1101
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
1101 points (98.8% liked)
Technology
72360 readers
3014 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
"We heard the criticism but decided that no, you would still need an adapter to use headphones, plus a USB-C hub to be able to charge the damn thing while listening to music or watching videos"
Funny how that's the same excuses that we get for modern laptops terrible design. "We HAVE to make it thinner so there's no space! You wouldn't want a laptop that's not complete shit if it meant it'd also be less thin and breakable, now would you?"
Let me expand, as I usually deal with surveys and population feedback. There's loud feedback, and there's statistically significant feedback.
People who want a headphone jack are very loud. They will interject this issue into every feedback opportunity given. They will mention it on the comment sections, forums, q&a sessions, answer their surveys accordingly, etc. That's all fine and their prerogative.
However, when you look at the statistics. They are unfortunately a very tiny minority of the entire population. They are not statistically significant for decision making. They don't have the volume to move sales significantly. This sucks, of course, and I personally wouldn't mind the return of headphone jacks, smaller phones and bigger batteries as a fair trade for thicker phones.
But unfortunately, the vast majority of the market is pre-occupied with other things. The phone screen is too small, the phone weights too much, the phone is too thick, I want to bring my phone to the pool without fear of it breaking, etc. They are not as passionate about it, not like the headphone people are, but they far outnumber them in several orders of magnitude. In the end, if the product doesn't sell, it won't matter how much it was worth to a single passionate person. It will sink the company if it doesn't have mass appeal. Making phones is already an extremely expensive endeavor.
What statistics? People buying thin phones over thicker phones doesn't mean much when that's almost all that's being sold nowadays and every phone is trying to be as thin as possible. It seemed to me that 90% of what we're told people want is actually just what companies want to push on us because it's cheaper and more profitable.
All the people I know who are average users couldn't care less about how thin the phone is, two mm more or less doesn't make any difference. They care about screen size and being able to use it without too much hassle. If they get a phone without an audio jack half of them will just assume that they can't plug earphones at all. And they are not the ones who will complain. But then, Fairphone isn't marketed towards average users, so maybe their users have different priorities? Idk
If you ask people what they want, they will tell you they want a phone that has 15 inch screen that looks perfect under the sunlight. But also fits into their pocket. And it has to have a battery that lasts a week, but it must not weight anything at all. But also has to play all the highly graphical games, and also have a professional level camera. It must do so and also last forever and be indestructible.
That phone obviously can't exist, and a lot of what people want are things that oppose each other from the engineering pov. That's the point of surveys and market analysis. You don't just look at what people say, you look at what they do, what they actually buy.
It is true that the other side of marketing is convincing people that what the company is offering is what they would also want to buy. But it is never a guarantee. I mean, look at the Samsung Edge flop. Marketing is not magic, you can't brainwash 100 million people to buy something they don't want. Marketing is marrying what the company wants to do in terms of cost cutting and profit maxing, with what the market is actually willing to buy. If people keep buying slop, they will keep selling slop, and they will keep marketing slop to people to convince them they want the slop. To break the circle someone has to stop, and it won't be the corporations.