Notably Fairphone removed the headphone jack on their phones so that they could sell us these wireless earbuds. I appreciate that the battery is replacable on these buds, but not worth it imo! After all, wired earbuds don't even need batteries. :(
Headphone jacks were a major wear item on older smartphones, and waterproofing them is very annoying as well, requiring a ton of adhesives. I had to take the back glass off my old Xperia Z2C three times over its life to replace the headphone jack, and the waterproofing was totally shot after doing so. At the end of the day, I honestly don’t mind the trade off, although I can see how it can be annoying for others.
I've had the area around jacks get scratched over the years, but I've never had them fail due to mechanical wear. Is this common for others?
I've certainly had the micro and mini USB ports fail on me over the years though.
MiniUSB was a busted connector design from the start, which is why the industry moved to Micro USB so quickly. Many MiniUSB receptacles in the wild were failing after thousands or even hundreds(!) of insertions.
Not a problem (like, never) once I switched to Apple… but then they removed the jacks.
But as others have mentioned, I too have had quite a few Micro-USB and USB-C connectors fail over the years. But almost never the trusty old and dearly missed minijack.
I ended up buying a small battery-powered Bluetooth-to-3.5mm receiver that I keep in my left pocket, and then send Bluetooth audio to it from my phone in my right pocket. It's a pretty ridiculous setup.
As an electronics guy the jack is rarely the issue, a TRS jack has spring contacts inside, so wear should not be an issue unless they use the shittiest of connectors or you actually damage the bonding between connector and PCB. It is 100 times more likely for the plug to fail and a 1000 times more likely for the cable to fail.
I've not seen the same failure in TRS connectors in a long time now, but I think that's mainly because few people actually use them.
Most jacks do just fine, but having the springs eventually wear out on some device or another wasn't uncommon for me 6+ years ago. Not having to worry about whether the jack is going to suck or not on a given product suits me just fine. Having it attached to an adapter means I can easily swap it out if it wears.
That said, some of the sibling comments are reporting wear on USB-C receptacles when used while running... The mechanical design of the Apple Lightning connector seems to me like it'd be more durable, since it's tapered and doesn't have that center alignment thing. But maybe the contact springs of Lightning wear out faster as a result? I haven't seen any data on this, just speculating.
The material and monetary cost of the number of wired headphones I've destroyed in the 6 years before I got wireless head phones (because there was no realistic way to stow the cabling for the activity I was involved in) probably approaches the cost of the 2 pairs of wireless headphones I've owned in the last 6 years.
I don't think they cut the headphone jack just to sell these headphones. While it is true that you can make a headphone jack as water-resistant as the rest of the phone, every hole you put in the phone adds to the design and assembly cost to maintain the same IP rating. And each hole significantly adds to the complexity of repairing that phone in such a way that it maintains that IP rating after the repair.
A set of small wireless headphones uses far less material than a large pair of wired headphones. Not saying it is a direct replacement, just that everything has some environmental impact, and fretting over one tiny device misses the forest for the trees.
I've lost either the earbuds or case of so many wireless earbuds during the past 4 years that I could have afforded 2-3 much higher quality wired earbuds.
I probably outed myself as an old with the latter question ;)
Keys: All the time. Now I have a tile on them.
Pens: lol yes, it’s why I’ve never tried to get into very-nice pens.
I’d have lost my AirPods several times without find my. I’m certain I’d not have managed to keep both buds more than a couple months if I weren’t very diligent about putting them back in the case when I’m not actively using them.
I'm saying that for the objectives Fair set out for themselves, dropping the headphone jack is low-hanging fruit. Its one more piece that fails, it fails as a consequence of normal use (there's no way to baby the headphone jack, or the power jack, in such a way that it doesn't eventually fail from repeated usage. Indeed, they're explicitly rated for number of cycles (typically around 5000 for a headphone jack, which is consistent with daily usage for 3 years, well below their 5 year warranty. By comparison, I'm seeing 20k cycles for a cheap usb-c port, which is a lot more defensible for a 5 year warranty)), and it makes maintaining their IP rating after a repair much harder (doubly so, given that they want users to be able to repair their phones).
All for a feature that, given the price point, won't even be used by the majority of users.
Don't get me wrong the replacement cables can often run like $50 but still, it's not exactly breaking the headphone
I love my wxm4s but I'm on my third pair due to battery life. Wish they had user replaceable batteries... Heck at least for the case
Additionally, unlike a 3.5mm jack, you don't need to deal with a 'sound card' that can handle almost anything you can plug into it. You get to tailor your headphone/headset drivers specifically to your attached devices. The general-purpose device that can handle anything you can throw at it costs much more.
Regular headphones.
It's just wire and magnets, with some plastic.
But the floppy drive was supplanted by other means of data transfer and storage that were broadly perceived to be bigger/better/faster/stronger.
Is there some aspect of active headphones that is bigger/better/faster/stronger than regular passive headphones?
Sounds like you want usb type c! In addition to Audio Adapter Accessory Mode which allows it to drive a couple pins with analog audio exactly like the 3.5mm jacks (and therefore enabling completely passive adapters to support devices with 3.5mm jacks), usb type c also supports charging, high speed data, and video. That's a lot more universal than some silly jack that can only support audio.
Unfortunately it looks like at least the fairphone 4 didn't support Audio Adapter Accessory Mode and I haven't found information on whether the fairphone 5 supports it. Definitely a mark against the company if they don't support Audio Adapter Accessory Mode.
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MU7E2AM/A/usb-c-to-35-mm-...
https://www.walmart.com/ip/AGPtek-Streambot-Mini-Bluetooth-W...
And most people who say "just use the dongle" are not using the dongle.
It's also less reliable than the builtin port, kinda like HDMI dongles but not as bad. My earbuds' inline mic wasn't working with them, idk why but it was fine using the jack. Sometimes my phone didn't realize headphones were plugged into the dongle and it kept using its internal speakers. Irritating when you can't rely on basic functionality like that.
Lastly, leaving the dongle plugged in can wear out the port as others have said, and you also won't be able to charge at the same time. Particularly an issue in cars; I even tried wireless charging and found that my phone overheated if it was also running nav.
With all those caveats added, the dongled jack is far more hassle than Bluetooth, and it's not because BT is particularly good. iPhones had both for several years, and BT headphones never really took off until the built-in jack was removed.
Wireless earbuds being repairable is great, but you don't need to remove the jack for that.