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Fairphone Fairbuds launch with replaceable batteries, titanium drivers and ANC
(www.notebookcheck.net)
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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Let's not forget this here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRdL0StldJM
Wired headphones do not have the need for replaceable batteries.
And get caught on everything.
I can't be bothered with the inconvenience of wires. Bluetooth quality is good enough for what I need it for, and the convenience of simply putting them on gives me sound is hard to beat.
I have a pair of noise-canceling Bluetooth headphones (not buds) from 2008 that still work. Battery life isn't what it was, but whatever - they work fine for how I use them (as one pair of several). I could replace the battery if I felt like it, just not worth the effort.
But I get that some people prefer the wired for their use-case.
The simple point is, no one forces you to use wires. Bluetooth has been a thing for decades.
But basically every (yes some exceptions) company that makes phones forced you to use wireless ones.
And in the case of Fairphone it is just simply hypocritical.
The only reason the headphone jack was ever removed is to sell you wireless earbuds.
People will deny this but this is the only real reason for doing that. The other reason is copying apple, which isn't really another reason as apple removed it for the first reason. Fairphone just went the extra mile to claim that headphones are wasteful, in essence they're making an excuse to cover up their reason why and also trying to force others to do it as well.
or a adapter at greater than 20x cost
YUP! I'm sorry, Apple earned more money than Spotify purely based on their airpod market. I refuse to believe otherwise.
If they truly cared about repairability/maintainability they'd give me a headphone jack phone with a replaceable module in case it wears down.
I freaking hate dongles, I always have one when I don't need one and can never find one when I don't. They randomly don't work or I don't know if this AliExpress one I bought is actually stealing my data. Just give a built-in jack, please!
I velcro’d dongles to some wired pairs of headphones, but haven’t been using them.
AirPods have been great for stockholders and bad for our planet’s inhabitants. But I cannot deny the flexibility, seamlessness (even across devices), speed to don & doff, and convenience are powerful factors.
All my phones always had headphone jacks, even though I prefer wireless and put those rubber nub dust protectors in them, so they don't get filthy. Nobody forced me to do anything. I had multiple brands. Wiko, Samsung, Honor, etc..
No one's disputing the utility of wireless. But it's not harming anyone to have a device with both mini-jack and bluetooth; the way it was for nearly 2 decades without any complaint.
Fair, that's your choice, and please don't be aggressive about it, because it gets very annoying very quickly. Tried not to type out this second part, but couldn't.
But our preference is not a choice. Because phone manufacturers have decided for ourselves.
A follow-up video "Why I was wrong about fairphone" by Louis Rossmann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAogtqyN22M
Still critical of lack of audio jack but praises FairPhone for including list of all components and board view of where each part is located and a complete schematic. In comparison to other phones manufacturers that's night and day of repair-ability.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=EAogtqyN22M
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I have yet to use a USB-C to 3.5mm dongle for my phone that hasn't gone bust in my pocket in a few months. Probably time to see about a cable for the earphones that terminates in USB-C on the phone end, but that was difficult to search for.
I love my wired ones, and have been nursing some BT earbuds for years, but it's hard to use wired and not to move to BT anymore without buying a phone specifically for the 3.5mm jack.
Get a portable dac amp so you can connect your wired headphone over usb-c and upgrading its sound quality at the same time.
Hyperbole aside, I'd still be worried that any cable physically connected to my phone would break the port over time - mostly because that has happened to me in the past with multiple devices.
I guess there is no way to escape the extra stress to the port. Maybe using this kind of detachable magnetic adapter can help with reducing the strain? They don't conform with usb specification though, so while it may reduce strain to your port, it may carry another risk like making it easier to accidentally shorting some exposed pins.
Nice, I did not know such a connector existed - that will be useful for completely different and unrelated use cases.
While I had toyed with the idea of a portable, Japanese - made DAC for a while, I switched to Bluetooth headphones years ago. Started out with a cheap Philips headset for $50, later on got the Bose QC 35 II (still my daily driver when outside) and finally worked my way up to the Sony WH-1000XM5.
I did not realize how nice active noise cancelation is. Plus, the frequency reproduction of the XM5 with LDAC enabled is absolutely fine.
On the cons side, you're walking around with $300 - $400 on your head, which is an absolutely luxury, plus you'll get headphones that perform equally well in the sound department (minus the excellent ANC and freedom from cables) for a lot less.
I'm the same, those dongles don't last, and are annoying to use. I picked up one of these cables from aliexpress to use with my iems and it works a treat. There's better quality cables out there, but for 10 bucks these are solid.
For the moment I'm on a budget so DACs are not in my budget. They seem fun though, and I do love my hi-fi so, who knows, may be worth?
The latter image, I used dongles like that. They broke within months and I had tried multiple brands, I soured on them a few brands deep.
People keep whining about this but honestly people who listen to music with wired headphonea are a small fraction of a 1%. And they probably have this data from their telemetry.
They are now a small fraction cause this trend is already 8 years old.
Don't wanna be a whiner but wireless in ears never last long enough for me. I'm forced to stop using them after a while because they need to be charged. Even a 2 and a half hour phone call is enough to deplete them. This is a non existing problem with wired ones
I live in a low humidity climate, there is no pain quite as obnoxious as wired headphones static shocking you right across your brain.
Idk what exactly causes this, but I definitely have headphones that never do that. I reckon it’s only on my pricier pairs, so maybe it’s a cable insulation thing?
It depends on the proximity of metal to skin mostly. If you use giant cans with huge ear pads, you're fine. If you use in-ear reference headphones, the metal mesh over the speaker is close enough to the earhole to jump the gap. It also depends if the headphones are plugged into a device on your person versus say, a desktop DAC. And if you use a chair with wheels that roll across plastic, etc. etc. A lot of variables. I still enjoy using wired for audio quality, I just have to make sure I don't plan on moving and/or discharging my bodily static periodically on a grounded surface.
ESD is such an hilarious annoying thing, I once touched a cell phone and the entire display oozed to black starting from the point I touched and then oozed back to picture. Another time, I ESD'd a wall thermostat so hard that it reset back to factory defaults. I may actually be a Van De Graaff generator.
Edit: Just remembered a third, touched a light switch screw one day and static snapped me with enough juice that 200 nearby LED lights blinked on for a split second, and then back off.
But also see:
https://piped.video/watch?v=EAogtqyN22M