I had the same opinion and refused to even consider phones without it, but I’ve had to resign myself to the fact that it’s a losing battle.
My current Motorola One Vision has a 3.5mm jack, but I bought a USB-C to 3.5mm DAC/headphone amplifier a while back to use with my PC, and of course it works great for the phone. It’s really just a barely noticeable ~5cm extension to the headphone cable.
My main concern was perhaps wearing out the USB-C port, but so far no issues. And of course it’s easy to repair or replace on the Fairphone.
There’s also the factor that the 3.5mm jack on phones often doesn’t have enough power to drive anything other than earbuds and very efficient headphones, but the Meizu HiFi Pro dongle has enough oomph for full-size cans.
Ideally I would have liked a 3.5mm jack, but the fair supply chain, repairability and 8 years of software support outweigh it.
Understandable. For me though the only thing I use my phone for is messaging, calls, music, and light internet browsing. Hell, give me 1-2 camera sensors, if I wanted to do photography I’d get an actual camera and lenses.
Once my current phone dies I’m probably getting this or something similar to it. It’s so frustrating that the one feature I want is nowhere to be found.
No 3.5mm, no buy from me. I was hoping they would finally get the hint there is a lot of people for whom this is a dealbreaker.
I had the same opinion and refused to even consider phones without it, but I’ve had to resign myself to the fact that it’s a losing battle.
My current Motorola One Vision has a 3.5mm jack, but I bought a USB-C to 3.5mm DAC/headphone amplifier a while back to use with my PC, and of course it works great for the phone. It’s really just a barely noticeable ~5cm extension to the headphone cable.
My main concern was perhaps wearing out the USB-C port, but so far no issues. And of course it’s easy to repair or replace on the Fairphone.
There’s also the factor that the 3.5mm jack on phones often doesn’t have enough power to drive anything other than earbuds and very efficient headphones, but the Meizu HiFi Pro dongle has enough oomph for full-size cans.
Ideally I would have liked a 3.5mm jack, but the fair supply chain, repairability and 8 years of software support outweigh it.
Understandable. For me though the only thing I use my phone for is messaging, calls, music, and light internet browsing. Hell, give me 1-2 camera sensors, if I wanted to do photography I’d get an actual camera and lenses.
Once my current phone dies I’m probably getting this or something similar to it. It’s so frustrating that the one feature I want is nowhere to be found.