Let’s not forget this here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRdL0StldJM
Wired headphones do not have the need for replaceable batteries.
And get caught on everything.
I can’t be bothered with the inconvenience of wires. Bluetooth quality is good enough for what I need it for, and the convenience of simply putting them on gives me sound is hard to beat.
I have a pair of noise-canceling Bluetooth headphones (not buds) from 2008 that still work. Battery life isn’t what it was, but whatever - they work fine for how I use them (as one pair of several). I could replace the battery if I felt like it, just not worth the effort.
But I get that some people prefer the wired for their use-case.
The simple point is, no one forces you to use wires. Bluetooth has been a thing for decades.
But basically every (yes some exceptions) company that makes phones forced you to use wireless ones.
And in the case of Fairphone it is just simply hypocritical.
And in the case of Fairphone it is just simply hypocritical.
I agree. I get that they’re a business and all but I haven’t seen a legitimate explanation for them removing headphone jacks and, like every other manufacturer, simultaneously introducing expensive Bluetooth ones.
You can get 3.5mm to (whatever usb port) that will as far as I know work in every phone. Just because it doesn’t have a dedicated port doesn’t mean you can’t wire in your headphones.
I much prefer it this way, if you want to wire you can, if you don’t you don’t have to have an extra useless port on your device.
Edit
Lol, bring on your down votes. I bet if you surveyed a hundred random people on the street if they really want a headphone port on your phone and are committed to using it you’d get less than ten people. It’s not realistic to support every legacy hardware function on a modern device because a few tech enthusiasts want it, especially when there’s a very easy way to support it.
No one’s disputing the utility of wireless. But it’s not harming anyone to have a device with both mini-jack and bluetooth; the way it was for nearly 2 decades without any complaint.
Fair, that’s your choice, and please don’t be aggressive about it, because it gets very annoying very quickly. Tried not to type out this second part, but couldn’t.
But our preference is not a choice. Because phone manufacturers have decided for ourselves.
A follow-up video “Why I was wrong about fairphone” by Louis Rossmann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAogtqyN22M
Still critical of lack of audio jack but praises FairPhone for including list of all components and board view of where each part is located and a complete schematic. In comparison to other phones manufacturers that’s night and day of repair-ability.
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I have yet to use a USB-C to 3.5mm dongle for my phone that hasn’t gone bust in my pocket in a few months. Probably time to see about a cable for the earphones that terminates in USB-C on the phone end, but that was difficult to search for.
I love my wired ones, and have been nursing some BT earbuds for years, but it’s hard to use wired and not to move to BT anymore without buying a phone specifically for the 3.5mm jack.
Get a portable dac amp so you can connect your wired headphone over usb-c and upgrading its sound quality at the same time.
Hyperbole aside, I’d still be worried that any cable physically connected to my phone would break the port over time - mostly because that has happened to me in the past with multiple devices.
I’m the same, those dongles don’t last, and are annoying to use. I picked up one of these cables from aliexpress to use with my iems and it works a treat. There’s better quality cables out there, but for 10 bucks these are solid.
For the moment I’m on a budget so DACs are not in my budget. They seem fun though, and I do love my hi-fi so, who knows, may be worth?
The latter image, I used dongles like that. They broke within months and I had tried multiple brands, I soured on them a few brands deep.
People keep whining about this but honestly people who listen to music with wired headphonea are a small fraction of a 1%. And they probably have this data from their telemetry.
I live in a low humidity climate, there is no pain quite as obnoxious as wired headphones static shocking you right across your brain.
Idk what exactly causes this, but I definitely have headphones that never do that. I reckon it’s only on my pricier pairs, so maybe it’s a cable insulation thing?
It depends on the proximity of metal to skin mostly. If you use giant cans with huge ear pads, you’re fine. If you use in-ear reference headphones, the metal mesh over the speaker is close enough to the earhole to jump the gap. It also depends if the headphones are plugged into a device on your person versus say, a desktop DAC. And if you use a chair with wheels that roll across plastic, etc. etc. A lot of variables. I still enjoy using wired for audio quality, I just have to make sure I don’t plan on moving and/or discharging my bodily static periodically on a grounded surface.
ESD is such an hilarious annoying thing, I once touched a cell phone and the entire display oozed to black starting from the point I touched and then oozed back to picture. Another time, I ESD’d a wall thermostat so hard that it reset back to factory defaults. I may actually be a Van De Graaff generator.
Edit: Just remembered a third, touched a light switch screw one day and static snapped me with enough juice that 200 nearby LED lights blinked on for a split second, and then back off.
But also see:
Yep. I refuse to buy a FairPhone for this simple reason: I hate bluetooth. It means I have to buy a new expensive device to get audio quality that’s worse than before and requires batteries again. Fuck that.
I also find it ridiculous that they call themselves “fair” but making bluetooth buds probably increases pain and suffering, because more materials have to be used to make them than a simple jack headphone.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
I don’t know about the fairness of this particular company but by that rationale nothing can ever be fair, just by existing we increase the suffering. Its how the world is.
Think headphones jacks don’t cause suffering at some point in the chain?
Not that I’m disagreeing, just not sure how things would get named under this specific scheme.
Does it assume that it’s generally understood that everything is a little harmful in some way, so as long as you don’t claim otherwise, it’s cool or would everything need to be measured on some sort of average harmfulness scale and then include the rating in the title.
Like “Horrendously harmful Apple” or “Mildly harmful Colgate”
A bit hyperbolic perhaps.
Genuinely not trying to start a fight, actually interested in what you think would be a good way of doing this, as I’ve occasionally pondered it myself and never come up with a good answer.
Incidentally, this is one of the core plotlines to later seasons of “The good place”
Incidentally, this is one of the core plotlines to later seasons of “The good place”
Aaaay! Was going to say that too 👍
My only point is that we can work to minimize suffering. Making it necessary to purchase a new accessory adds more suffering than using an old accessory.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
if you hate bluetooth. USB C dongle earbuds are quite impressive nowadays like JBL or anker. no pairing
That’ll have to be the middle ground should I ever be forced to buy a phone without an audio jack.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
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I wouldn’t trade my wireless stuff for wired ones at this point. Wireless earbuds have gotten so good that dealing with a wire would be a downgrade in most cases. When I work with mixing I always use my monitors with a wire, for obvious reasons.
Also as an aside; any company that claims to do anything “green” is profiteering off of greenwashing. Of course making stuff environmentally friendly would become trendy in the cringe corpo world. I think the most egregious example is Apple’s autumn 2023 iPhone event. Just thinking back on it is making me cringe.
The “greenest” product is the one that is never made to begin with.
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Apple’s autumn 2023 iPhone event
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Why the fuck use wireless phones? Just use a classic wall phone you fucking dummies! Why use SSDs? Just use good ole floppies!
Fuck sakes man, pull your head out of your ass. It’s called modernity and it’s okay
Bluetooth headphones are not modernity, they should of course be an option, but increasingly they are the only game in town. Wired is still king for loads of things, not the least of which is reliability.
You wanna know how many times my wired Sennheiser’s have been unable to put music in my ear holes? Never. They always work. Care to guess how many wireless headphones have been able to provide sound every time I’ve wanted it without delay or failure? None. I’ve owned more than 2 dozen wireless this, that, and the other, headphones & earbuds, and none of them have been even a shadow of the reliability offered by my old wired headphones. Which is to say nothing of the fact that the wired experience usually sounds better (Still don’t think you can get any comfortable phat 600ohm monster cans that don’t have a wire) and has no issues with making sound when you’re in a space that is saturating the 2.4Ghz band (my Costco is usually so full of idiots on Bluetooth that you can’t get a reliable experience for anything from any wireless audio device.)
You seem to think it’s “backwards rhetoric” to want a feature that will never be offered in a wireless setup, and that’s just fucked man. There are a wealth of reasons why wireless does not fully replace wired. It’s why anything that doesn’t have to move generally gets a fixed connection, it’s just more reliable and often more efficient. That’s not backwards, it’s just a priority that you don’t value above others. If landlines or floppy disks offered any advantages over anything else they’d still be around today (and arguably they are in some limited niches,) but the replacements for those technologies have had no downsides against their replacements while wireless tech still has some significant downsides (again, maybe you don’t weight the pros and cons the same, so this may not apply to you) against the technology they are meant to replace, and will likely never see 100% capture of their role as a result.
TL;DR: Stop trying to frame this as some sort of crusade against the future, there are legit cases where wired is just better than wireless.
I like wired headphones it has nothing to do with modernity but the functionality I prefer. I dislike dealing with battery life. Same reason I have a wired keyboard. Also I’ve been in power outages that lasted long enough I wished I had a wall phone to do things like let my family know I hadn’t frozen to death or to call into work to update them so I was less likely to be fired. Me wanting a company to sell wired devices doesn’t affect your ability to buy wireless devices this isn’t a zero sum game, no need to be hostile.