this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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Headphone jack, if the fair phone 5 still doesn't have a headphone jack, fairphone demonstrates that their user hostile company. Removing the headphone jack while introducing earbuds was removing customer choice to force people to buy earbuds.
I don't care how repairable the phone is, if it's designed to remove optionality from me. I'd rather have a phone that gives me more options and is less repairable, then a phone that's very repairable but not user friendly.
Hell, they're all about replaceable, user serviceable modules. Make the headphone jack an optional module!
(Not trying to be combative/pedantic/"devil's advocate")
What kind of phone do you personally use, and/or prefer, that's more user-friendly, as opposed to user-hostile?
I'm not necessarily opposed to anything specifically, and trying to find less-corporate alternatives that are, ideally, more eco-friendly or whatnot, but obviously "no ethical consumption under capitalism" and all. Fairphone is just the least corporate and eco-fucked thing I've found thus far that's reasonable with current technology and interoperability.
Thoughts? Suggestions??
Pixel 5a - has a headphone jack.
I want to believe in the fair phone mission, they're talking my kind of crazy. But removing the headphone jack and at the exact moment pushing their own Bluetooth earbuds felt extremely disingenuous to their mission.
Removing choices from users, to put them into your sales funnel for some other device, might be a good business decision, but it is user hostile. It increases e-waste, because people cannot use their previous equipment.
Somewhat off topic, I still use my headphone jack. I plug in my headphones into the phone when I'm on conference calls, or if I'm in a loud environment and I need to isolate the sound better. Headphones just work, I can carry a wired headphone in my backpack, and if I need to take a conference call I can always do it. And the audio quality never gets interrupted. It's simple. Simple works.
Let's also talk about security, the more services you have available to the outside world, the larger your risk surfaces. For a secure phone that runs graphene, you would turn Bluetooth off if you don't need to use it. So removing the option of a headphone jack forces people to use Bluetooth when they're using headphones, out in public maybe, which means the phone has more attack surfaces available. Which is antithetical to the mission of a security hardened device.
I honestly would have respected fairphone more if they simply said nobody else is offering a headphone jack, and we intend to support our business through the sale of Bluetooth earbuds, so removing the headphone jack makes our ecosystem more sustainable. I would not have liked it but I would have respected it. But the mealy mouthed water rating excuses a lie. And if you're lying to me I don't think you're being fair to me.
Good looking out. And thanks for explaining all that! There's lots of stuff with the security and platform that's still currently beyond my depth of understanding (it doesn't help that tech and cybersecurity are screaming ahead so fast that it's one of those Red Queen "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place" fields where I can't seem to catch up or stay anywhere close to current)
Mine is currently a Pixel 4a, and, ironically enough to your feelings about the headphone jack, which my Pixel 4a does have, one of my personal/primary gripes related to capitalist consumerism and spending, is that it doesn't have a removable microSD card slot, and I personally prefer to keep and backup my photos and files and everything on the local microSD card that I can switch out to whatever, rather than being forced to pay for Google's additional cloud storage.
So it sounds as if we have similar reasons behind the
I wish I could just pick and choose a company and device that's not massive, that does have a microSD slot (and ideally a second one for a dual SIM), not un-fixable and un-updatable, and reasonably eco-friendly. And I can't help but see flagship models now of major companies soaring upwards of $2,000 USD, which is just fucked. Ugh, le sigh
Yeah the trend is more compute power more price more screen real estate, less features. Clearly the phones are not competing on user choice, they're competing on a few big metrics. So we look to a small market entrant, to come to our privacy and option niche, to satisfy us. Fair phone felt like that company.
I see a future not too far off, where people don't own laptops, desktops, even tablets. It's all going to be some portable phone like device. The computing power is there. It's all going to be defined by the interfaces. I hope that future includes lots of optionality. And not locked down
I often also wonder about when we'll shift towards some combination of like Google Glass types of vision wearables, communicating seamlessly with some form of headphones (or ear pods, since those seem to be so goddamn popular, even tho I see somebody lose one of their two every dang day it seems...) and communicating seamlessly with the FitBit-style watches that so many people sell their souls to
But I'm still also personally really a fan of big screens, hence why I really love seeing the foldable technologies like Samsung's Z Flip and/or Z Fold
...and then there's the part of me that keeps wondering how long it'll be until there's secure (encrypted?) ways for someone to just like 2FA-verify that they're the owner of a car and use like the Near-Field Communication/NFC or Bluetooth or something of their phone/wearables to unlock and drive their car, or, far more importantly and bringing cybersecurity into question, being able to like "AirDrop" like a 2-hour limited usership to a friend or family member that needs to pick something up or borrow it.
Like, I envision some way to use tech to share driveability of a car digitally to friends or family, but I'm sure that all the layers to make it so it's not like the Kia hotwiring problem are gonna take several years, and be a cat-and-mouse continued struggle.
IDK man, I'm just rambling
So the interface to the computer is your first point. I see a future where wearable glasses, dockable phones: so you can use a big monitor when you're at home, some sort of projection, e-ink displays, are going to become much more usable.
Identity, either through a phone or some other mechanism. Phones can't really guarantee identity, they can take factors that are hard to duplicate, to indicate identity but they can't guarantee it. So fingerprint is a good example, the phone knows your fingerprint, you apply your finger to the fingerprint reader, and you validate to the phone you're probably the person registered.
Access Management, once you have established identity then you want to delegate access in your example for a few hours to a car, or some other mechanism. Given that most computers are network nowadays, if you're reasonably happy with the identity provided by a phone, access management of a car is trivial. We could probably set something up today that does what you want.
Heck Toro the Airbnb for cars does something like it already. Your phone unlocks the car and etc etc etc
I think I had seen something about Toro a while ago, but couldn't figure out what the heck they are/were, but I didn't bother looking into it since I actively try to minimize my consuming. I totally wouldn't have guessed "AirBnB for cars," but assumed finance, since that seems to be like half the dang companies that advertise somehow
Totally with you. Won't buy it without a headphone jack. I need a jack way too much to give it up.
There's an entire discussion on that going here.
Not trying to downplay your point about removing functionally, I completely agree. But I bought a 3.5 to usb-c adapter and it works just as well.
I'm not in love with the idea of either carrying an extra dongle, or buying yet another set of wired headphones with the USBC device and a DAC built in. But I could get over it. If, and only if, the phone had two USB ports one on the top one on the bottom.
No need for a DAC, USB-C can transmit analog audio signal, it's part of the standard.
I'm with you brother