Hi Dion Since the industry is shifting towards the use of USB-C ports, especially as ports are becoming the charging standard by European legislation, we want to ensure that we keep up with general industry standards (which means also keeping sound output to this same standard), so future devices will not include the headphone jack & our mini jack adapter will remain a low-price option to make your wired headphones compatible.
I don’t mind this decision. But posting the reply from Fairphone here to manage expectations for the future.
"Q: Would you consider reinstating the headphone jack in your next products?
In the current user feedback surveys we see more people being critical about the current Fairphone dimensions than about the fact that they have to use an adapter for using devices with headphone jack. Hence, at this stage we would not consider reinstating the headphone jack in our upcoming devices."
I was pretty sure about the headphone jack already (unfortunately). However what I find even more interesting in the original article that you’re sharing is the information about the Nokia phone that at a first glance looks like they had seen too many Fairphone ads:
Is it, that’s about the G22, this LinkedIn post was about the Nokia G42 5G. But when talking about on-topic stuff, this is just about the headphone jack not coming back.
Well I don’t mind, have no use for it anyway…to be honest I wish I could opt out the selfie camera…to me the most useless invention ever …I would rather have a screen without that useless camera in it.
Less is more I guess
There are great hybrid earbuds that can switch being cabled or wireless. People still have a lot of cabled headphones and these don’t even need integrated batteries as Bluetooth modules have these integrated. The reason for removing the jack weren’t great when they were first made, and they don’t make sense even know. Nice repairable TWS earbuds don’t change a single thing about the lack of proper wired headphone support.
Which earbud has space for a headphone jack? Anyway, check the Fairbuds XL, it can do what you want. The dongle will fix any legacy connector that’s not USB C yet.
I do use the USB-Jack dongle for my old, cheap, wired gamer headphones (which I always use when calling from home, where I work most of the time). Using the bluetooth earbuds for this would be stupid, I’d kill their teeny tiny batteries in one year, and sitting at a desk the cable doesn’t bother me the least.
I was somewhat skeptical at first but Fairphone’s USB-Jack dongle works better than I expected, so I’m rather satisfied with that. My headphone’s cable got 10 cm longer, that’s all.
If there is something I sorely miss on the FP4, it would be a LED!..
It’s extremely annoying to never know if you have new messages unless you walk up to the phone and press the button. I really miss my old Samsung’s kindly blinking to inform me it would like my attention (the color telling me if it was a call, a SMS, an email, etc.)…
Each time I look at my FP4, I’m thinking “what is it not telling me right now?”…
The earbud doesn’t have a headphone jack. The earbud has a B or C-pin connector that either connects to a 3.5mm cable or a Bluetooth ear-hook module.
And “buy this other pair of headphones” is not a solution. I want to use my regular headphones, which all use a 3.5mm jack on my phone without a stupid dongle (because I’ve dealt with them on some devices and I hate them. They’re incredibly inconvenient).
That’s not a hard ask.
I had little hope that headphone jacks would come back but at the same time it is disheartening to actually read a definitive statement on that regard.
Especially since in the last weeks my problems with the USB-C dongle are getting worse and worse to the point of being unusable.
I haven’t had the time yet to to investigate the reason but as of now the problem seems to be on the Fairphone’s side. This is really a bother.
I would really love to see hybrid Earbuds, and a repairable set of those, but despite all even Fairphone is a company and doesn’t seem to be able to follow instances which makes sense for customers and not the industry.
It might be a stretch, but in my opinion here we see the limits of having such a reformist approach to systemic issues (like e-waste in a neoliberal economy) while remaining part of it, as a company they still need to come to compromises…
That said, community projects are the way, please let me know if you find any sustainable hybrid set of earbuds!
Nope it’s not. USB C can do charging, video, data transfer, storage, peripherals and audio. Now imagine if we create a connector for each of those functions. The 3.5mm jack is also huge, thus takes up a lot of space. It’s harder to clean and replace. And it’s not used that much, I travel in public transportation daily, I hardly see anyone with a wired headset. So it doesn’t make much sense to insist on a redundant port. Add up all these reasons and that 3.5mm jack is just a waste.
I’m onboard with the jacks lovers. The main reason for it to disappear is explained by a cost trade off. Can we have a cost analyse breaking down the premium of driving the proc’s DAC and routing an amp to a jack socket. I know that a chunky bit of work but I couldn’t find it online and so that it’s done once for all, please state sources or whether a number is an estimate. if that’s to consider, show evidence of the failure rates from jacks ports.
I’m not able to find out these numbers for myself sadly but If there is time on your hands I’d also be curious to know how that compares with the technical cost increase from wireless earbuds and cases or other end devices directly in relation to the choice.
Since the industry is shifting towards the use of USB-C ports, especially as ports are becoming the charging standard by European legislation, we want to ensure that we keep up with general industry standards (which means also keeping sound output to this same standard), so future devices will not include the headphone jack & our mini jack adapter will remain a low-price option to make your wired headphones compatible.
