Bluetooth alternatives are far better these days

Disputable.

• they are cable-less, thus need to be charged separately
• they are cable-less, thus it is easier to lose them
• bluetooth implementation is a potential security vulnerability
• transmission by radio will always be less energy efficient than transmission by wire

Bluetooth alternatives aren't better, that's laughable.

You cant buy beyerdynamics DT-990s with Bluetooth, you cant get Sennheiser HD 490 Pros with Bluetooth, you cant buy Audeze LCD-5s with Bluetooth. I could go on and on but you get the point. Good headphones don't use Bluetooth.

The nice headphones a lot of us have had for years, well before the headphone jack was removed don't have Bluetooth.

So when you say they're better 1. You're wrong. And 2. You're missing the point.

If you prefer Bluetooth, fine, but phones with headphone jacks still have Bluetooth. You're only ok with it because it doesn't effect you and I think that's appalling.

Imagine phone manufacturers remove the ability to use Bluetooth headphones and I say "that's fine, wired headphones are better anyway". It's not about that, it's about removing your freedom to choose and it should NOT be tolerated

Phones that run Linux and have a headphone jack:

• https://volla.online/en/volla-phone-x23/

• https://furilabs.com/shop/flx1/

• https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/#tech-specs

• https://pine64.org/devices/pinephone/

2026 will be the year of the Linux phone!

No, bluetooth is not better. Bluetooth has latency which is bad for anything that needs realtime audio, like video games or any kind of live performance. It also runs on 2.4 like every other electronic Wireless devices making it prone to interference. And it's yet another device to keep charged all the time.

USB C is also inferior because you need dongles which increase complexity of your setup, it's more prone to failures. Like audio cutting off every x minutes because connection is just slightly loose or other electronic gremlins. I'm saying this having just had a gig and the MD's phone we relied on for the metronome started acting up during the performance not recognizing the dongle until a reboot.

Audio jacks were simple, analog, worked perfectly fine and delivered high quality audio. What we have now is overengineered slop that is less reliable and more expensive.

Bluetooth is better than...it used to be? Because I promise you there is no earbud on planet earth better than my open back cans.

I never had one of my wired earbuds fall off the platform at the train station and disappear in the gravel, nor did I ever have isues with forgetting to charge them, let alone their case being brolen and not charging at all. And if I want to switch my favourite headphones over from my PC to my phone, I'm really glad my old phone still has a jack.

I still have a headphone jack. Rare but Androids with them exist if you go out of the mainstream bullshit.

saying "bluetooth alternatives are far better these days" ignores the uses cases for cable.

I have a fp4 and it is VERY annoying to not have jack(I don't wanna use bluetooth because jack works, doesn't need a battery and is low tech), so now I only listen to music on my computer, but I'm planning on making an mp3 player with a raspberry pi pico.

Fairphone is too big, i don't want a phablet in my pocket

The removable batteries coming back would also impact the iPhone, which actually respects user privacy because Apple is not a marketing company. Apple is a products and services company, they sell tech devices and make a lot of money on services like Apple Music and TV+ and such. It's expensive for a reason; you can even take the encryption keys out of Apple's hands for iCloud so you genuinely are fully protected

Wait no Firefox on iPhone? Fuck that I'm back in

Orion sorta lets you use Firefox addons. I use the built in adblocker it has tho.

Friend you can buy a much cheaper android phone, which is why I don't really care much about this, though it is still obviously bad. I hate my phone, I hate cellphones in general, they're shitty feature locked mini laptops with a subscription so I can, what, make and receive 12 phonecalls a month? Download half a gb when I'm out of wifi range? Use google maps, the literally only truly useful thing my cellphone does for me?

Anyway, because of my disdain I buy the absolute cheapest cellphone on the market that has no attached plan, once every three or four years. I got a new one last month.

It cost thirty bucks. My monthly unlimited talk and text and data plan comes to about 22$ a month.

It's a piece of shit, obviously. But if all you're doing is begrudgingly using it to make a couple calls, send some texts, scroll Lemmy while you're pooping and occasionally use a map the price is appropriate.