- cross-posted to:
- android@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- android@lemmy.world
While they were happy with what the fairphone 4 brought to the table, they seem to like what was changed for the fairphone 5.
What are you guys’ opinions on this? A welcome change? would you get one if your phone died within the next year?
And I give it a 0/10 on having a 3.5mm connector
There is an adapter, buttt yeah I would really miss being able to just plug in a pair of headphones.
That is a solution to a problem nobody wanted.
If they gave us a second usb-c port instead I wouldn’t complain so much. So dumb that I have to choose between charging and audio
Is that really that much of an issue in the age of USB-C?
Yes, the 3.5mm jack is more durable than USB-C (since it is rotationally symmetric twisting doesn’t apply force to the connector), it maintains compatibility with billions of audio devices and doesn’t block your charging port if you use it.
Begs the question why aren’t charging jacks designed like audio jacks?
If you wanted them just for charging it would be fine. Barrel jacks are still pretty ubiquitous.
If you want them to also be data they get less great. They make 3.5mm/etc jacks with 3 “pins” and I assume more. But every time you’re inserting/removing the cable it’s rubbing past the insulators separating the contacts. Their failure per plug/unplug is higher than something like USB-C where the 24 contacts are being pushed together instead of brushing past each other. It would suck if you put in your USB-barrel and one of the contacts broke/bent.
There are plenty of products out there that use TS style audio plugs (more 2.5mm in my experience than 3.5mm) for DC power for portable devices. When you get to data transfer requirements, the higher pin counts of current connectors wouldn’t be space efficient.
See, you just described a thing and made a statement, but I don’t buy that one bit. I’ve broken several 3.5mm plugs but never once a USB-C.
I’m on the side of 3.5mm in phones, but there’s a reason XLR and 1/4" are the industry standards for audio.
I’m the opposite. I’ve broken several USB-C connectors, and not one 3.5mm
XLRs on phones? I can get behind that.
3.5 jack port is definitely not more durable than USB-C. If you have good headphones, the change that the 3.5 plug is gigantic in length and the cable thicc AF which causes a lot of stress in the plug due to very large leverage. Additionally, I prefer to use the DAC integrated in my headphones rather than using the low quality tiny DAC in my phone. And in digital, the cable thickness does not matter really.
Very few people are plugging their large headphones into their phones though. For a more reasonable pair of portable headphones or IEMs the size of the plug isn’t a problem.
But congratulations, you have hit on my biggest audio pet peeve! DACs matter very little these days. Anything talking about DACs and not the DAC/Amp stages is marketing BS. Even dirt cheap DAC chips will acoustically transparently convert the digital signal to analog in audio frequencies because it is so basic to do. DACs on their own are useless for audio anyway, what really matters in your audio signal is the amp circuitry after the DAC that applies gain to the signal to useful levels as the choices there do make an acoustic difference if the design is poor.
What makes you think the DAC/Amp in your headphones is going to be better than the one that is built into the SoC of your phone? I don’t think I’ve ever seen any measurements of headphone DAC/Amps.
I learned that from my father, who mostly listen to music from his phone using external headphone amp for his bayer dynamics studio headphones, or uses digital out (via Bluetooth) and let his other Bayern dynamics active headphones do the DAC. He is sure that he hears the difference, but of course that could all be in his head alone. I myself am not a hiFi enthusiast, I only find the tech behind it very interesting. (I listen to music using airPods and in my car using CarPlay, sorry iPhone user here, but thinking to migrate as soon as my iPhone X becomes unusable) But given my interest in tech, I appreciate the explanation, that cheap DAC chips are very good as well, these days.
I don’t get why you get so much downvotes, because it’s not as obvious as people make it out to be and there are plenty of adapters. So it’s a good question.
But yes. The 3.5mm jack had the thing companies say they are striving for: simplicity.
DACs are nice and everything but the phone can just decide to not connect properly. The DAC can decide it had enough of your phone. In either case you’d need to reconnect them. And that means unlocking your phone, because a secure phone will block streaming to ‘unknown’ USB-C devices, unless it’s unlocked during the negotiation phase. And if your connectors have become wonky for whatever reason: Well, no music for you.
And then there’s the issue where you have to have them at hand when you need them. In your car, on your person, while at work.
3.5mm is great because it actually “just works”. One of the few things that can claim such thing.
I recently bought a phone that lacked a 3.5mm jack, so I bought a splitter with a USBC charging port and a headphone jack. The problem I encountered was that the splitter reported to the phone that headphones were connected even if they were not. I was used to unplugging the headphones and have playback automatically pause, and resume when the headphones were put back in. With the splitter I was no longer able to do that. I don’t know if I bought a cheap ass splitter or if that’s the normal behavior for these things.
This is not the normal behavior, but I’d consider the adapter part of you headphone cable and just leave it on there. If you want to unplug, just unplug the headphones (including adapter) from the phone?
That means the charging cable also needs to be unplugged if I want to step away. Thanks for the info about it not being normal, I guess I just got a POS splitter.
Ah, so thats what you meant by splitter. Might I suggest, there are some very cheap battery powered Bluetooth receivers. Those might be a good solution for you, in case you hadn’t considered something like that.
Yes, that’s actually exactly what I ended up buying. It’s got a pause/play button, so I hit that and take the whole thing with me.
Negotiation is a thing for sure. It is possible, though I haven’t ever seen it implemented, that digital audio over USB-C or bluetooth can be blocked by DRM. It would seem business suicide to do something like limiting audio output to certain audio products but I wouldn’t put it past any short term minded profit seeking enterprise.
Yes, I should be able to play music, AND charge the phone without a 9 wire adapter like those universal charger plugs from 10 years ago. Wild concept. I wonder when phone tech will be able to support such a thing
I think phones should have 2 USB-C ports
Only if I can charge 2x as fast!! 😉
There is one that offers this, it has to batteries as well.
Live by the wire, die by the wire(with a 3.5mm plug/jack of course)
my issue right now is that i use one of those charging + 3.5mm splitters in the car, but when they’re both connected there’s a loud ass buzz. a 3.5mm ground loop isolator works but made bass sound terrible. i’m probably gonna get an old phone just for music in the car 🤦🏽♂️
Even if they gave us a second usb-c port instead of a 3.5mm jack I’d be fine with that, don’t make me choose between charging and decent audio
The car doesn’t have Bluetooth connection?
nah, it’s an 08
deleted by creator
In car, I can recommend using android in the car using the touchscreen of the car. There you can manage audio as well as charging the phone. One cable to rule them all.
Yes, it is.
OK
Yes, it’s fucking ridiculous! My cans are now either useless or cumbersome and everything else sounds awful! It’s like you people who just want some noise have never even heard decent audio!
I’ve got the Bose QC 45 headphones which can do both Bluetooth and 3.5 mm. The audio quality is the same between the two delivery methods. The only difference I’ve noticed is an occasional video/audio synching issue with Bluetooth which quickly corrects itself and is usually only an issue with older devices. It’s my understanding that this and the audio lag issue have been solved recently in newer devices.
I personally think Bluetooth is a shit standard that has slowly been fixed over the years, but it’s pretty much 100% there at this point
The real question I have is: is a decent DAC that hard to find? I bought a shit one because it’s only a back-up option for me, but I can’t imagine the good ones are scarce.
Tell it to the phone companies. A DAC and amp should be part of my phone.
Bose is shit.
No, the DAC used should be one that the headphones are designed for, so using integrated DAC of the Headphones should lead to best results just using a high end external DAC would be better.
Lol, your phone has not a good enough DAC that this would be hearable ä, but you do you
No way i’m carrying a dongle
New headphones come with lightning and USB C cable these days
I ain’t buying new ones either
See it positive: you don’t have to choose from many phones if you that much want a headphone jack 😄
Attach the dongle to your wired headset.
As well as a 5.25" floppy disc drive and betamax, you call that a phone?!? No thank you, I’ll stick with my x-phone https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9-nezImUP0w
People complaining about 3.5mm jacks remind of the people who complained about how the iMac G3 didn’t have a 3.5" floppy drive. At first yeah it was weird to leave it out, but it’s been 9 years since the first smartphone launched without a 3.5mm jack (the OPPO R5 in 2014).
If you want ancient tech then your options will be limited.
Ancient tech? Looks at literally every laptop and desktop sold.
Headphone jack removal is anti-consumer and any device without one is missing a key component. Why would I buy a device missing a key component?
Plus you can find wired headphones EVERYWHERE. Walk into any gas station and pick up replacements for $10. Sure they may not be the best quality, but they work. Also, no charging, just plug them into your device. Also, no setup, just plug it in.
I can’t tell you if any of my laptops have a 3.5mm jack. If they do, I’d rather have another USB-C port instead. And arguing that just because it’s still used in desktop computers, then it can’t be ancient, I’d like to draw your attention toward the rs232 port that still isn’t phased out entirely.
In case I missed it, would you like to point out where exactly you’re being forced to buy a specific phone?
I happen to be writing this on an android 13 phone with a 3.5mm jack (I had to check, but it’s there), it’s not like you can’t get a phone with the connector.
i actually find this argument flawed. Bluetooth is great but does not provide feature parity. correct me if I’m wrong but aptX was supposed to be lossless audio, but it has been shown that it has compression artifacts. I’ll be happy with Bluetooth only if we can have absolutely lossless audio
This is not a well thought out response.
The things you mention had workable replacements and/or were the loser in a standards war. Bluetooth headphones have weaker audio, battery limitations on the headphones and the streaming device and the argument for removing them is just not justified outside of forced path to profits for proprietary headphone sales. Also, there are USB-c headphone options and problems are two fold - clunky, costly adapters and increased stress on the phone’s main charging port.
It’s not even close to ancient and you’re argument is extremely weak.
Please define “weaker”.
What are you talking about? How are you forced to buy some specific BT headphones for your phone?
And the argument about USB-C headphones being clunky? Sure, it may not be optimal, but you could always just buy a phone with a jack or give in and switch to BT.
So, the smaller version of the connector that studios use to this day is ancient, huh?
pfft musicians what the hell do they know about music
NOTHING
My electrician says that woodworking doesn’t need ancient tools like hammers.
Actually it’s even older. And it’s also not used in a phone.
The argument that 3.5mm jacks are somehow superior to a digital stream is so laughably flawed. The 3.5mm jack is a shit connector, always has been. It got its success from being paired with the original walkman, not exactly hifi equipment. The durability of the jack is wanting and a few specks of dust in the socket and you’re getting static when you move about.
I don’t know how many sockets I’ve had to replace over time because a male jack broke off in the socket. It’s one thing that the jack is so thin that it can break in your pocket. But when manufacturers then mount sockets, that doesn’t allow you to push the broken part out, and also uses some weird one-hung-low socket with a weird footprint that you can’t source with less than a 5k MOQ, and that is only after searching for an hour. Which then leaves you having to do all sorts of weird cowboy tricks in order to have a working sound output… Then you will get to my level of annoyance with the 3.5mm jack.
All those problems are not really a thing with 6.3mm jacks, but, by all means, keep believing that 3.5mm is superior because professionals use something that looks like it, and disregard everything else.
Ethernet must be ancient tech to you.
In an end-user device? Yes, it’s irrelevant. Use wifi unless you have a special usecase.
Wow, so gaming with reliable latency is a special usecase? Wi-Fi is awesome for convenience but it can never be better than wired because of physics.
Yes, yes it is. Most people couldn’t care less, they just want convenience.
What are the physics you’re talking about?
Wi-Fi is a shared medium where airtime is split amongst multiple clients on a radio spectrum that is open for all the public to use… Wired gives each device dedicated bandwidth with no interference. Wireless gets better and better, but it can never, and will never, be faster than a dedicated cable.
None of that are physical limitations, it’s purely implementational. Legacy ethernet was half-duplex as well, before switching and dedicated pairs for tx/rx became the norm. Handling of the shared medium is done with CSMA-CA and not -CD, which was used for ethernet, so at least we learned something.
Copper is also susceptible to interference, both RFI and EMI. Sure you can mitigate the effect by shielding and twisting the wire pairs with different amounts of twists pr length. But in the end, copper is also susceptible to interference.
I’m not an RF engineer, and I don’t have an idea of what can be done to mitigate noise in wifi even further. But claiming that it’s an inherent physical limitation, that can’t be mitigated, that’s just defeatism. It’s about the implementation, not physical constraints.
It’s absolutely a physical limitation and to argue otherwise is a waste of time. You can use complex multiplexing algorithms to squeeze more out of a single wireless channel, but at the end of the day you’re sharing that airspace with anything from another WiFi signal to a microwave oven. To go faster with wired all you have to do is, like you said, add another pair.
EMI can be sheilded, yes, or you can move to optical and then you’re literally transferring at the speed of light on a dedicated medium. You simply can’t do that with radio. It’s not physically possible unless there is some signaling technological breakthrough that we have not yet conceived.
The difference here is that 3,5mm jacks are not obsolete.
Nobody besides a few grumpy folks opposed the switch from microUSB to Type-C, for example, because we got something better instead.
Floppy drives got obsolete, because again, we got something better - disks! And then flash drives! Always a better, more convenient and functional option.
3,5 mm jack, however, is still completely relevant and is not replaced by anything. It is the only widely adopted consumer-grade standard for analog wired audio. Wireless audio has objective drawbacks: one more battery to control, lower reliability, poorer sound quality (not a big issue with most phones since their DACs are normally not audiophile-grade anyway, but still), higher price, pairing issues, and many more. And USB-C to 3,5mm dongles are obviously terrible: they can get lost, they don’t allow you to listen to music while charging your phone/transferring files, and they are yet another component to manage.
Essentially, wireless audio has been pushed down our throats, and we do not appreciate that. For me, not having a 3,5mm jack is one of the criterions that immediately kill any desire to buy that phone. It will just be a massive pain in the ass for me, and I don’t want that.
agree, and not just for 3,5mm jacks. If there is a way to do it with a cable, i will choose the cable instead of a wireless solution. The only time I didn’t was with a wireless mouse that, after a while, I just kept on the cable anyway. They are so very convenient, especially the 3,5mm jack.
Yes, same applies to everything. Thank God USB exists and powers so many wired (and also wireless) devices.
Also, Ethernet on computers is a must.
I don’t know if it’s me you’re calling a troll. If it is, I can assure you that I truly believe that the 3.5mm jack is a shit connector, it’s only place was in portable equipment, and that it’s superceded by bluetooth.
Maybe I presented my views in an inflammatory way, but as I’ve stated elsewhere, I wanted to get my view across in as little text as possible. Maybe also be a little provocative, so I’d actually get people to read the comment. But I believe what I said and it wasn’t formulated in that way to piss people off, just to entice and drive the point home. Exaggeration promotes understanding, but maybe my exaggerating got a little too much and disabled the understanding part.
I’ve been tinkering with electronics for close to 30 years by now, and my electronics engineering career is in its 3rd decade, and I have encountered issues with 3.5mm jacks time and again.
Trying to repair broken sockets or broken off jacks, still seated in sockets, is tedious and so low reward, when you can just get some BT headphones.
The BT headphones will break, sure, but I’d rather have good use of some 100€ headphones and a 300€ phone, not be frustrated by the wires tangling, and then discard the 100€ headphones when they break than the phone which can live for much longer. Besides if you’re buying the right BT headphones you’ll be able to source parts for it much easier than an obscure 3.5mm socket with some weird footprint.
Maybe it’s not time for the 3.5mm jack to die, for some, but for the rest of us, we don’t really care about it. Live and let die, but please stop moaning about it.
This is just proof smartphones are toys and not real tools.
They do everything poorly. iPhone video and photo looks like garbage compared to a real camera and now you can’t even play music without overly compressed bluetooth. This is like wanting a flip phone filter for your camera. It’s asinine and backward and you defend it like a lemming because HURR FLOPPY DISK SMALL. Apples and oranges. A universal connector capable of delivering a strong signal is not the same as a low capacity storage format.
But please do go on about how great your tracking device is
you do know that you could have made your point in a nicer manner, yes? why would we want to bring the strenuous tones of hollow outrage from reddit to here?
we are all better than that, even the big danish guys.
He didn’t even make a point. That was all insult and comparisons that don’t compare.
I’m sorry, but I had to say something. I’m so tired of non-technical people moaning about the out phasing of the 3.5mm jack, and especially the arguments about audio quality and vendor lock in that has been raised in this thread. I had to make sure that it was understood, that the view is not unopposed.
Could I have done it more diplomatically? Maybe, but I also wanted to drive my point home in as short a post as possible.
I asked chatgpt to help out rewriting my comment, but with your criticism in mind. It came up with:
While 3.5mm jacks may seem like a staple, it’s worth noting that technology evolves. Much like the transition from 3.5" floppy drives, change takes time to be widely accepted. The omission of the jack in smartphones isn’t about dismissing tradition but adapting to newer, more versatile alternatives. It’s been nearly a decade since the OPPO R5, and as technology progresses, embracing these changes can lead to a broader range of innovative features.
I don’t want to bore people to death, but I can also see now how perhaps I could have attacked the technology instead of the people.
We are better than our old /u/ on reddit, and we must strive to keep it that way. Competing with reddit on toxicity, will be a fight we’ll never be able to win.
Thank you for calling me out on my BS, and helping us all to keep the fediverse a better place.
Technology evolves?
You need an extra clump of stuff in your pocket that’s terribly unreliable now or your top shelf standard audio equipment now needs replaced by our branded earbuds that sound terrible. PROGRESS.
This isn’t progress. This is forced obsolescence. Literally everything about it is worse. I can put my phone in a plastic baggie when it’s raining, but I’m not carrying around an extra fucking DAC/amp everywhere. I just have to deal with crappy wireless earbuds.
What company does this? I keep hearing the argument, but I have no clue who it is.
I haven’t found a phone my Jabra headsets couldn’t connect to. Only my ps4, but that is not really part of this discussion.
Thank you!
Much appreciated, unironically. All hail the fedi!
You know the kind of guy who writes nothing but bad things and troll comments, and then wonders why his life sucks? Well… that was me. Every time something good happened to me, something bad was always waiting around the corner. Karma. That’s when I realised I had to change. So, I switched from reddit and joined the fediverse. I’m just trying to be a better person. My name is
Earlbigdanishguy.We need to be better, reddit can go suck a donkey, but if we want this to be a viable alternative down the road, we need to be better. Calling each other out on bull shit behavior is warranted from time to time.
Get over it, gramps 🤣