I don’t know much about Moondrop’s line of phones, but I do love that Apple removed the headphone jack, Samsung naturally copied them, and Moondrop comes along and says “you know what? We’ll add two headphone jacks”.
Respect.
(I absolutely still use the 3.5mm jack)
I still don’t quite get why some people are defending manufacturers which remove the headphone jack on their phones…
3.5mm jacks don’t cost much materially. Removing it doesn’t bring any benefit at all, and you are forced to buy a bluetooth headphone or a Type-C-to-3.5mm dongle on top of that.
I don’t think it’s about the cost of the 3.5mm jack itself, it’s about the space it takes up. “Thinner and lighter” as a goal means removing chunky things they don’t think are necessary. Also waterproofing maybe?
I am not so sure about the waterproofability of headphone jacks, but does it benefit to make phones even “thinner and lighter”?
I don’t defend manufacturers that do this or anything, but personally I hate cords and want to go wireless for everything. Of course a headphone jack doesn’t prevent me from doing that, but given the choice of two identical phones except for a 3.5mm jack, I’m choosing the one without.
Why have a hole that I’m never going to use that can trap dust, allow water in, take up a tiny bit of space and make the phone look less appealing (to me)?
I don’t see how the jack can make a phone less appealing? 99% of the time you’ll be looking at the screen, you’re not going to see the headphone jack.
Though, perhaps it’s because of lifestyle differences between countries (I am not American), I simply cannot imagine not using the 3.5mm jack ever. I am still using AUX on my car radio.
3.5mm jacks don’t cost much materially
They take up quite a lot of space (for a phone) that could otherwise be used for a larger battery. I’ll happily take a few hundred mAh of battery life over a headphone jack. I find bluetooth headphones much more comfortable to use anyway. But I understand that some people prefer wired headphones.
But that space usually isn’t. No company would make a battery with a tiny little protrusion where the headphone jack once was. That’d cost a lot more, and make it a lot more fragile.
They’d be more likely to leave it empty, or fit something else in that space, like a third speaker.
It also made it so much easier to choose a new device. Requirements: headphone jack and a removable battery. Results: 1
Even Fairphone made themselves irrelevant to me by dropping the headphone jack. What an absolutely stupid decision to make especially for a device like that.
I’m using USB-C to 3.5" adapters, they cost next to nothing and allow me to use a much wider pool of phones. Some even come with a USB-C passthrough so you can charge it or connect other stuff simultaneously.
I believe in voting with your wallet. Giving money to companies that practice anti-consumer behaviour sends them the signal that you’re okay with what they’re doing. I’m not okay with it so I’m sticking to my principles.
I never bought a device with non-removable battery either and now thanks to EU it seems that I don’t ever need to either.
I also bought an older model MacBook because it had a better keyboard aswell as HDMI port and SD-card reader. Now the newest models have them again because enough people like me refused to buy the inferior models.
Are you aware of the Galaxy Xcover Series of phones? They often offer both.
Oh that’s what they did with the Active series, thank goodness I thought they’d stopped doing them.
