But of course we all know that the big manufacturers don’t do this not because they can’t but because they don’t want to. Planned obsolescence is still very much the name of the game, despite all the bullshit they spout about sustainability.
What I don’t get is how no company seems to have worked out a legitimately good service and maintenance model for tech products. Fairphone hasn’t invented the wheel here. They’re going to make money on maintenance, parts and repair.
I would think there would be lowered costs involved in not having to push out a new product every 6 months and market it to customers who just bought something less than a year ago.
The business models of the current tech giants are very much based on planned obsolescence. Selling you a gadget for $ 1000 every two years will always be more profitable than selling you one very five years and doing service in the meantime.
Selling you a gadget for $ 1000 every two years will always be more profitable than selling you one very five years and doing service in the meantime.
Are you aware that the current version of iOS is supported by the phones Apple released in 2018? And they’re still releasing security updates for the prior version, with support for 2017’s iPhone 8?
Apple got in trouble for lowering CPU speed with a software update. They said it’s to help old batteries but it made the experience noticable worse so it appeared like they tried to make getting a new phone more appealing by gimping old ones.
Updating proprietary software need not be in the user’s best interests.
Checking in on a five year old XS MAXXX here. Runs like the day I got it.
The costs (overhead) are too high. They make more by simply manufacturing and selling.
Otherwise they’d be doing it.
I’m wondering about that. I’ve worked with several manufacturers, and their most profitable segment is parts. If you ever want to get the highest annual bonus, work for the parts devision.
Manufacturers of what? Selling and replacing car parts is a much different proposition than trying to replace semiconductors inside an earbud.
If the thing you’re selling costs $100,000, a separate parts stream makes sense, because the skilled labor that goes into replacing parts in a used device is worth the cost, compared to throwing it all away and starting with the new thing.
If the thing costs $100 and skilled worker time is at $50/hour, there’s just not much room for repairs to be cost effective, and repairs then become more of a reflection of one’s internal values around reducing waste or tinkering for fun than an economically feasible activity.
Anything that’s repairable is by component (main board, sound card, battery, camera, case, etc.). It was nice when we could swap batteries in cellphones. I have a Samsung S24 Ultra that came with a promise of 7 years of updates but the battery will degrade well before that and will cost $200-300 to pay a repair shop to replace because of the need of specialized tools. With my old Samsung Note 1, I could get a new battery for $20.
Why do you think they all opposed right to repair?
And specifically, right to open repair? They’ll happily send you a $600 TPM-locked biometric sensor, because they would control the market and ROI, but won’t let you buy a $90 alternative from someone else.
What? Why would the battery replacement cost $200-300? That seems a bit out there; authorised Apple resellers here replaces iPhone batteries for $80, that’s work and battery. That’s digestible at least, but still unreasonable in my opinion. I’d prefer to return to the days of feature phones where you could slip off the back and just slot in a new battery you picked up at the local electric parts store for $15-30.
But not for overall profit
Yes, for total corporate contribution margin.
The service and maintenance model is largely “replace it”.
Everyone looks to a desktop computer where you swap out a stick of ram or whatever. But the real key is to look at laptops. Yes, a LOT of vendors solder the god damned ram in place and so forth which is bullshit. But repairs are generally less “okay, let me re-solder this one connection” since that connection is a via that is embedded in a circuitboard. So it becomes “let’s replace that board”. And yes, efforts can be made to split up the board more but you lose latency savings and increase the complexity of the boards because you now need to add connection points and so forth.
And then you look at earbuds where… do you even have room for connectors like that? Near as I can tell, Fairbuds let you replace a few pieces of plastic, the rubber earplugs, the in-bud battery, and the charger (possibly just the battery?). That is definitely a step in the right direction but it also becomes a question of how much that even matters. In particular, I am wary of the value-add of the internal batteries since charging a lithium battery is largely “solved” and these have an external controller (the case) that can preserve the battery.
While I think we can do better in some spaces, the reality is that a lot of modern tech is fundamentally un-repairable. Not because of evil conspiracies but just because it is a lot easier to print a PCB and slot in some components than it is to connect vacuum tube diodes. And when so many of those components are fairly complex chips and the damage is less “oh, the metal prong on this chip broke” and more “oh, the via shorted out”?
Stuff like the fairbuds just seem… real stupid to me. Fairphone level “replace and repair” is kind of borderline but I think is generally good. And while I have series issues with how Framework does it and the resulting e-waste, I love the ethos of their laptops.
But We need to pick and choose our battles to be ones that make sense. Will Smith’s Tested’s Adam Savage just uploaded a video where he gushed about how easy it was to repair a kitchenaid mixer and that is an AWESOME video. That is the kind of repairs that people can meaningfully make. Using an x-ray machine to detect a possible short in a chip and hoping that was the only short… is not.
And in those cases? We need strong warranties AND strong e-waste recycling programs and incentives. Electronics are increasingly disposable for good and bad reasons. The junk drawer full of old phones and swelling batteries is bad.
I am wary of the value-add of the internal batteries since charging a lithium battery is largely “solved” and these have an external controller (the case) that can preserve the battery.
Li-ion batteries wear out with normal use, or even sitting on a shelf fully charged. I suspect the battery is the primary reason most devices with onboard charging become unusable over time, and ensuring that it is user-replaceable will greatly increase average service life.
The wear and tear is greatly exaggerated (more specifically, it is based on older tech and before we had chargers that cycled correctly) and the technology (bluetooth has made leaps and bounds the past few years) is likely to be outdated long before the battery fails.
It is one of those things that I want on principle but very much question the value of. And considering that this is a zero sum game where the time and cost of the replaceable battery comes from somewhere else (in the case of cost: the consumer’s pocket because holy crap these are expensive…).
My Sony linkbuds S only last two hours now. It’s a product from 2022. When did they solve batteries? Because it wasn’t in 2022
The product in question is not outdated because they rolled out updates for the new features, like Bluetooth LE audio
Honestly? it sounds like you bought a stinker then. Because I have some (I forget if they are anker or jabra) earbuds that are MAYBE a few minutes off of what they were when I got them before the pandemic (so 2019/2020).
It depends on how many hours a day you use them, not comparable between people
Could you please elaborate on these improvements to Lithium battery chemistry that have alleviated the problem with battery wear?
To my understanding, the underlying chemistry/material science has not made significant advancements.
But all the stuff we used to have to do to avoid damaging said batteries (e.g. Never fully charging it, discharging it a bit periodically, etc) is now more or less automated by controllers. Which goes a long way to reduce the impact of “wear” and stretch out the lifespan of a battery.
That’s the thing about capitalism, it doesn’t have to be a conspiracy to be evil. Capitalism will optimize for the cheapest option to acquire the most profit, and generally the cheapest option is also the one that’s the worst for the workers/environment/consumers.
In capitalistic societies like the USA, for-profit companies are mandated to serve the interest of their shareholders, which is usually to make as much money as they can. If there was some kind of incentive to do the right thing, that makes the “right thing” more profitable than the rest, maybe companies would do the right thing. Maybe make companies pay for the amount of ewaste (or any kind of waste) they generate?
While I think we can do better in some spaces, the reality is that a lot of modern tech is fundamentally un-repairable. Not because of evil conspiracies but just because it is a lot easier to print a PCB and slot in some components than it is to connect vacuum tube diodes. And when so many of those components are fairly complex chips and the damage is less “oh, the metal prong on this chip broke” and more “oh, the via shorted out”?
Is this a fundamental piece of tech as it exist now, or is this just kind of the way that tech has manifested after 50 years of development inside of a profit driven system which incentivizes unrepairable and disposable products over things which can be sustained for a long time?
I’d also like to posit that we’ve experienced a relatively rapid growth in the last 50 years, and that possibly has also affected design. In a rapidly changing market, you’d be a fool not to design everything as disposable, since next year’s thing is going to be so different and so much better that it’s kind of ridiculous to expect as much backwards compatibility or to expect repairability since people won’t be sticking with stuff for as long. Now, whether or not that growth is actually slowing down intrinsically, or if that growth is just slowing down as a result of the current structure of the market, who can really say.
But largely I would posit that, don’t mistake the fundamental nature of a thing as being the same as said thing in relation to a much larger and broader system. We could frame infotainment systems and the increasing digitization of cars as an inevitability, but in a radically different context, like southeasy asia or africa, we might see cars that are prized for their ease of maintenance and utility value, fuel efficiency being a lower concern, and luxuries like infotainment being much, much lower.
It is obviously both.
But you cannot have earbuds without microchips. Those things are often smaller than a single vacuum based transistor. Same with cell phones. Brick Phones weren’t giant (just) because people wanted things to be bigger. They were giant and worthless for anyone other than Zach Morris because technology did not allow otherwise. And that is why basically every year (up until maybe a decade ago?) it was “And this is smaller and lighter because who wants a giant ass phone”.
But… there are trade offs to that. When all the meaningful logic in a device is on a single board/chip, it can be REALLY small and you get a lot of inherent shock protection (nothing to get dislodged when it hits the concrete). But that also means that diagnoses increasingly involve x-ray machines and repairs are largely “replace the chip”.
And, like I said, that is why the fairbuds are still full of glue for the actual internals and they don’t sell the actual chips. ifixit commented on this on how it is likely for waterproofing reasons but… that still means you can’t actually “repair” anything but surface damage and swapping out a battery (And while I am not convinced that is a meaningful value add, I still like it). That is the fundamental limit to when you aren’t even dealing with chips with the spider leg prongs and are instead dealing with significant amounts of logic in the substrate of the board itself.
So if you want something that “values repairability”? You aren’t getting earbuds. You probably aren’t even getting headphones that (sane) people can just pop in their bag and go. You are looking at the bigass cans targeted at people who have Thoughts on psychoacoustics. Or, to put it in computing terms, you aren’t buying a cellphone. You are buying a desktop. (… also, good luck fixing your motherboard. Because even if you identify the short and bypass it… do you really want to put an 800 dollar GPU in there?).
Which gets back to understanding what does and does not make sense to focus on “repairability”.
Fairphone isn’t super profitable. They just scrape by with not too much growth. The big companies probably simply understand that it’s just cheaper and more profitable to manufacture tons of e-waste and get consumers to buy a new one every year. Hopefully fairphone will be more competitive as new repairability and recycling regulations come into force.
When tech gets better so fast there is no point. we just haven’t adjust to the era of more mhz every year and so now buying to last is useful as you won’t get an upgrade from new.
There are indeed good aspects to this product.
But I won’t join the “Fairphone good” circle jerk and give them the free publicity, because just like Apple and Samsung, they removed the headphone jack from their phones soon before the launch of these headphones, in other words, artificially creating the problem and need to sell you their expensive solution.
You don’t get to ride the “we are pro customer!” free publicity train while also wanting to be the next Apple.
The fairphone 4 doesn’t have a jack and its from 2021.
Yes and they sold shitty generic bluetooth earbuds that they pulled from the market a year and a half later with 0 support when they were almost ready to launch their Bluetooth headphones.
So? Their over ear Bluetooth headphones came out on Q1 2023. Two years developing a new category for your company sounds about right.
Plus, their phones are expected to be used for long, so if they wanted to push people towards Bluetooth they’d have to start early.
Plus, this is still irrelevant - how does the fact they screwed customers over in 2021 somehow make it better?
So? Their over ear Bluetooth headphones came out on Q1 2023. Two years developing a new category for your company sounds about right.
So they first removed the headphone jack but intentionally didn’t launch a companion device because the customers would just wait for them “to sell you their expensive solution”?
the fact they screwed customers over in 2021
Wait, 2021 customers were not informed about that and got their headphone jacks taken away after already paying? They could not make an informed decision and were screwed over?
I bought the Fairphone 5 and yeah, I miss not having the jack and I see no reason to take it out
Cost. The Fairphone is already too expensive for what it offers.
I agree the price is pretty high for what it is, but I wonder how much adding a headphone jack would actually affect it.
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/CUI-Devices/SJ2-35853B-SMT-TR?qs=DXv0QSHKF4xcEQUTnRYIcA%3D%3D
here is a link to a headphone jack, which costs 47 cents each if you get 5k. they already have the added electronics to be able to send audio over usb-c, so it is pretty much just the cost of the jack itself at 47 cents.
They explain very thoroughly on their website why they did it:
https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/9836188988049-Audio-Jack-3-5mm
Yep, same excuses as Apple.
Analogue connector too old, too big, hard to make modular. All proven false by a multitude of other devices.
It might be false, but I think the real reason is that very few people care about a jackstick… I care, but I’m the only one I know, and I only ever hear a small group of people online talk about it being a big deal. In the end I don’t think too badly about that specific decision from any phone manufacturer.
Heck, I don’t even care about having an audio jack as long as there are two USB-C ports. I’m a down for a unified connector. There just needs to be enough ports for it.
I might be on board with this, especially how simple and reliable the USB-C analog audio system is supposed to be. And my ongoing problem with Bluetooth is just how amazed I am at how slow/unreliable it is to both pair and to reconnect on a slew of different (modern!) hardware.
But it’s funny. I have a tablet with 2 USB-C ports. I have USB-C to audio adapters that I’ve used with it for a while.
Recent trip, I forgot the adapters. So I picked up a pack of adapters at the local Best Buy. Didn’t work! Tablet behaved as if they simply weren’t plugged in. Rebooted, tried stuff, then bought a different brand of them. Same problem! Got home, original ones I had worked fine.
I don’t care if it’s the tablet’s fault, or the adapters, or what. I’ve never, ever, ever had to worry about stuff like this with 3.5mm jack on any device. Ever. That’s the reason it’s worth it to me (plus not having to worry about charging, or various other complications with wireless. Like when enabling Bluetooth headphones on my last laptop crushed wifi performance. Or makes my good ol’ Steam Link start to freak out with my 8bitdo, or…)
I’ve had issue with very worn out 3.5mm adapters before! Like: I was on an intercontinental flight earlier this week and my cable barely held in the worn out port of the plane. I agree that there are fewer issues with software refusing to work, but the hardware-connection can be quite sucky on them too.
I’d prefer that to the jack tbh. I’ve been converted to prefer digital wired audio
I’d be more okay with it if that weren’t for the fact that there can still be compatibility issues when before there weren’t.
In my case, lots of people I know care about it. And I definitely do.
But these are just anecdotes, and I haven’t seen real data.
I’m guessing the majority of people would prefer to have it, but don’t care enough that it’s a major factor for their phone. And the number that care at all continues to shrink. But we’re both just guessing.
This is just one search result but it’s showing 326 million phones shipped in just Q4 of last year. How many of those new phones do you think shipped with headphone jacks?
https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS51776424
There’s plenty of industry analysis out there that, while not perfect, is data showing that new phone sales have not been hampered by the removal of the headphone jack.
I’m rocking a Pixel 5a which does still have it and I do get a warm and fuzzy in my nerd brain by having it there. If I’m honest though, I used it maybe twice in the last year.
Yeah, same here. It’s a pretty specific demand when bluetooth headphones have become really good and actually have a lot of advantages compared to wired ones. Also there is always the option to use a USB C dongle so it’s really not that big of a deal.
I don’t need another hole in my phone that does nothing but collect debris.
So - takes up too much space, is the main reason :)
I don’t care, still worth it to me. As long as I have the option, any phone I buy (including the one I bought last year) will have a 3.5mm jack.
I “upgraded” to a new Pixel last year because I thought the battery on my old 4A was getting wonky (and I have not had good luck with doing battery replacements). At the time, I did not know (enough) about the Fairphone, and I could not find a new Pixel with an audio jack (maybe I didn’t look hard enough?).
I’d like to go back to having a jack. I do have one scenario where I want to use well-fitting BT buds, but I can do that on any phone. I want wired buds that I don’t have to charge, can switch between devices in 0.5 second, without interacting with any software, and don’t have misbehaving touch controls that trigger when I brush my long hair back behind my ear(s) or shoulder(s). In fact, I still have a set of completely dumb buds that I use for my work laptop that I’d love to be able to use with my phone – don’t need noise cancelling or controls of any kind. I really hope that I can find a phone with a jack next time I do an upgrade. I don’t care if it is thicker, I’m gonna stick on Otterbox (or similar) on it anyway.
I was also concerned about security, but full-power BT is fairly secure now. No one can “drive-by” and monitor or replace the audio; they have to get you during “initial” pairing.
I hated that too at the time, but I have to admit, that in practice this has not really turned into an issue basically ever: My headphones and earbuds are bluetooth anyways and I did get a usb-c to headphone adapter that I store with my earphone’s backup audio cable for the very rare case that I need it (I can count on one hand the instances for when that happened). And in those very few cases I wasn’t about to charge my phone anyways, which is the one argument for why you might want both.
So, I don’t know, maybe it really is time to move on. I will defnitely say that I’m not a big fan of analog cables, so maybe a more general move to USB-C for audio might be the right way to go in the first place?
Yeah I feel the same way. I didn’t get in on Bluetooth until I got Bluetooth hearing aids, but it’s just really convenient.
My last pair of computer headphones are analog and they’ll be my last analog headphones
Okay, but my phone has a jack and absolutely dog water sound quality. Because it has a jack it does not support the USB DAC which I use on my desktop.
Worst part is, the whole USB DAC is $12 including shipping and it has USB connector and 3.5mm, and an amp. They cheaped out on this part not only on the phone, but also on the motherboard. On my computer the amp is way too weak to drive my around ear headphones.
So if it’s a crap one maybe they shouldn’t even include it, since I’ll have to use a USB DAC to get perfectly transparent sound. The only good one I own is on my budget Acer Aspire laptop.
LG phones used to come with a DAC. I still use mine as an MP3 player even though it’s not my main phone.
All phones with a 3.5mm audio jack have a DAC. You can’t play digital audio without one somewhere along the chain and all audio going through a phone or PC is digital unless you’re picking up a radio signal or some other analog signal that’s being fed directly to the audio jack.
You probably mean it comes with a good DAC, since they aren’t all created equal.
A bit of a tangent, but I believe that’s why people considered Macs better for audio stuff, they probably used a better DAC than most motherboards come with or might have just added that pathway in general back when it wasn’t standard on most PC motherboards and your had to use a sound card if you wanted better audio than the PC speaker which was more of a synthesizer. They’d take a pitch and generate an analog wave at that frequency while a DAC uses a sample rate and series of amplitudes at that frequency to generate rich sound.
My current phone is an LG G8 and I have no idea what I’m going to replace it with when it finally dies. I’m half considering seeing if one of the local repair shops can replace the battery on it because that’s what’s starting to go.
Honestly, I blame LG’s marketing team on the failure of their phone department. Hardly anyone knew about the built in DAC, and they should have been pushing that hard to the audiophiles.
I’d rather they just give me a headphone jack tbh
I’m right there with ya. I know many people prefer wireless earbuds, but I like ripping cables out of my ears at random. Makes me feel alive.
Yes! I had totally forgotten about the instant pang of shock and anger I would feel when that happened.
Am I the only one that can’t stand the few hundred millisecond delay of Bluetooth audio?
Not at all! It drives me nuts. I’ve tried watching movies with Bluetooth headphones on, so as not to bug my wife at night, and it just feels off. Almost like watching old subtitled movies. I checked it out and my headphones have a ~250ms response time. My car’s system literally has a nearly two second delay and I can’t take it.
holy shit is that what that is??? it’s fucking awful i thought that video playback was somehow really intensive on my phone is fucky weird ways that were random and annoying.
It seems to be worse with multiple devices in use. I tried going Bluetooth only on my work laptop, and it just couldn’t handle my keyboard, mouse, and headphones (headphones would be laggy and sometimes skip/get static).
So for my work computer, I use wired headphones and Bluetooth everything else (I like typing with my keyboard on my lap sometimes).
This. I hate to charge my headphones everyday
Love my pixel buds. I take them on airplanes, I clean the house with them, I take phone calls with them, and not once have I swung my hand and yanked my phone out of my hand causing it to crash to the ground. Not once have I had a damaged cable that forces one bud to cut in and out. They work great.
Charging is not a big deal. I honestly use them hours at a time throughout the day and since the case charges them, when I stop using them for a bit they are topped up. I probably legit throw them on the wireless charge pad once or twice a week, and never out of necessity where they’re “dead”.
I think it should always be an option to have the jack but I personally prefer wireless.
My sony ones survive more than a week.
that isn’t the typical experience though, and letting your batteries drain completely is bad for them. also if you don’t have some sort of routine, a lot of people (myself included) end up forgetting to charge them and end up with no working headphones until they can charge them again, which is pretty annoying.
Idk bro I have a cheap ~40 dollar pair of Chinese wirless earbuds called tozo nc9 (t12s were also a good option iirc) and you’d be surprised how good of a product you can get for cheap these days.
Several hour charge hold, over 48 hours of listening time with the case, noise canceling, better sound quality than most of the bass boosted budget junk put out by American companies.
I mean wired headphones are great too, but at this point it’s become at least reasonable to get a pair of wireless.
I have mpows that cost 60$ and pixel bud pros that cost a lot more. If I didn’t know the price of either I’d say the mpows were within 40$ of the pixel buds pro in terms of quality. The ANC works well. They last longer. But their mic is not great and they don’t have the fluffy quality of life stuff the pixels have.
Yes, I get it. I would still use wired headphones, but I got bluetooth ones as a gift. And to add to your critisism, batteries die and you have to replace them around every 10 years.
I haven’t had wired headphones last me more than a year. One bad snag on a cable any they’re done. 10 years is a long time.
Well i didn’t mean the headphones, I meant the batteries.
My Momentum 4s have 60 hours of battery life…
I use my AirPods daily for 5-6 hours and still only have to charge for 20 minutes once a week. It’s really not that big of an issue
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I have come to love my bluetooth earbuds… but darn when im in the car i just wanna plug my phone in some times.
Mine just auto connects and I’m playing with Bluetooth
Yea, a portion of my problem is the bad implementation of Bluetooth in my 2013 Subaru Impreza.
It just wouldn’t support Bluetooth reconnects.
But in the end, if a friend is in the car nothing is quicker and easier than just plugging them in.
My vehicle is from 2000 and I installed an after market Sony in it in 2010. Been using it ever since. But this was back when the system wasn’t so uniquely integrated into vehicles. It’s not really even an option in many these days.
Yea, mine has a swappable front end, but just downs seem worth it.
Ended up getting a Bluetooth adapter from Ali which works well.
fuck wireless headphones! I don’t want to remember charging another god damn thing to start with.
This the type of business the EU has to develop. An entire ecosystem from phones, earbuds to computers and software. It’s how you create a conscious and a model.
Unfortunately most people don’t care. And since they don’t care, they don’t buy. These earbuds cost 150€ because they can’t afford to buy huge amounts like Apple. I wish they could lobby the EU to subsidise these kinds of devices.
I love what fairphone and some other companies are doing.
Still some of their earphones got a 1/10 reparability on ifixit, so I’d really check how reparaible these ones are.
Those were the first earbuds they offered, which were just OEM-ones where they main point of attention was on getting the workers a living wage (which is fair enough, they are called “fairphone”, not “repairablephone”), just like the Fairphone 1 where they apparently wanted to collect some experience in the space first.
I have them because I bought my fairphone 4 like one week before they had a free pair with every purchase on offer and wrote to their support, who graciously gave me a voucher as well. I don’t use them a lot, because I do have pretty good over-ear headphones, but they do come in handy on occasion, as they fit into my handbag, which means I am more likely to actually have them with me.
Yeah apparently the newer ones got a 10/10 on ifixit so it’s way better and it’s what I would probably buy if I was on the market.
I wish all their stuff wasn’t EU only.
It’s hard for a small manufacturer to start selling in overseas markets. It would take a certain volume for them to have the capital to set up shop in the US.
They’re not, they sell the phones in the US through here https://murena.com/america/shop/smartphones/brand-new/murena-fairphone-4/
Search for KZ IEM it’s a chifi has this kind of feature also probably cheaper than fairphone version.
I completely agree. This is annoying.
Do you know how many products are US-only?
a friendly reminder that there are also people outside of the US or Europe
Like Canada! /s
Name just fifty (50).
Game of Thrones
You should ask your carrier why. Why they don’t offer it. EU and US are two different market where people don’t buy phones in the same way.
They cut the cost by not selling it to the carriers which will sell it to the customer.
In my European country, the market is dynamic. The fairphone 5 is available in multiple store. People have cheap mobile plan without contract. Another type of market.
I think you can get them imported but the costs go up significantly. Also they wouldnt be certified by your electronic bodies
I’m doing just fine with my bio body…
You can, I had an English vendor ship me my FP4 and it works just fine stateside. It does have its quirks being locked to GSM networks and the 5G bands not being universally aligned between the continents.
Nothing’s fair with FP when they can’t give the option of a jack. So much for caring about the environment
I still use the free wired earbuds I get on flights. You can also go to walmart and get unpackaged bags of them for like $1. I just lose wireless ones too easily
I mean, yes that’s an option. They are terrible for anything other than hearing things like they are in a tin can, but an option.
I’d suggest at least a slight upgrade if you prefer wired, and there’s nothing wrong with preferring wired. But I honestly can’t stand them. I get the wire caught on clothes, can’t leave my phone charging and pace the room, have to deal with it if I’m running, etc. It’s just more comfortable to use wireless.
Some solutions:
- run the wire under your shirt
- charge your phone at night - I rarely need to charge during the day
- listen to audiobooks - crappy audio doesn’t matter as much
I have both wired and wireless headphones and love them both. For wireless, I use my bone conduction headphones most of the time so I can talk to others briefly, hear what’s going on around me, etc. But when I really want a good listening experience, I use my wired headphones. They’re fantastic for music, playing games (e.g. on my Steam Deck around the house), movies, etc.
But sometimes the crappy ear buds are just the ticket. I leave a pair in my work bag in case I’m stuck at the airport on a business trip or something and forgot one of my other pairs.
Meh.
Overpriced.
I can buy 3 or 4 pairs of BT5 earphones for the price of these.
My most expensive pair currently was $75.
I’ve never had batteries go bad in them - they get broken well before that happens. Though I have a noise canceling headset from 2006 that still works. Battery lasts long enough.
I’d rather break a pair of $30 earphones, and have multiple spares than a single pair of $150.
And they all sound about the same given the source and environment.
Overpriced.
their entire premise is making sure that people on the supply chain of their devices are compensated adequately (hence the “Fair” in the name), which is why their products are more expensive than you’re used to.
Nooooo! You can pry my cheap tat produced by child labour from my cold dead hands!
It’s called feel-good marketing. Similar to organic veggies or ethical coffee from Starbucks.
I don’t know about Starbucks or Big Organic Veggie, but Fairphone publishes annual reports on sustainability and life quality of their workers.
Of course, that’s part of the marketing idea. Starbucks (and many others with feel-good marketing) did the exact same, until it leaks that it wasn’t quite the truth.
It’s not for nothing that Fairphone is guilt-tripping in rich countries ;) But still exploiting poor countries.
And downvote me what you want. It doesn’t make you immune for cheap marketing tricks. People with a Fairphone are the same kind of people who brag about how their cup of Starbucks saved a life, stepped right into the trickery.
While I’m not blaming you, what you’re saying is really the problem in our society.
I blame his mother. There, I said it.
But their mother’s mother is to blame for their mother!
I totally get it, why buy one expensive thing once, when you can buy cheap stuff that will cost more in the long run? 5 times 30 surely is cheaper than 1 times 150.
From my experience, there is just stuff where you don’t want to cheap out on. Don’t get me wrong, there is no need to buy „premium“ stuff when good stuff is about the same quality but cheaper, but buying cheap stuff, just because it is a little less than the good stuff usually never pays off for me
Sadly in my experience the boots theory is no longer accurate as the $50 pair of boots fall apart as quickly as the $10 pair, especially when talking about electronics. There may be longer lasting devices out there but the price is so beyond my price range that it may as well not exist.
Updated for 2024, the boots theory would read something more like a $50 pair of boots lasts for one year and is mostly comfortable to wear, the $10 pair lasts for one year but is uncomfortable to wear, and the $2000 pair of boots is comfortable and will last many years but anyone who buys them will toss them after one year anyway when “the fashion” changes.
My batteries are already on their last legs in the Sony tws, but I’ll be replacing them with new ones.
If your $30 earphones break before their batteries do, maybe consider buying something that does not break in a year of use?
When I shopped for wireless earbuds, I spent a half hour comparing the top brands (most expensive), so I ended up asking the clerk what he used (saw one in his ear). The ones he recommended were $20 and they’re great, sound decent, and last all day.
Sometimes cheap is just as good.
In my experience 30 bucks is a terrible price range for in-ears or headphones, mostly Chinese garbage that fails after a few months, maybe a year or two tops, even with just light usage. My current ones were at around 100 bucks and already outlived my previous cheap ones by quite a bit. That being said, FairPhone is kinda well known for being overpriced in regards to cost vs quality too, at least with their phones.
