this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
1078 points (98.7% liked)
Technology
71932 readers
3508 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
"We heard the criticism but decided that no, you would still need an adapter to use headphones, plus a USB-C hub to be able to charge the damn thing while listening to music or watching videos"
Funny how that's the same excuses that we get for modern laptops terrible design. "We HAVE to make it thinner so there's no space! You wouldn't want a laptop that's not complete shit if it meant it'd also be less thin and breakable, now would you?"
Let me expand, as I usually deal with surveys and population feedback. There's loud feedback, and there's statistically significant feedback.
People who want a headphone jack are very loud. They will interject this issue into every feedback opportunity given. They will mention it on the comment sections, forums, q&a sessions, answer their surveys accordingly, etc. That's all fine and their prerogative.
However, when you look at the statistics. They are unfortunately a very tiny minority of the entire population. They are not statistically significant for decision making. They don't have the volume to move sales significantly. This sucks, of course, and I personally wouldn't mind the return of headphone jacks, smaller phones and bigger batteries as a fair trade for thicker phones.
But unfortunately, the vast majority of the market is pre-occupied with other things. The phone screen is too small, the phone weights too much, the phone is too thick, I want to bring my phone to the pool without fear of it breaking, etc. They are not as passionate about it, not like the headphone people are, but they far outnumber them in several orders of magnitude. In the end, if the product doesn't sell, it won't matter how much it was worth to a single passionate person. It will sink the company if it doesn't have mass appeal. Making phones is already an extremely expensive endeavor.
You know why there aren't more users complaining about this? Because they flat out did not buy the device for that reason (e.g. me). Removing the jack is also extremely hyprocritical coming from a "sustainable" company.
And if it did have it you wouldn't have bought it either because the company is hypocritical. So why do you care? Why should they care?
The point is, the people who did buy it didn't care, and the people who care don't buy. It's a conundrum. Pair it with performance data of other phones that do have a headphone jack, plus the engineering compromises over other very important features. Then the decision makes sense. You lot aren't buying phones with headphone jacks either, so it isn't economically worth it. It's not like the motor g or the Asus rog phone are breaking sales records just on the headphone jack.
It's the same story as with small phones. People who aren't buying phones like to complain about phone size. But then when a small phone is made, no one buys it. Then the people who didn't buy the phone complain again, because the phone wasn't perfect for them.
It happens all the time, people are usually very vocal about things that actually don't drive their decision making.
Because they should want to capture more customers? Is that really your question?
Yeah and how many were those?
Exactly, they want the most amount of customers. But they won't sacrifice AxB customers to satisfy B customers. They'd be effectively losing customers or breaking even at a higher cost to them.
We know this numbers must have a population of around 180 thousand customers. The known number of fairphones sold across all models so far. Now let's make assumptions. Let's suppose that there are 100 people who want headphone jacks and would absolutely buy a fairphone if they came with it, for each user that has advocated for headphone jacks in this thread. You wouldn't even break 1% of the total number of fairphone sales, just this year (130k).
Again, there's a difference between wanting something a lot. And actually making decisions based on what we say we want. Fairphone removed the headphone jack on a model that broke sales records for them. Fairphone 5 was heavily criticized for not having a headphone jack. And it is selling comfortably well within their expectations. So obviously the people who stopped buying Fairphones because of the headphone jack weren't that many actually.
You can get good Bluetooth earbuds for under $50 and a USB-C to AUX dongle for under $15.
The average person is fine with Bluetooth earbuds or an adapter, and audiophiles would not find the inbuilt DAC/amp on a phone to be adequate.
My wired earbuds cost more than ten times that and will probably last me until I retire. The vast majority of those USB-c to 3.5mm adapters are cheap crap that have a worthless DAC and/or fall apart after a short time. I have purchased my wife three such adapters since she decided it was worth it to get a phone without a headphone jack and none of them have been good.
I ended up having to buy her a separate portable music player to use. So thanks for that Google, Apple, and the rest of the greedy shithead OEMs.
Maybe I chose the wrong $10 adapter but I notice a big drop in sound quality using that vs Bluetooth, to the point that it's not worth using unless there isn't another option. I'm not really an audiophile, though I can notice the general quality of sound.
That's why you don't just buy the cheapest one you see on Amazon. Google/DDG around to know which ones are good.