I see a lot of people complaining that the Fairphone 6 doesn’t have an Aux jack.
Just use an adapter cable.
A 3.5mm Aux jack takes up a significant amount of space just to connect a few wires that could be connected through USB-C anyway, that space could be used for a bigger battery.
Even if there was a good enough reason to keep Aux it should be 2.5mm Aux and not the usual 3.5 as it does exactly the same thing but uses less space
I’ve taken apart a phone for the purposes of replacing a battery. While everything is very compact as you can imagine, there is also a surprising amount of unused space. I’ll admit I’m not an engineer, so I don’t know if this space is error margin for manufacturing tolerances or something, but there is certainly enough room for a jack to be installed were this space tightened up just a little.
Yeah… I disagree. One only thing that I got to give to bluetooth headphones is dealing with the cable - sometimes it’s just more preferable to have no wires, especially during sport activities.
I’m still on the lookout for the next phone with a headphone jack. I was so hoping for it to be the next fairphone, but sadly that’s not it. (Old small ZenFone was perfect but software support of Asus is ass)
that space could be used for a bigger battery
This is the truly bizarre part. Removing thr 3.5mm port is about thinness.
It is the antithesis of increasing battery life.
I 90% agree, I swapped to wireless earbuds about a decade ago when my aux port on whatever phone I had then broke, and I immediately preferred it. I went from buying £10 wired earphones from a supermarket what sounded shit and broke every month to £25 wireless earphones that sounded shit and broke every 6 months, so for me it was am improvement. I was also a chronic “catch headphone cable on every handle” victim, to the point that I immediately preferred the wireless solution. Another thing is when my wireless headphones break, they fucking break; I go with one earbud for about a month then inevitably buy a new pair. When my wired headphones started to degrade, I always fought it, ending up in a losing battle of finding that perfect way to hold them to make them still work. The only downside I have nowadays is when I’m listening to music or a video and realise I’ve misplaced my phone, which isn’t really an issue, just that it was impossible when it was tethered to my ears.
But I’m probably part of a very small minority when it comes to my preference. I carry a compact camera any day I leave the house intending to take photos, so my ideal phone would have one rear camera that prioritises efficiency over quality. I’d have no headphone port, and to be honest, I could live with no ports and wireless charging and data transfer. I’ve had two smartphones in the last that had their USB-C ports fail as chargers (both galaxy S8s), and I could go years without needing to use the port for anything else. My dream phone would have no ports, one rear camera without a bump, no front camera, minimal tactile side buttons, be pretty slim, have a swappable battery and run a FOSS OS and mostly FOSS apps.
I respect the voices that want a smartphone equivalent to a ThinkPad a lot, but I don’t really think it’s anywhere near as necessary as a ThinkPad would be, because for most tasks that need something like that, I’d just use that.
That being said, there’s two reasons I don’t 100% agree. The first is to do with the fairphone specifically. More battery space and better waterproofing don’t really apply to a phone where I can swap the battery and it comes apart so much that it’s not really competitively waterproof. The second is larger, which is that I can just not use a headphone jack if I prefer wireless, while people who prefer wired are having increasingly few options available on the market.
STRING THEM UP, FELLAS
Dafuq kind of take is this?
notices what sub we’re in
oh, I see. Carry on.
I like having a separate connector for audio because it gets a lot of use and this lots of wear from the constant plugging and unplugging, and I’m often moving around with the headphones plugged in. I don’t want to have to worry about breaking something from doing this.
Small USB connectors tend to be the first point of failure in most of my devices, and a broken USB port would render a phone completely unusable. I don’t want to take that risk.
Aux jack is much more reliable than usb-c and can be plugged into any orientation. It is a superior connector. The size difference is negotiable and phones should be made a few mmm larger anyway to fit peoples hand better.
Counterpoint:
External DACs on multiple recent generations of Pixel devices frequently experience severe distortion and Google seems to not give a shit about fixing that.
I literally cannot use wired headphones or speakers with my phone even with relatively high end equipment without horrific audio glitches.
I have issues even with the simplest Apple USB-C to 3.5 mm dongle on my phone. The USB side rocks back and forth, disconnecting from the phone and exploding my ears with popping noises.
It’s also flimsy as hell.
I ended up bying a phone without a jack. I got 2 dongles that split into a jack and a charging port, so i can charge in bed while watching videos. One of the jacks has static noise and whine, the other has i think some kind of digital to analog interface that cuts the sound conpletely when the audio is too low.
So i hear static or when i watch a video or listen to an audiobook, when there is a pause in speech i hear the sound cut out completely, or if a video has soft background music on it, it might not pick up on it at all.
It’s very distracting.
And if you go online to buy a dongle, they dont really say what they have in them, or you dont know how your phone handles the conversion etc.
So I don’t think “just buy a dongle” is the solution. It works but now i have all these problems i didnt have with my old phone that had a jack…
My dongle that supports charging and analog audio for my car has a whine that changes pitch with the motor speed (guessing it’s very sensitive to the voltage or frequency of the alternator or something). Though at least it’s low enough that it’s almost unnoticeable when actual audio is playing.
It also requires the phone be unlocked to start sending audio through the USB interface. And maybe about 10% of the time whe I get it all set up and music/podcast playing, the motion of hitting the lock button on my phone to turn the screen off also bumps the usb port enough for it to briefly disconnect, which stops my audio and forces me to unlock my phone again to get it playing through the cable.
The phone needs to have a DAC anyways if it wants to drive its speakers. I could live with a smaller analog jack, but hate having to use a separate device with its own DAC that is probably way cheaper than the one already in my phone plus they probably don’t even isolate the audio signal from the charging signal because the main selling point is just the ability to play audio and charge at the same time.
Clip a ferrite core filter around the audio cable, that should get rid of the whine. You can find them pretty cheap on Amazon or your favorite electronics store.
Extremely misinformed post. Upvoted.
Not enough room for a 3.5mm audio port, but we absolutely must have a 50MP dual camera plus TOF sensor!
It’s more that it’s redundant and takes up a lot of space, you can just use USB-C
Yeah just remove the camera and connect an external camera to the USB-C port.
Show me an affordable dongle that supports full speed passthrough charging and clean audio simultaneously. Then, I’ll agree on redundancy.
I disagree. My phone has perfectly acceptable battery life and a 3.5mm jack, I use it all day and get home with over 40% left every day. I need the jack to use my earbuds at work, and to listen to music in my car - and I’m gonna be honest with you something as small as an adapter WILL get lost by me. Everyone’s got a different use case, and it might not be important for you, but your use case isn’t everyone’s.
it should be 2.5mm Aux and not the usual 3.5
true
that space could be used for a bigger battery
for what? for like 10 minutes of extra time?
Even if it’s 1% that adds up.
10x 1% increases is a big jump
Where does it add up? I’ve never let my phone battery fall under 30 min of remaining battery life before charging. I’m pretty sure that’s the case for almost everyone. Extending the battery by an hour isn’t going to meaningfully change how I use my phone. Extend it for an extra day and that’s when it starts getting interesting.
My 2yo phone is still virgin on his aux jack port.
