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[–] 82 points 1 year ago* (68 children)

Removable batteries are coming back, as they become mandatory in the EU in 2027.
Or you can already get one with a Fairphone (which also has SD card slot).
As for the headphone jack, I'm afraid it won't come back. Bluetooth alternatives are far better these days (I got both, so I know from experience), and good adapters (like Apple one) are barely more than $10.

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  • [–] 129 points 1 year ago (37 children)

    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
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  • [–] 40 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    i'm a musician, have a trained ear and even with mild tinnitus have yet to see any BT audio transmission that matches the fidelity of cables.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Missed a few things.

    • They are cable-less, thus they use a battery and have a shorter lifespan
    • The batteries they use are generally not user replaceable so they turn into e-waste rather quickly
    • Due to the reduced bluetooth bandwidth, call quality is crap
    • Sound quality is worse than a wired headphone that costs the same
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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I have two devices, one is my phone, and one only plays music. I only ever use my phone as my phone, and my music device as my music device in my car, and both run over Bluetooth.

    It is a crapshoot as to which role my car will assign to which device. Sometimes I have to put my phone in airplane mode so that the car won't try to assign it the media player role in Bluetooth settings. I'm not impressed.

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  • [–] 37 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    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

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  • [–] 32 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago*

    2026 will be the year of the Linux phone!

    or 2027. Or some Chinese variant of android on Chinese/Taiwan phone that allows sideloading, perhaps with alternate playstore and maps. I don't yet understand how draconian this actually gets implemented, but death of android/google (to me) is possible. If hardware is good enough, then android emulator will be fine for legacy apps.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago*

    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.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    They won’t become “removable” like in ye old Nokia days. It’s not like you can carry extra batteries and just swap them on the go.

    They just have to be swappable without special tools or specialist equipment.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    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

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