I despise people repeating comments. How is making the device cheaper, more sustainable, and more reliable greenwashing? I would love anybody who just loves complaining about the headphones jack to explain that. No one else has. I doubt anybody complaining really cares about the environment either. What phone do you currently have?
It allowed them to increase the IP rating, allows for simplified manufacturing, and easier maintainability and repairability.
How is not including it considered greenwashing (I notice you didn’t ask about that, so I assume you know the answer)?
Plenty of electronics have been able to get IP ratings while still having headphone jacks. It’s a trivial part to include as it is practically an ancient bit of tech and doesn’t introduce some kind of massive complexity to the device. Repair is a simple swap of the module. Nothing you’re saying has anything to do with supporting your claim of its removal leading to greater sustainability or reliability. Its materials are no different from the rest of the phone, meaning it’s just as sustainable as the rest of the parts, and it’s not a part that’s prone to failure, meaning it’s just as reliable as the rest.
The way i understand it, they ditch the jack so they can sell ppl their earbuds while claiming it’s about the environment. No idea if that’s true, but i don’t really care about this angle. Also, regarding the IP rating, you could add a rubber flap over it, pretty sure some CAT phones had that. Still, my biggest gripe is the jack situation, though a secondary sim slot and a smaller screen would be nice.
Personally, the best phone for me, that i know of, would be a Galaxy XCover 5 - small, durable, removable battery, jack, dedicated microsd slot and dualsim. Shame it doesn’t support any variant of degoogled android.
I don’t agree with the OP that removing the jack is a mortal sin. However having worked in related induatries, I don’t think removing it really saves much if any money and it is entirely possible to make a phone or any other electronic device water resistant even with a headphone jack. Hell you can get wired ear buds that can be submerged in water.
I know it wasn’t mentioned specifically, but even fairly cheap watches will be water proof to like 30 meters and still have a user replacable battery.
I just wish companies would be honest about it.
The usual argument is “FP5 bad because no headphone jack, I choose Nokia or Samsung”… I guess if you’re not even trying to have a fair and sustainable supply chain, that’s totally fine.
Fair and sustainable supply chains shouldn’t mean I have to throw out perfectly good electronics at home, such as wired headphones, because this company wants to save a trivial amount of money. Keeping the headphone jack means a greater level of sustainability because I don’t have to replace other fully functional electronics to use with this phone.
Here we go again… Adapters exist, nobody is forcing you to literally throw away your headphones. If the small inconvenience of using an adapter is so overwhelming for you that you’ll throw the whole sustainability argument right out the window and go for a company that doesn’t give two shits about it, then go for it. But don’t claim that sustainability matters to you, because it obviously doesn’t.
If I’m gonna focus on the headphone jack then I could simply say that it’s already a cheap and reliable part that provides better quality sound that Bluetooth most of the time. Wired headphones are also way cheaper to buy and in my experience easier to fix. the Bluetooth earphones when their battery starts dying down or gets damaged will be thrown away and create more waste.
Wether this company IMHO is greenwashing OR the competition on the mobile segment is just too great and I want to believe the latter.
I think that the phone is also way too expensive, yes the phone is repairable but the components are still quite expensive to replace (although very easy to do so).
Fairphone has made too many faux pas with this one.
As for my phone, I am not a reference in that matter I upgraded to a zenfone 10 that I intend to keep for 4 years (until no more security updates). the phone cannot get it’s bootloader unlocked but I’m not going to dive into that at this point. A small phone with a decent headphone jack with latest specs and big amount of storage.
I am in Asia and I had a degoogled phone but it’s extremely hard and inconvenient most of the time (even with microg). so anyway just to say I won’t be tinkering with the phone just using open source apps as much as possible.
