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
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.
Yes, optimizing thinness is the antithesis of increased battery life.
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)
No.
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.
Dafuq kind of take is this?
notices what sub we’re in
oh, I see. Carry on.
STRING THEM UP, FELLAS
Once again, remember folks, this is unpopular opinions. Which means this is a good post, not a bad one.
But…but…but…
I just wanna strangle him. Can I strangle him a little? Just a little choke…
You’re going need an AUX cord for that.
Good thing it isn’t plugged into anything
So long as you promise it’ll be under 10 seconds
Longer!! I want to see the light
Funny saying this to the moth guy
This. This is my legacy now 😭
Yes, if you can untangle the aux cord currently strangling you, you can turn its power against him
strangle with upvotes
I hate how small the USB-C connector is though! They’re fragile and wear out pretty quickly. Everybody discounts the round barrel jack size as if it’s a bad thing, i think it’s the exact opposite. It’s large and the internal contacts are similarly large which keeps them working forever lol
Usb C is far more resilient than the micro B connectors it replaced. What are you doing to your type C ports that makes them wear out? Could just be dust stuck in there, easy to scrape out with a toothpick
I’m comparing it to ports larger ports like 3.5 and USB-A. The ports in the phone are fine, but the plugs on the headphone end wear out like crazy. Carrying a phone in my pocket with a USB-C header sticking out for a while day of work causes it to wiggle around no matter what I do. Eventually I realized it was a losing battle 😐
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.
Just give me a featureless brick and I’ll pay for the dongles I want. Like the screen dongle and the sound dongle. All through USBC ofc
Framework actually kind of did this with their laptops ports 🤣
Show me an affordable dongle that supports full speed passthrough charging and clean audio simultaneously. Then, I’ll agree on redundancy.
Well, that’s definitely an unpopular opinion.
For me, there are two reasons losing the aux port sucks. First, it means I have to pay extra for functionality I want. It’s not like the phone is cheaper without the aux port so it’s just more money out of pocket for me. Second, it means I have to keep track of a dongle. Something I’d be using nearly everyday.
The funny thing about battery size; they could make the phone 1mm thicker and you’d get way more battery capacity from that than removing an aux port.
Also, wireless sucks dick. May as well give my own unpopular opinion.
I used to be a big fan of rhythm games on android, but the loss of the headphone jack has completely killed it for me. Bluetooth latency is still like 200ms, it’s insane. I can’t stand to even watch video with it
You can have wired USB C headphones with no latency.
Also any good headphones should compensate by delaying the video a bit. At least on iOS with Airpods the audio and video are almost perfectly synced. Same with any other bluetooth headphones I’ve used. I did have a REALLY old BT speaker with like a 500ms delay and that was very noticeable. But that speaker is over 10 years old and cost $20.
Also any good headphones should compensate by delaying the video a bit
Video yes, but that doesn’t work with games. New Bluetooth devices are a lot better than older ones when it comes to latency, especially Bluetooth 5 devices I’ve noticed, but they’re still not very good. Wired or dongle-based wireless still have way, way better latency
The fact that codecs like aptx aren’t ubiquitous on all android devices is one of the biggest reason why it never switch back. Aptx when the two devices support it is beautiful. Low latency, high quality. Perfect. But even nice devices don’t always support it (I’m looking at you google) It’s a solved problem, but manufacturers can’t get their shit together.
Then you have manufacturers like Sony who produce butt loads of Bluetooth paraphernalia, but can’t make Bluetooth on their phones work for shit. Bluetooth key for his Tesla doesn’t work for him unless his wife turns off BT on her phone first.
The funny thing about battery size; they could make the phone 1mm thicker and you’d get way more battery capacity from that than removing an aux port.
Z space is not at a premium, X and Y space are. A 3.5mm jack takes up a TON of space in all dimensions. The PCBs of modern phones are TINY compared to the phones of old.
“a TON of space” Give me a break, older phones that were quite literally a small fraction of the size of modern smartphones were able to house them just fine. The space is minimal and everyone knows it. The reason that Apple got rid of it was mostly so that they could push their first party wireless headphones and make a killing. And it worked out very well for them. Everyone else followed suit because… Apple did it!
Z space is at a premium too, because consumer studies (according to Fairphone) show that people want slimmer phones. More so than functionality like 3.4mm TRRS.
Extremely misinformed post. Upvoted.
I disagree, truly unpopular well done.
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.
If the solution to a problem that didn’t exist before is “buy an extra thing” it’s not a solution. It’s bullshit to sell you even more garbage you shouldn’t need.
Right?
I just want to hitch my working Clydesdales to my Toyota because I want to avoid the emissions, but it comes with a fucking engine instead and no place to mount the yokes! They don’t need ANY gas and can even drive me home at the end of the night. Who has the money to go full electric when the wagon was working PERFECTLY fine.
It’s bullshit to sell me all this garbage I don’t need.
Why do these threads keep assuming everyone has high quality aux headphones lying around and nobody has wireless headphones, almost a decade after this trend started? Even assuming you don’t have a prior investment in earphones, unless you’re fine with the shitty bundled earbuds you need to buy new stuff regardless of the connection.
The best pair of BT headphones is still incapable of the sound quality that wired ones have. Plus the latency that even the best that Bluetooth has to offer, plus the fact that an aux port is virtually indestructible, and even if you managed to break it, you can still plug your phone in to charge or transfer data. USB C ports aren’t as hearty and if you mess it up with it being plugged in while walking around with it in your pocket, your phone is then kinda fucked.
Either you never used a good wireless headphone or a bad wired one. Sure the best wired headphones might have higher quality than the best wireless ones but that’s once again not something everyone will have lying around. In my personal experience every set of wired earbuds / headphones I’ve used (stuff my parents had lying around and ones bought for / gifted to me) sounded worse than all but one pair of wireless ones I’ve used.
Latency does not matter with audio and can be compensated for with video. Only place it would matter is gaming and even some of those might offer compensation options. Not to dismiss that it might be the decisive factor for some people but it hardly applies to everyone.
You quite obviously don’t have much of an understanding about how Bluetooth, DAC’s, bitrates, or latency work. You are right about latency not mattering for audio, at least. You can also compensate for the lag in video’s if if available. It isn’t on most streaming services, so the audio just stays a bit off. You can’t do anything about it in games, with a few quasi exceptions. Some headphones will have a “game mode” to lower the latency down so it isn’t as noticeable, but this is accomplished by lowering the bit rate even further. In other words it cuts the audio quality down so it has to send and read less data in order to convert it faster. Even with the crappier audio there’s still noticeable lag.
Can’t you accept that someone who knows what they’re taking about might have a different opinion than you? Bluetooth bitrate is once again a non issue for most situations. Unless you’re listening to lossless audio (e: or the headphones are stuck in headset mode) Bluetooth has a higher bitrate than what you’re listening to. And I’d argue with most headphones you hit the limits of the hardware way before you hit
any bitrate limitationsstill. (Edit: what I meant is, if the hardware is capable of delivering better sound quality than what standard codecs can support the manufacturer will then include higher quality codecs)I didn’t know streaming services didn’t have audio latency settings, that doesn’t sound ideal. Latency is very situational in how much it matters to different people with different content (game streaming is a thing) so I’d still not write bluetooth off, but if it does bother you do use wired headphones
At some point technology moves on.
At some point we had to give up VHS for DVD It’s time to let go of Aux just like we let go of VHS
Ok, so what should replace the aux port? Becuase right now it seems to be just an adapter … for an aux port. That’s not moving forward, that’s just adding extra steps.
USB-C can replace Aux
IMO, everything that can be USB-C should be, that way we can have one cable for everything.
So how do I charge my phone while also having it connected to my wired headphones?
Should I get a docking station for my phone now? Add multiple USB-C ports to phones?
Realistically you don’t NEED to do that, unless your battery is cooked. You can just charge your phone when not listening to music
If you really must then a simple splitter does the trick.
If this isn’t acceptable, then I’d argue that phones should have two USB-C ports, instead of one Aux and one USB-C
So what you’re me offering is limited use cases and additional equipment to achieve something that I can currently do with an AUX port.
This is not an upgrade or improvment … that’s just enshitification.
If this isn’t acceptable, then I’d argue that phones should have two USB-C ports, instead of one Aux and one USB-C
That is slighlty better, but a lot of headphones don’t actually support sound via USB-C and I’m also not aware of cheap, wired earbuts that use USB-C.
Sometime in the not so distant past I could have said: “but a lot of radio’s don’t actually support CD’s and I’m also not aware of cheap, radio’s that use CD’s, or a place to buy Cheap CD’s”
At some point we had to ditch tapes for CD’s or Digital media.
We can’t just stay stuck in the past because it’s convenient in the short term.
Something funny about those: sometimes they just don’t work. Seriously. Depending on the phone, the brand, those splitters just will not function because the phone decided it cannot do both power and media from the same port at the same time, if it’s split up. I tried 4 different ones before finding out my phone is too dumb for it, and same with most friend’s phones.
Classic management response for problems they created: “You don’t use your device that way, and if you do you are wrong”
Bluetooth has replaced the aux port
i held out for quite a while, but i got a shokz bone conducing headset about five years ago and i had to admit, the sound quality is pretty good, so i got a fairbud xl more recently and they both work great with my phone. i still use a wired headset and mic with my pc thoughBluetooth has replaced the aux port
No. It’s an alternative that trades sound quality and delay for being wireless. Not a replacement.
There really is no perceivable difference in audio quality between wire and bluetooth. Especially considering most people use Spotify. Also most consumer headphones aren’t great; you’d have to use audiophile level gear to maybe hear a difference.
I don’t think I’m an audiophile, but I stream my own flacs with 800-3000 kbps and there is a very noticeable difference in quality between the bluetooth- and the wired connection on my Bose QC Ultras.
Out of curiosity I did a quick test with Sennheiser Momentum 4 using 1000 kbps flac and I personally couldn’t hear a difference that I wouldn’t call placebo. If I wanted to I could convince myself that BT sounds better. But there really was no difference in quality. Only the tuning might be slightly different.
One cause of a difference could be whether the headphones use their built-in DAC or the phone’s.
To the phone? Really, really doubt it.
it has though, at least according to most phone makers
the average person (me included) isn’t bothered by the minimal loss of quality and latency, at least on the move
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.
