• orangeboats@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    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.

    • smeg@feddit.uk
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      6 months ago

      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?

      • orangeboats@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I am not so sure about the waterproofability of headphone jacks, but does it benefit to make phones even “thinner and lighter”?

        • T156@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Completely fine. There are multiple phones that have been out with waterproofing and headphone jacks.

          It’s not that much more difficult to waterproof than the charge port.

        • smeg@feddit.uk
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          6 months ago

          I’ve got no idea of the legitimacy of the claim, it’s just what the manufacturers claim. Likewise, they assume people want “thinner and lighter”, presumably because that’s what Steve Jobs said. It’s all just trying to make the devices appeal to the mass market.

          • Chee_Koala@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            They don’t even assume that anymore. If you look at the mean dimensions of sold phones in NL over the last 7 years, you’ll see that the ‘thinnest’ year is already behind us. Less then 6/7mm just becomes unwieldy for a lot of hands, and the sold phones dimensions reflect that.

        • catloaf@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          Obviously. If you can free up thickness and weight in one area, you can increase things like battery size, either alone or to compensate for a higher-power processor or something.

          • orangeboats@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            I don’t think the battery argument is convincing enough to me unfortunately, since it’s more likely that the recent increase in battery capacity is due to battery chemistry improvements rather than increased physical size.

            I mean, I have two similar sized phones from different eras. One had 3000mAh, another had 5000mAh. They both include a headphone jack.

    • ahal@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      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)?

      • orangeboats@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        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.

        • ahal@lemmy.ca
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          6 months ago

          I guess I just find a closed chassis more sleek or futuristic? I fully admit this is pretty dumb and it’s definitely not a significant factor in my phone purchasing decisions.

          Fwiw I’m not American either. But like I said, I hate cords of any kind. I’d probably buy a phone without a USB port if not for the fact I occasionally need to charge at other people’s houses :p

          • 800XL@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            I hate having cords too. For me at least no matter what pair of wireless headphones I buy, they never last as long as I need them to and when they die I am never around a place to leave them to charge.

            Another thing is that my phone always tries to figure out what bluetooth device it thinks I want to pair with and it is wrong 90% of the time.

            It also thinks that if I’ve been away from a bluetooth device for awhile that when I come back I want to switch from my headphones to that device and it is wrong 100% of the time.

            Cords are irritating and I can’t tell you how many times the cord has caught on something walking by and ripped the headphones out of my ears, but it still way less annoying than bluetooth.

    • Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 months ago

      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.

      • T156@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        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.

            • Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              6 months ago

              Just look at the inside any modern smartphone, it’s full of battery and other stuff, basically no empty space. The iPhone 7 was the first generation without a headphone jack, it still used the old case design though. Look at the iPhone X which was completely redesigned, it’s just marginally larger than the iPhone 6/6s/7/8 (they all use the same case design) but has a much larger battery. They went from 7.45Wh (1960mAh) on the iPhone 7

              to 10.35Wh (2716mAh) on the iPhone X.

              • EddoWagt@feddit.nl
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                6 months ago

                I feel like the bottom phone there looks more empty than the top, it looks like there is still some room at the top and bottom there.

                But anyhow, they’ve removed the headphone jacks from iPads as well and those certainly have some room left

                • Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  6 months ago

                  No. Most of the iPad lineup uses LCD displays which are relatively thick. The headphone jack only fits in old iPads, because of the large bezels. On newer iPads, the headphone jack would need to go under the display, making the entire device much thicker. With OLED, you don’t have this problem, but Apple either uses LCD or Mini-LED for iPads.

      • stardust@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        Space seems overblown when Samsung ultras fit in an entire spen that takes up way more space, and most phones do not have a stylus that can be stored internally. So I don’t buy the excuse of space. Always has seemed like more a company excuse to sell accessories.

    • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I still don’t quite get why some people are defending manufacturers which remove the headphone jack on their phones…

      Not defending, just utterly couldn’t care either way. 🤷

      • orangeboats@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I am trying to. My current phone has a headphone jack. But I fear that the possibility of getting a high-end phone with a headphone jack is diminishing.

      • Yttra@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Cool, just make alternatives actually available in a country, and also get them onto mobile carrier whitelists. Easy.

        (Looking at Asus)