Every wired headphones I've had started to break down after a year or so, including ones with a detachable cable.
BT headphones are much more reliable. If you buy something like the Sony's you can probably get replacement batteries.
I have two pairs of 15y sennheiser that are pristine and used all the time. And they seamlessly plug into any audio device I own or my friends do, are never out of charge, and I can listen with two headphones from one tablet when wife and I watch a movie on airplane or tent with kids.
Bluetooth will sooner or later loose battery - never mind the lag of 15y old Bluetooth standard.
You say you can "probably" get replacement batteries but we've already seen that it's damn near impossible to source the tiny batteries for things like true wireless earbuds.
Really? They seem to have less points of failure to me - they're fully encapsulated (usually glued shut) and don't have to physically interface with anything less than simple metal charging pads. Compared to physically being shoved into something and yanked out and a cable that is being manipulated.
Points of failure on wired buds are the cord and connector construction and materials. So you can generally know the "more you spend", it's likely being put into the construction (for reputable brands).
This just means they're harder to repair? That's not a reduced point of failure in really any sense.
Wired headphones are some wires, solder, also often glue, and a driver. Wireless headphones have batteries, internal computers that need to communicate wirelessly with devices and - in the case of True Wireless Earbuds - themselves, and in general more parts that are more delicate crammed into the same or smaller space.
> don't have to physically interface with anything less than simple metal charging pads. Compared to physically being shoved into something and yanked out and a cable that is being manipulated.
What a strange point. Unless you're wirelessly charging some AirPods then... You're gonna have to charge those things with a physical cable. That will have to be, as you so hyperbolically put it, "shoved into something and yanked out."
Fortunately, any decent headphones worth your money anticipate such rude treatment and have their cables be easily replaceable.
Wireless headphones can't be said to do the same for their batteries that will inevitably wear out.
> A notable downside compared to previous Fairphones is that the Fairphone 4 no longer includes a 3.5mm headphone jack, a choice that feels at odds with the company’s otherwise customer-first approach. Fairphone tells me it made this decision in order to be able to offer an official IP rating for dust and water resistance, which was missing from the company’s previous phones. It’s only IP54, which means it’s protected from light splashes rather than full submersion, but that’s impressive in light of its removable rear cover and modular design.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/30/22700014/fairphone-4-rele...
It's probably not as repairable as the the fairphone, but clearly it's possible to be waterproof with a removable back/battery and a jack.
Replacing cracked glass was hard as you had to soften glue and required a uv curing glue to attach the replacement, but would assume the fairphone treats the digitizer screen and front glass as a single replacement assembly also.
> that’s impressive in light of its removable rear cover and modular design.
(In the live stream they also mentioned that a headphone jack would make the phone bigger still. And also that they had a lot of back-and-forth on it - I don't know why you would attribute this to malice rather than a balancing of constraints.)
Because you are not listening that it is only about the 3.5mm jack. If they can do a USB-C port, they can do a 3.5mm jack. A USB-C is quite a bit more difficult to deal with than a 3.5mm jack.
> but Fairphone has the rating while being user-repairable. Not being glued shut is what makes it more challenging to get that rating, as I understand it.
What does that have to do with dropping the 3.5mm jack? There are other holes which present the same problem as the 3.5mm jack.
> (In the live stream they also mentioned that a headphone jack would make the phone bigger still.
Making the phone bigger would give them space to add seals to keep stuff out. See, nothing to do with the IP rating.
> I don't know why you would attribute this to malice rather than a balancing of constraints.)
Attributing it to "reasons other than IP rating" is not attributing it to malice. It was pretty clear it was more about making it thinner like every other phone and not IP rating.
I imagine (but know little to nothing about these ratings) that the more holes and crevices there are, the harder it is to be water and dust resistant. Modularity and the USB port add these, the jack might have pushed it over the limit, and when forced to choose between those three, the jack seems to me to be the sensible one to sacrifice. Still a shame, of course.
"The most fair-trade and repairable phone you can't plug headphones into" isn't the nicest selling point.
I now only buy headphones with replaceable cables to avoid this problem
I don't think I've read many comments as airy as this one. You can't get replacement batteries.
I have a pair of bose wired earbuds from 2013 maybe that still look brand new and the quality blows me away. Literal plug and play.And the type of wire somehow never catches/jumbles/splits etc.
In thatsame time I've had at least 5 pairs of bluetooth buds and over ears 9that I can think of). sony, sennheiser, jabra, and some amazon brands.
The user experience is different for every one, random buttons, different time to sync, etc. Hundreds of dollars wasted, largely due to battery degradation or one of the buds straight up not working. There's no reason why batteries in bluetooth modules can't be consumer replaced besides planned obsolescence.
Generally speaking, you'll probably have more success with active (DAC-based) USB-C to 3.5mm adapters.
to be fair, I believe that was an actual DAC in the dongle. I suppose in theory you might get better quality with analog passthrough from an onboard DAC. I doubt anyone other than apple would bother putting a decent DAC in a phone with no headphone jack though.
Granted, they were never attached to a mobile device, which wears the cable.
To counter your anecdotal evidence, let me offer mine.
My AKGs are almost 20 years old now. I only had to relpace the plug once which was a cheap repair I could do myself.
Also, for a less bulky design.