positive user reviews.
“We heard the criticism but decided that no, you would still need an adapter to use headphones, plus a USB-C hub to be able to charge the damn thing while listening to music or watching videos”
Funny how that’s the same excuses that we get for modern laptops terrible design. “We HAVE to make it thinner so there’s no space! You wouldn’t want a laptop that’s not complete shit if it meant it’d also be less thin and breakable, now would you?”
Let me expand, as I usually deal with surveys and population feedback. There’s loud feedback, and there’s statistically significant feedback.
People who want a headphone jack are very loud. They will interject this issue into every feedback opportunity given. They will mention it on the comment sections, forums, q&a sessions, answer their surveys accordingly, etc. That’s all fine and their prerogative.
However, when you look at the statistics. They are unfortunately a very tiny minority of the entire population. They are not statistically significant for decision making. They don’t have the volume to move sales significantly. This sucks, of course, and I personally wouldn’t mind the return of headphone jacks, smaller phones and bigger batteries as a fair trade for thicker phones.
But unfortunately, the vast majority of the market is pre-occupied with other things. The phone screen is too small, the phone weights too much, the phone is too thick, I want to bring my phone to the pool without fear of it breaking, etc. They are not as passionate about it, not like the headphone people are, but they far outnumber them in several orders of magnitude. In the end, if the product doesn’t sell, it won’t matter how much it was worth to a single passionate person. It will sink the company if it doesn’t have mass appeal. Making phones is already an extremely expensive endeavor.
You can get good Bluetooth earbuds for under $50 and a USB-C to AUX dongle for under $15.
The average person is fine with Bluetooth earbuds or an adapter, and audiophiles would not find the inbuilt DAC/amp on a phone to be adequate.
My wired earbuds cost more than ten times that and will probably last me until I retire. The vast majority of those USB-c to 3.5mm adapters are cheap crap that have a worthless DAC and/or fall apart after a short time. I have purchased my wife three such adapters since she decided it was worth it to get a phone without a headphone jack and none of them have been good.
I ended up having to buy her a separate portable music player to use. So thanks for that Google, Apple, and the rest of the greedy shithead OEMs.
Which brand of adpater did you get? If you got a generic one then a bad DAC and durability aren’t surprises.
I’ve used three: one was generic (it was at the time the only way to get one that could charge and have a headphone out in the same dongle), one was from Fiio (surprisingly bad sounding, maybe worse than the generic in some ways, but better build), and one was the official Google dongle (sounded clean, but was super weak. Couldn’t power even my lightest headphones that weren’t IEMs). The only one I still have is the Google dongle because the others broke, but I don’t use it because it still kinda sucks. I ended up being forced to buy a phone without a headphone jack fairly recently because Google more or less killed my Pixel 4a and there were no replacement phones with headphones jacks that I could put GrapheneOS on. I ended up buying myself a portable music player to list to music on. My phone is now only for listening to music in the car and it sucks :(
Maybe try the Apple one when Android 16 comes out (in GrapheneOS form) which fixes the volume issues.
From what I understand there are better dongles now than that they can perform better than the Apple dongle, but the one everyone raves about that was $20 - $30 or so is now hard to come brand is going for closer to $80 (I think it is the Jcally JM20 Max). I don’t see a reason to bother spending more money chasing this crap now that I’ve had to buy both my wife and I standalone music players. What I do know is that the first company that releases a decent phone that has a headphone jack that fits my other needs is getting my Money. If Fairphone has brought it back, it would have been them since they have decent ROM alternatives (though not GrapheneOS).
Maybe I chose the wrong $10 adapter but I notice a big drop in sound quality using that vs Bluetooth, to the point that it’s not worth using unless there isn’t another option. I’m not really an audiophile, though I can notice the general quality of sound.
That’s why you don’t just buy the cheapest one you see on Amazon. Google/DDG around to know which ones are good.
how do you charge the phone with a DAC plugged in?
Wirelessly.
Or you switch to your bluetooth buds during a wired charge.
I’m all for audio jacks, but have been using a phone without one for 4 years now, and there are so many options to not be incovenienced.
Also I don’t use my audiophile headphones with the phone at all - DAC on it just isn’t good enough to get most out of then, prefer to use them with my desktop PC amp only.
Wirelessly.
FairPhone doesn’t do wireless charging.
Didn’t know that, thanks.
It’s kinda tough sell without wireless for such price, for me. Though I guess it’s maybe a tough fit with their modular design ambitions, and corners have to be cut somewhere to keep their higher costs down.
good luck charging my phone wirelessly! wireless charging is also very wasteful, and it does not support idle charging (powering the phone without wearing the battery), even if the phone otherwise does. doesn’t it also take up a significant amount of that precious space inside the phone?
You can get a USB-C splitter adapter.
isn’t that against the USB-C standard?
People who want a headphone jack […] are unfortunately a very tiny minority of the entire population.
People interested in paying more for fair trade materials and repairable phones are also a very tiny minority of the entire population.
Of course I don’t have any statistic, but I would guess that the proportion of people wanting a Jack is significantly higher in the group of people interested in buying Fairphone that on the general population.In my particular case, I’m still using my Fairphone 3, and I’m not buying a Fairphone again unless it has a Jack.
Have a look at their impact report. They themselves claim that they don’t spend more than €5 per phone on fair trade or environmental stuff.
You are only paying more for that phone because they are a tiny boutique manufacturer who has to outsource everything. The fair/eco stuff is just fair- and greenwashing.
If you buy a phone because you want to look fair/eco, buy a Fairphone. If you actually really care for fair/eco, get an used phone and donate some money to the correct NGOs or charities.
Have a look at their impact report. They themselves claim that they don’t spend more than €5 per phone on fair trade or environmental stuff.
I’ve looked through their report and I can’t find this info. The only thing I’ve found is a ~€2 bonus per phone to their factory workers, which is only a small fraction of a phones supply chain. Can you provide a more detailed reference supporting your claim?
Read through the whole report, sum up all the money they mention. It comes out to $16 000. Double that for the stuff where they don’t mention money (because they surely would mention anything that costs more than the things they do mention). Double it again, for a safety margin. Double it again, because we are really generous. Now we are at €128 000. Divide that by the number of devices sold in 2024 and you get $1.24. Now add the $1.20 (Page 29) they pay as a living wage bonus and you arrive at $2.44 per device.
And now let’s be super generous and double that guess again, and you end up with the <€5 per device that I quoted above.
The picture becomes clearer when you look at what they say about their fair material usage.
Take for example the FP5 (page 42 & 67). Their top claim here is “Fair materials: 76%”, which they then put a disclaimer next to it, that they only mean that 76% of 14 specific focus materials is actually fair. On the detail page (page 67) they specify that actually only 44% of the total weight of the phone is fairly mined, because they just excluded a ton of material from the list of “focus materials” to push up the number.
The largest part of these materials are actually recycled materials (37% of the 44% “fair” materials). The materials they are recycling are plastics, metals and rare earth elements. That’s all materials that are cheaper to recycle than to mine. You’ll likely find almost identical amounts of recycled materials in any other phone, because it makes economical sense. It’s just cheaper. Since these materials cost nothing extra to Fairphone, we can exclude them from the list, which leaves 1% of actually fair mined material (specifically gold), and 6% of materials that they bought fairwashing credits for.
Also, the raw materials of phones are dirt cheap compared to the end price. The costly part is not mining the materials, but manufacturing all the components.
With only 1% of the materials being fairly mined and only 6% being compensated with credits, you can start to see why in total they spend next to nothing on fair mining/fair credits.
Yeah, I see, thanks a lot for taking the time to read through the report and write this.
It’s fucking sad but honestly thanks for pointing it out, I hadn’t even read the report.Yeah, it is sad. Turns out, Fairphone is just yet another fairwashing company. People spend lots of money and suffer through using this phone with its trash quality software because they think that they are saving the planet by doing so, and in the end they actually just indirectly donated maybe a few Euros to some random fair credit mill.
Keep your eyes peeled and read what’s beind the marketing, because even companies that look good rarely are.
Especially for stuff like fair/eco/green, where it’s really hard to objectively measure how good something is and where legal standards are ridiculously low.
Thanks for the detailed reply. You saying that “They themselves claim that they don’t spend more than €5 per phone on fair trade or environmental stuff” is a complete lie. It’s not a number they’re claiming, it’s a number you’ve estimated. And lets be clear: what you’ve done is take $3k in gold credits plus $13k cobalt credits and multiplied that by an arbitrary 8x.
I think you’ve gone into your analysis with a foregone conclusion. There simply isn’t enough information to say anything about the cost overheat of being “fair”.
You’ll likely find almost identical amounts of recycled materials in any other phone, because it makes economical sense. It’s just cheaper.
And yet the FP4 was significantly less recycled. Plastic is certainly not cheaper to recycle; that’s a lie the plastic industry’s been pushing for a while.
Like I’ve said before- their market is small enough they should be trying to get everyone they can to buy it.
That’s what they’re doing. That’s why they remove the headphone jack in favour for a slimmer, lighter phone. Their market research showed that’s more important to a bigger portion of their customers.
I’ve never met someone that cared about a thinner phone, they’ve been too thin since 2015…
People that want their ducking hradphine jacks? They are everywhere.
This is thing with not understanding how statistics work. The point is that your personal experience is biased.
These people are not passionate about phone thickness. They won’t start or even have conversations about it. Specially since, for the most part, the companies are already catering to their tastes. But, if placed in front of a survey and asked to rank phone features by their importance for their purchase decisions, the overwhelming majority will rank other phones features way above a headphone jack. Most people on the planet are not audiophiles, and the majority of people perceive wires as an annoyance and an inconvenience.
That is the point of surveying and market research. To check with the actual potential buyers what is worth making. Of course it isn’t a guarantee, looking here at the recent flop of the Samsung Edge. But otherwise, a single person’s perception of the market will never be complete or accurate.
Audio jack isn’t an audiophile thing, it’s a “I don’t want to pay 100$ for headphones thing”
As for thickness, it doesn’t increase thickness. It is simply false, someone even retrofitted a whole audio jack into an iphone.
Nobody makes q difference between a 4mm and a 4.5mm phone, even if tgey were feature and price parity.
The reason you are giving here is made up marketing by the phone industry so they can sell earbuds.
Are we forgetting that companies also have their own bias to make the decisions that increase overall profits? They lost buyers (me included) by this change, but they made up the difference by selling higher margin accessories. Companies will only cater to users if it aligns with turning a bigger profit. If adding an anti-feature is better for the bottom line, then that’s how it goes. Enshittification doesn’t happen accidentally, but by pushing the boundaries of what the users tolerate.
What statistics? People buying thin phones over thicker phones doesn’t mean much when that’s almost all that’s being sold nowadays and every phone is trying to be as thin as possible. It seemed to me that 90% of what we’re told people want is actually just what companies want to push on us because it’s cheaper and more profitable.
All the people I know who are average users couldn’t care less about how thin the phone is, two mm more or less doesn’t make any difference. They care about screen size and being able to use it without too much hassle. If they get a phone without an audio jack half of them will just assume that they can’t plug earphones at all. And they are not the ones who will complain. But then, Fairphone isn’t marketed towards average users, so maybe their users have different priorities? Idk
If you ask people what they want, they will tell you they want a phone that has 15 inch screen that looks perfect under the sunlight. But also fits into their pocket. And it has to have a battery that lasts a week, but it must not weight anything at all. But also has to play all the highly graphical games, and also have a professional level camera. It must do so and also last forever and be indestructible.
That phone obviously can’t exist, and a lot of what people want are things that oppose each other from the engineering pov. That’s the point of surveys and market analysis. You don’t just look at what people say, you look at what they do, what they actually buy.
It is true that the other side of marketing is convincing people that what the company is offering is what they would also want to buy. But it is never a guarantee. I mean, look at the Samsung Edge flop. Marketing is not magic, you can’t brainwash 100 million people to buy something they don’t want. Marketing is marrying what the company wants to do in terms of cost cutting and profit maxing, with what the market is actually willing to buy. If people keep buying slop, they will keep selling slop, and they will keep marketing slop to people to convince them they want the slop. To break the circle someone has to stop, and it won’t be the corporations.
Very strange how mine can somehow fit a 7000mAh battery, dual SIM + SD card slot and a regular jack. Hmm…
Is it repairable only with a screwdriver and parts you can buy from the manufacturer?
That’s a definite advantage of the Fairphone.
I guess, I will find out how mine fares when the need arises. Hasn’t happened in 4.5 years yet.
Are you a Republican? Because that really sounds like “mine works, so fuck everyone else”
Are you a murican? Cuz you really sound like USA is your whole world.
Okay, I’m going to ask… why don’t you use wireless?
Edit: some results are in, and the only reasonable answer is better audio quality, although that’s probably no longer true. The rest are fairly weak reasons.
Lol’d at the 10m extension cord though, thanks for that one.
wireless headphones run out of battery, and most seem to have atrocious build quality and battery life.
The battery? Mine last at least 8 hours and charge in two.
Battery degradation. Wired earphones/headphones can be BIFL if treated properly. A typical wireless device will see battery degradation within a handful of years, and I have yet to see a decent TWS solution with replaceable batteries.
The Fairbuds does have a replaceable battery if that’s what you are searching for. Sure, the sound won’t be as good as a Sony, Bose, or the like, but it would be good enough if your focus is durability instead of perfect sound quality.
Latency issue, in some use cases it’s not acceptable to have 0.1~0.3 sec lag, like racing games or rhythm games.
(Yeah, I know there are some wireless protocols to make latency shorter, but it might cost a lot to buy a supported headphone, and it’s still useless if the phone doesn’t have proper protocol supports.)
It’s about options. You can still use Bluetooth even with a phone that has a 3.5mm jack. I also run live sound and have used the ability to plug my phone directly into the board for background music multiple times.
- They are expensive. You can get wired earphones for 2 euros that actually work and are reasonably durable. It’s not a great loss if they fall in a puddle or if I step on them.
- They are a lot more failure prone. Half of those I tried didn’t work or only half worked, and those that did work didn’t last very long.
- They have shitty range. I can use a 10 meters extension cord with wired earphones if I want to.
- They require charging. And it’s a law of physics that everything that requires charging always run out at the most inconvenient time.
- Also THEY ALWAYS GET LOST. Wireless earphones, mouse, controllers… it doesn’t matter, if it’s not attached with a cable they’ll just disappear.
Wait… have you actually lost your mouse? Hilarious if true 😂
Well not actually lost… I just haven’t found under which furniture it rolled yet 😅
LOL, 10m extension cord. I mean you’ve already established that you don’t give a crap about sound quality with your first point but that’s just ridiculous. Not to mention the 10m cord that your dragging around the house.
I don’t really care about sound quality when using earphones at home because I only use them when there’s a lot of ambient noise so the sound will be bad either way. When doing vacuum cleaning, or the dishes, stuff like that. When I still had a smartphone I used a 1,5m extension cord so it wouldn’t pull on the jack each time I move, but since it died I’m using a much longer one plugged to my PC (not actually 10m, that was hyperbole, more like 5m). It’s not very convenient I’ll admit, but it does the job.
I just want them to make a true flagship phone. I personally wouldn’t mind paying extra for a more ethical phone, if it had all the bells and whistles and wasn’t half obsolete straight out of the box.
A big problem they have is that they have to rely on Qualcomm for security updates, and the flagship chips simply don’t get 8+ years of support. Fairphone uses Qualcomms IOT chips, which come with much longer support.
Qualcomm will have to change that, what with the EU now mandating a minimum of 5 years of updates after the phone is no longer sold.
So if Qualcomm expects their SoCs to be on the market for 2-4 years, like they do right now, they will have no choice but to provide updates for 7-9 years.
I wouldn’t be surprised if, given this development, Fairphone turn to the more conventional chips other OEMs use, which would likely also be a win for battery life.
What features would that include that the phone doesn’t already have? I’m currently an iPhone user, but I’m looking to move to a more open source alternative.
better cpu, 2 sim slots, a programmable button cause this dumbass launcher switch is a joke, at least 5000mah battery, at least a sceen mount fingerprint reader or even a working face recognition like in pixel phones.
a 2 year old motorola phone has all of these for some reason, for only 300 bucks. i can pay 40 bucks for a battery change every 4 years, thats still a better deal to be honest.
The dumbass launcher switch is programmable and the battery is close to 5000mAh?
Better SOC and cameras. If it has to last 5+ years these have to be very good on release date.
Wireless charging
headphone jackn’t :(
Did some digging, but it doesn’t appear the band compatibility with US carriers is improved at all. Am I wrong here?
Would that be a problem when travelling to the… oh, right, we’re not doing that anymore… would this be a problem for Europeans travelling to Canada?
why you gotta be so rude about it? like we’re forced to live here, your bragging doesn’t help anyone
From their own site it would seem they don’t. There is a “US” version but you can’t buy a Fairphone from the website directly.
https://m.gsmarena.com/fairphone_6-13955.php
There is some band overlap, but I am no expert.
Snapdragon 7s Gen3 is a pretty decent chipset. Decent display too. 8GB RAM is a bit on the low side. Camera is all about how good processing is. It’s not that crazy expensive if all works well and considering what their goal is.
I’m on an S10e with only 6GB of RAM and it’s still running smoothly. If it was still getting security updates I would keep it for way longer, but alas it’s not so I’m going to upgrade to the new fairphone (not thrilled about losing the headphone jack and getting a larger phone, but I support their overall goals so it seems like the best choice for me)
Interesting that they seem to be using a consumer grade Snapdragon chip this time, typically they used weird chips ment for industry applications if I’m not mistaken. Wonder what sparked the change, did Qualcomm start supporting their chips for longer?
Probably yes.
And probably due to EU mandating new phones to be supported for longer.
https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/smartphones-and-tablets_en
Looks like it.
Starting with Android smartphones running on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform, Qualcomm Technologies now offers device manufacturers the ability to provide support for up to eight consecutive years of Android software and security updates. Smartphones launching on new Snapdragon 8 and 7-series mobile platforms will also be eligible to receive this extended support.
They only used a weird chip for one generation (the last generation; 5)
They only did that once for the FP5. It was a terrible choice, leading to high battery usage and compatibility issues. They only did that because when it came out, 5 years of software support wasn’t something crazy any more. Samsung already provided the same on their mainstream flagship phones. So to top that they chose that embedded chip with 10 years of support from Qualcomm. But 10 years is practically speaking really hard overkill, especially considering the very impractical downsides of that chip.
By now, most major phone brands have support times rivalling what Fairphone is bringing to the table, and for that to work, Qualcomm has to support their mainstream phone chips for longer.
I would totally buy one of these if they were sold in the US. Sadly, last time I checked the newest phone wasn’t sold here. So I doubt this one will be.
you can get them in the US.
If they are all about swappable parts, and being able to upgrade your phone how you want … Shouldn’t this just be a module upgrade… Of the main part? Maybe I don’t understand it … At the very least the old parts should work with the new system right? Unless something major has changed.
Worth noting buying a second hand phone is still better in every aspect and sadly 2nd hand Samsung from 3 years ago is still better and cheaper. Though Fairphone is getting closer with each release!
2nd hand Samsung from 3 years ago is still better and cheaper.
Cheaper? Yes. Better? Hell no, unless you can root it and install a custom ROM.
You can - Samsung phones are really well supported for that.
I would never go with Samsung as a conscious choice for custom ROMs, mostly because all well-supported devices are pretty old, which means lower chance of getting something in a decent state for a reasonable price used, that wouldn’t require immediately swapping the battery already. Not to mention the Knox eFuse which means losing functionality when flashing a custom ROM. I’d argue a used Pixel is a better option, the 7 Pro can be had for relatively little money and is still a good phone.
Yeah pixels are definitely the best but they’re expensive and not as accessible globally.
main camera, AI-powered low-light magic
Can I turn it off? Can I? I just want my photos, the real ones, however bad they are. I don’t want them to be half generated.
Just to be clear, unless you’re shooting RAW you never have your “real” photos. Every phone/camera performs massive amounts of post processing, including using ml models.
AI is only a buzzword for something that has been the norm for a while.
Is there any chance this is the same HDR technology that has been around for at least 10 years, but using latest marketing buzzwords?
Also, working a bit on developing my photos from RAW over last years taught me how we actually expect a lot of magic from a regular camera. The brain does a lot of work and low/high light compensation, color balance, etc… are required to some extend. Of course sometimes it becomes a bit absurd : most smartphone pictures seems oversaturated, with clear blue skies and I one took a photo of a blue-ish mountain because (I think) some classifier thought it was part of the sky.
Yeah, it’s most likely just doing some “AI” (ML) denoising. Nothing to do with GenAI
happy cake day!!
Thank you!
Was really hoping to see a Fairphone 6a. Similar to the Google Pixel Series. Just a cheap version of it. I really don’t need 120Hz, OLED or “No Bezels” all i want is big battery and a headphone jack that is all.
Compared to the Fairphone 5 it has some improvements but also a few downsides:
Pro:
- It’s a bit smaller (~4mm) and lighter (~20g)
- Slightly better camera (future tests will tell how much better)
- 120 Hz display
- More RAM and storage (although I feel that the previous 6GB/128GB option was also sufficient for most users)
- WiFi 6E Tri-Band (however you will likely never need this speed)
- Bluetooth 5.4
- Slightly larger battery
Con:
- Backpanel now requires a screwdriver
- Display has less resolution/PPI
- Performance of processor will likely be nearly identical to predecessor (however it’s more efficient and modern)
- Downgrade to USB 2
- 600€
My conclusion: Overall the improvements are ok, however just releasing the Fairphone 5 with a newer SoC might have been the better/more cost effective choice. Sacrificing display resolution for 120 Hz feels also quite wrong. 600€ is very pricy for a phone like this. Cutting some premium features away like the 120 Hz display or a bit of RAM and storage (that you can extend anyway with an SD card) might have saved enough to get the launch price down to somewhere near 500€ which would make it accessible for a wider audience.
USB 2? What a stupid choice that appears to be. Did they have any reasoning behind that?
The transfer speed over USB on mine probably doesn’t even pass USB 2 speeds anyway and I’ve had flagship phones in the past that were even slower over a cable. I guess if that’s still the case then there’s probably a good engineering argument to reduce complexity.
I just checked my phone and the up/down speed for files is roughly 40MB/s despite having a USB 3 connection.
USB 2 has a max. transfer rate (under optimal conditions) of 60MB/s, so I think when the phone storage improves a bit or the cable is a bit longer it will likely become a bottleneck.
Also note that there are other applications than transfering files which might need more bandwidth.
To be fair it really doesn’t make much of a difference but USB 3 is now the standard for a century and has been around since 2008 so I somewhere expect a 600€ phone to also have it.
Or there wasn’t good enough engineering to begin with to achieve usb 3 speeds. Seems like they should have got it right before using it as a reason to cripple the thing further.
Eh I don’t really see a necessary use case to get angry over it… Transfers over WiFi have been faster than USB on pretty much all phones for a while now, and way more convenient.
I just drop files into my phone with kde connect. It means I can even start a transfer and wonder off with the phone and the mesh network keeps it going
Use for all your old usb 2 ables lol
Lol nooooo, I’ve been trying to get rid of all mine! Of course since I’m an IT guy that really just means they go to the box of bygone cabling standards, but still. I want them out of my active cable stash lol
Why does The Fairphone (Gen. 6) use USB-2?
In order to make the device more affordable, we explored how we could best balance our spec choices with the least possible impact on user experience. Going from USB-3 to USB-2 was one of them.
https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/24463093338898-The-Fairphone-Gen-6-FAQ
Thanks for the link. I can’t necessarily agree that it’s low impact, transferring files at 2.0 speeds is brutal.
Regarding resolution, I’ve been using my S21 Ultra at FHD quality (2400x1080) since I got it and it has a significantly large screen. I don’t see a point in higher resolutions but I definitely appreciate higher refresh rates. Makes it feel smoother and more responsive.
If the 10hz reading implementation is good I may consider upgrading my fp4. A better camera would be nice too but if they get the power saving if that screen right then I’m interested…
Otherwise my fp4 has everything thing I need a phone to be
I also found out a few other things that have changed:
- They now use Torx T5 screws
- The backcover and battery are now fixed with these screws
- The battery uses a dedicated connector
- Parts of the backcover now require a pick
- SIM/SD now sit at the bottom in a dedicated slot and don’t require the removal of the backcover.
- The volume buttons got replaced by the “moments” button and are now on the left
IMHO this is kind of a downgrade in repairability as you now need custom tools (not everyone has a T5 screwdriver at home). Moving the volume buttons to the other side is also kind of weird and unexpected as most (non Apple) phones have them on the right…
