So they finally seemed to have come up with their original design after 3 years of selling non-repairable TWS earbuds, great. I genuinely appreciate that they are trying to give users more sustainable options. Perhaps they can walk back the decision to remove the headphone jack as well so that people can use wired headphones directly which doesn't use battery in the first place.
The audio quality on these battery powered blue tooth headphones is fucking awful. IM not a purist by any stretch, but a decent pair of head phones is a whole other world of music vs anything AirPods like.
I recently fell off of team 3.5mm-jack when I discovered USB-C headphones! These include their own DAC and that means they have the potential to be *much* less noisy than the usually cost-reduced DAC included in the handset. Plus this way I can splurge for one decent set of headphones and get the same mix on all my devices, which is good for composing.
So, the 3.5mm jack can die. I'm now on team "dual USB ports" to solve the charging-while-listening issue. Let's go team!
Isn't that exactly why audiophiles - in the broadest sense, not just the golden cable types - stick with jack headphones? The DACs and amps built into headphones, or even earbuds, being very likely subpar compared to the one they can pick separately.
Headphone DACs/amps have been a thing forever and they're typically the size of a pack of cigarettes.
(Disclaimer: I made peace with BT since getting the Sony WH-1000XM4 earbuds, and later WH-1000HM4 headphones. I got them originally for the noise cancelling and LDAC support, but they're good enough that I don't hear a major difference with my friend's fancy Audio Technica)
Well sure. It's also why I use an external audio interface on my desktop, since the 3.5mm jack in my desktop's motherboard is noisy and glitchy. For convenience on the go I prefer USB-C headphones (for casual listening I don't care as much) but you can just as easily swap that out for a USB-C DAC, into which you plug your analog headphones of choice.
The point is, the handset's output over USB-C is digital! You're not stuck with whatever analog components it includes (or doesn't), those can be swapped out pretty easily.
As someone who plays around in the pro audio space, it's crazy how much you can spend on an interface. Especially "back in the day" (~20 years ago), most on-board stuff was pretty much trash and PCI sound cards (from Creative Labs and the like) were very common.
But you still can't charge it while you've got your headphones in.
Are there not high quality usb c to headphone jacks, with good DACs?
I've still got a phone with a headphone jack, clinging onto life so not something I've investigated. Surely that's going to be the direction for folks who want an analogue socket?
Hm. I have Sennheiser and Bose Bluetooth headphones and found AAC and AptX HD codecs on highest quality settings (on Android in dev tools) to be really good and almost indistinguishable from wired connections.
I wouldn't call myself an audiophile, but my hearing is pretty good and I'm sensitive to quality loss
Funny that you picked these, I have had 5 different people tell me to try them, and I own a pair.
I have some pretty broad musical tastes. If I throw on some modern, electronic music, or anything pop, these do a pretty good job.
The moment I dip into jazz, into anything where the range between the quiet parts and the loud parts (read pre 1990) is large they just dont perform any more. No amount of EQ is going to make up for that missing range.
The best example of this that I can give is Caltrains A Love Supreme. On something good there is a looming undercurrent in the track, the humming is alive. The track is lifeless on every bluetooth headphone I have heard. Hell even my Sonos speakers in the kitchen do a better job.
There’s a massive difference between bluetooth earbuds and $200-300 (ish) noise canceling Bose headphones. Yes, those are obviously going to sound good. I love mine.
But you can’t really find a decent budget option on bluetooth. I hate mine and only use them for audiobooks. You could find reasonable budget wired earbuds even 15 years ago.
Not the parent, but wvwn if quality was decent. I have wired headphones. Good ones. And I just want to use them. Sure there are USB-C DACs you can add to your phone but meh.
Get the idea, but I take my phone for sport runs multiple times a week, including in rainy weather. As of now I still have one with a headphone output. The idea of having to carry two devices and getting the worst of all worlds (more weigth, the unreliability of bluetooth combined with cables) doesn't really fill me with awe and wonder.
I used to feel this way too. I don't care so much about sound quality, as I'm mostly listening to podcasts and audiobooks, but I didn't want to be reliant on teeny little batteries that have to be recharged every couple of hours.
As it turns out, the unexpected benefit of not having wires is that the cord doesn't get caught on everything all the time, and that's good enough to overcome the poor battery life for me.
As someone who wears headphones basically all day at work (painter...) I 100% agree. It's a whole different experience, in a different dynamic.
On a similar note, 80% of the time I'm wearing my Sony linkbuds -- the ones with the "they have a hole in them" passthrough, even though they have the shortest battery life of the multiple sets I own.
Realistically, beyond the (not dismissing) "they are trash when the batteries die" aspect of things, taking your headphones out for 10-20 minutes every 4 ish hours... Is probably a good thing for our ears and minds alike.
Do you really have to recharge every couple hours? I use AirPods and find that they last for several (3?) hours when the mic is being used simultaneous with the speaker (zoom/phone), but much longer (5?) when just being used for playback. For me, this is plenty — especially because I don't use both ears at once. There's always way more than enough time to charge one while using the other.
What wireless 'buds have only 2 hours of battery life when for just playback?
I’m pretty sure my AirPods Pro have only about two hours battery life, but that’s probably because they’re at least three years old by now. I still love them though and would buy them again in a second if need be. I also don’t use them for music, just meetings, podcasts and audiobooks.
I assume you have the 1st gen one — I can only recommend the 2nd gen pro, I didn’t even originally want it, just got a good deal if I buy both this and an ipad, but I use the airpod each and every day for multiple hours, and I only have to think about charging the case after several weeks. The noise cancellation on the other hand is otherworldly.
If only they weren't also so insistent on also obsoleting analog outputs and thus 75 years worth of headphones.
Even worse, considering that they have to include DACs for speakers anyway, they still refuse to route analog audio out to the type-c connector - just to ensure that cheap passive adapters will not impede their shameless grift.
That "cheap passive adapter" has a ridiculous amount of complexity (both in the dongle, and in the chip you would have to connect it to to make it functional) that you're overlooking. You can't just 'route the DAC in the speaker to the Type-C connector'. That's not how these systems are built at all, and certainly not something that would be functional even if you could just route the speaker DAC to a 3.5mm connector or Type-C connector.
If this is so non-trivial, Chinese OEMs like Huawei have in fact succeeded in analog output. This is despite the fact that their receptacles are on a 50mm long flex PCB, you don't need another 2 signal layers or an extra daughterboard.
The laws of physics are the same everywhere across the world. Just because Apple is incompetent, it does not imply everyone else is.
You're talking to someone who works with folks on the USB-IF committee. Analog output through the DP/DN/SBU pins is not standard these days. A mux isn't even necessary in many implementations. Also, this functionality in USB Type-C is straight up deprecated. Just because it's technically possible (and sure, I agree, it is technically possible) doesn't mean it isn't more costly, less efficient, and wasteful vs. just putting the codec directly in the USB-C to 3.5mm dongle.
Here's the rationale than USB-IF gave in the ECN:
>> Few hosts support analog audio accessory. Those that might could be confused when connected to a device supporting corrosion mitigation, but no detrimental behavior should be seen. This should be a corner case of a corner case so likely zero to very low ppm of this condition. Note, any compliant host that supports analog audio accessory today is also required to support digital audio accessories, so there should be no impact to users."
Sure, if you use the audio adapter accessory mode, you can just get CC1/CC2 resistors. But then you just push a ton of complexity (even more-so than the standard codec for headsets) into the device. You need additional analog muxes above and beyond the codec, which aren't free. Nobody implements this anymore, cause it's much easier to just shove the codec into the dongle itself. Also, it's deprecated as of the latest USB-C specifications (precisely because nobody uses it now).
The Apple USB-C to audio jack connector is excellent. Objectively and testably excellent. It's nine bucks, and it works on anything with a USB-C port.
There's no grift here, shameless or otherwise. Apple stopped shipping a headphone jack on their phones for iPhone reasons, and the other manufacturers eventually followed suit because, for all the people on HN who complain about missing headphone jacks, consumers don't actually want them anymore.
I have a decent hi-fi system in my home and listen to a lot of vinyl and tapes, and my pair of Technics EAH-AZ80's sound pretty damn good using music streamed from Roon ARC (FLAC, some 320 MP3's).
I have heard a lot in the past few years of people praising cheap IEM's (I still don't get the difference between IEM's and a pair of wired headphones) and am curious to refresh my iPod Classic to use with some but I wouldn't know where to begin.
EQ can make a huge difference, and these days autoeq.app and the open data behind it make getting good EQ settings incredibly easy.
If you still like you want to use your wired headphones, something like the Fiio BTR5 is pretty excellent - you can use it either wired via USB-C for highest quality, or via bluetooth for convenience.
I don't even care about quality, but BT has too many random issues. When I had to replace my iPhone with a new one (with no jack), I basically stopped listening to music on the go.
Just use/buy an "old" phone with a jack? It is easy to find used phones (2021 or earlier) with headphone jacks. I have a 2017 phone and plan to upgrade to a 2020 phone.
That makes a lot of sense until you realize those are no longer made and are not updated with security fixes, in many cases.
It makes very little sense to buy a network-connected device which can’t be updated. And if you say “put Linux on it” it could be argued that you don’t know what tools like phones are for.
I only buy phones with great support for LineageOS [0], which is basically the open source version of Android with some adaptations... Even if I bought a 2024 phone, I would install LineageOS to make sure there are no backdoors on my phone.
Aren't the backdoors gonna be in the baseband firmware that no phone allows you to modify?
I always felt that we basically "lost" with open source: Intel did the Management Engine and phones stuck everything in the baseband.
There's no real possibility of having fully software-hackable hardware. Someone else ultimately has control of all hardware, if they want to exercise that control.
Running all sort of apps that wouldn't exist native on Linux (banking, whatsapp, ...) or whose equivalents although better and safer on Linux aren't compatible with what the mass uses.
I finally settled with a phone (Nokia 8110 4G) that does just the phone, the hotspot and the occasional low quality photo, then a Thinkpad for serious stuff, and don't miss at all a smartphone. But I have no use for social media etc. most people mileage will vary.
Actually I would be interested in Graphene OS, but it only supports devices that are either too old or too costly for a mere curiosity, therefore I will wait.
As someone writing this on a pinephone the primary issue with the statement is the lack of context. You 'put linux on it' and get OSS, and control of your own device. But most of the time lose 90% access to the abilities of ios/android installs...
I can sudo pacman -S dub & ldc2 + fav editor of the week. But had to spend hours getting an android emulator working to sign up to use the telegram install that came with most/all of the distros I've tried!
TLDR: you get a pocket laptop instead of a phone, despite owning a "phone"
> TLDR: you get a pocket laptop instead of a phone, despite owning a "phone"
Yes, exactly, thank you. You get a project that never ends instead of a useful tool. Maybe that’s what you want, and that’s fine if so, but that’s not what I want.
Headphone jack is a driver of innovation and early adoption as well. Look at mobile payments for instance, 1st available on 3.5mm. It's a good connector to have.
They only cost a couple bucks and can stay connected to headphones. One of mine has a microphone block that I generally keep plugged into my untrusted work laptop to ensure it isn't listening to me.
OP means that the third sleeve/fourth connection point on the jack (the one responsible for mic data) isn't passed through, ergo the only connection to the recipient device is the output. In other words, it limits a TRRS jack to a TRS one.
Whatever OS you're using, you're not magically going to regain access to a physically disconnected signal.
My laptop recognizes it as an actual microphone. Unless some software is able to change the microphone selection to the internal microphone, it will just be listening to silence.
Not sure what you are using but on Windows I can set my "default" but each application can still individually select which input they want.
IE an untrusted process running should be able to pick the inbuilt mic.
Maybe linux has permissions around device inputs that can be used to stop this but if a person is worried their untrusted laptop might be listening to them then I suspect such a permission layer is already breached.
jraph is simply pointing out that a laptop likely has a built in mic which can still be surreptitiously used no matter what the user plugs in and says is their preference. Untrusted is untrusted.
_carbyau_'s interpretation is correct, I meant to say that if you don't trust your laptop, you can't block for sure its internal mic by plugging a fake external mic. An untrusted app could always select the internal mic.
Yeah, you can, as you have connectors which allow USB-C pass-through on top of the 3.5 mm.
Another alternative is 3.5 mm to Bluetooth adapter from your headset. Though those are usually (?) male, and hence only work on a female 3.5 mm.
You can buy these for a couple of EUR/USD on Amazon from any Chinese brand. Fairphone themselves also sell a 3.5 mm to USB-C adapter. But this does not have USB-C pass-through.
These all do have a disadvantage: physical bloat / potentially making device less comfortable.
The Qudelix 5k is a pretty well liked 3.5mm to Bluetooth converter in audiophile corners. I've been using one for ~2 years now, it does a pretty good job, plus, retains the option for plugging in via USB.
FM radio using the 3.5mm jack has nothing to do with the jack itself. You could make a USB-C to 3.5mm jack that does FM radio reception too… or any long cord. The reality is nobody (comparatively) wants FM radio anymore. They barely did when it was released. With widespread data plans you can just stream it via the internet, it’s more convenient, it sounds better, and reception isn’t an issue indoors or in bad signal areas.
Good TWS headphones are better than the vast majority of wired headphones.
For example, Sony's headphones have lossless Bluetooth, and so do Samsung's, and the quality of the headphones themselves is quite good, even by audiophile standards, for in-ears.
You can also get bluetooth adapters for traditional IEMs, Fiio and KZ sell good ones.
At the end of the day, there really is no technical reason why bluetooth headphones have to sound any worse than wired headphones.
> Good TWS headphones are better than the vast majority of wired headphones.
Maybe, but there are no high end TWS headphones. None of them stand up to even $200 wired IEMs.
>You can also get bluetooth adapters for traditional IEMs, Fiio and KZ sell good ones.
I wouldn't call any of the TWS adapters for IEMs good. I have the Fiio ones, they are a pain in the ass to use and connect. And everyone I've heard from says the KZ are worse than the Fiio ones, so I'm not going to try them.
Get a Bluetooth DAC instead like the Qudelix 5k or Fiio BTR series.
> At the end of the day, there really is no technical reason why bluetooth headphones have to sound any worse than wired headphones.
True, true. I just wish they'd make good bluetooth headphones. I'm sick and tired of dealing with adapters, even the bluetooth ones.
> Maybe, but there are no high end TWS headphones. None of them stand up to even $200 wired IEMs.
That's completely subjective - Crinacle for example is a popular reviewer and disagrees. By all objective measurements they stand up to many 200$ wired IEMs.
> I wouldn't call any of the TWS adapters for IEMs good. I have the Fiio ones, they are a pain in the ass to use and connect. And everyone I've heard from says the KZ are worse than the Fiio ones, so I'm not going to try them.
> Get a Bluetooth DAC instead like the Qudelix 5k or Fiio BTR series.
I've personally had no issues with use or connection with my KZ adapter - my girlfriend still uses it, and doesn't report any issues (beyond battery life, as it's been 4 years now). I imagine it might also depend on the phone.
> True, true. I just wish they'd make good bluetooth headphones. I'm sick and tired of dealing with adapters, even the bluetooth ones.
I guess it's up to subjectivity. I personally find my wf-1000xm4s and xm5s really quite good after AutoEQ. I'm not the only one either, plenty of reviewers find them, once EQ'd (which is super easy on Android), to be competent IEMs, even compared to other 200$+ wired IEMs.
That's so long as you don't use an iPhone. If you do use an iPhone then yeah, you're screwed as you can't avoid audio compression and you're reliant on manufacturer EQ (though it's perfectly fine for Sony)
> Good TWS headphones are better than the vast majority of wired headphones.
Even not so good TWS headphones are more expensive than pretty good wired headphones.
> Sony's headphones have lossless Bluetooth, and so do Samsung's
Unlike Bluetooth which you have to pray to god that it will pick the best codec, wired connection is already lossless.
> there really is no technical reason why bluetooth headphones have to sound any worse than wired headphones.
... until you enable microphone, then it turns into a potato 16kHz mono stream. A successor codec was only finalized in Bluetooth 5.2 and I don't believe there are major earbuds that support LC3 yet.
> Even not so good TWS headphones are more expensive than pretty good wired headphones.
I would expect so, it's just a more complicated and expensive product to make. Even so, nowadays the difference is quite small.
> Unlike Bluetooth which you have to pray to god that it will pick the best codec, wired connection is already lossless.
I don't have to pray, there is a toggle switch for lossless audio, I just have to select it. It's easy to verify which codec is being used too, it's right there on the app.
And while a wired connection is already lossless, you can risk having a crappy amp on cheaper devices, and often you also have to deal with microphonics from your cables (especially those that have a mic built in). So while it can be as flawless as a lossless codec, it's not always.
> ... until you enable microphone, then it turns into a potato 16kHz mono stream. A successor codec was only finalized in Bluetooth 5.2 and I don't believe there are major earbuds that support LC3 yet.
Sony's headphones do support LC3 as of last week (it came in an update), but yes that's still a valid point as it's only recently being addressed.
You don't find it jarring when sound effects don't sync up with what's supposed to cause them on screen?
As an aside, mobile games aren't the only thing people play on their phones. I emulate every game console I ever owned on my phone as well as using it for a PC display over Sunshine.
I don't think we've cracked the design yet for no wire between the device and the earphones. I have the Shure BT2 set and I would list my relationship as "I tolerate them". It dangles, and if I wear a coat with a metal zipper it has connection issues when my phone is in my pocket.
I'm not convinced the new separate ones are better. Behind the head may still be the better option, and sliding them down around your neck when you need to be social ticks a lot of checkboxes for me as well.
There’s something about having two independent Bluetooth headphones that makes them much more than twice as likely to get lost. And I suspect that part of it is having both ears blocked and thus needing to take one out much more frequently.
Also there are a disproportionate number of tech people who have ADHD, and multiple small objects do not just have a high probability of getting lost, they have a virtual guarantee of doing so. Multiple times before they are lost forever.
Craze??? Wireless has been the standard for portable electronics for almost 20 years. It’s the norm. I could never go back to wired. Too bulky, unreliable, and fragile.
Go watch any live broadcast of a band past 20 years. You'll notice they use wired, not wireless. Why would they do that? Because the latency is lower, the sound quality is higher, and the bandwidth is higher.
Don't use wireless unless you absolutely need to. And you probably do not.
That being said, I like wireless for a simple reason. No wire near the head is very practical with regards to movement, and I used to destroy 3.5 mm headset wires multiple times a year when I was at school. But those days are long gone.
How do they solve that in live performances (also in talkshows)? They use mics there, and they use some tape or way to attach the mic to clothes.
> Go watch any live broadcast of a band past 20 years. You'll notice they use wired, not wireless. Why would they do that? Because the latency is lower, the sound quality is higher, and the bandwidth is higher.
Nope, I've had plenty of unreliable wired in-ear headphones. When used like the wireless ones of today they lasted a couple of years at most before the cable inevitable breaks (usually near the 3.5mm connector) from always moving
I've had to replace my wired headphone cable 3 times in the last 5 years due to wear, unexpectedly each time. I still use them because my current AirPods don't last a full work day, but I'll probably switch to AirPods Max next refresh.
I suspect my particular penchant for wearing through cables isn't super common, but at least for me personally, I find wireless more reliable for that reason.
> I've had to replace my wired headphone cable 3 times in the last 5 years due to wear, unexpectedly each time. I still use them because my current AirPods don't last a full work day, but I'll probably switch to AirPods Max next refresh.
How many cables are you able to buy for the price of a pair of air pods with broken batteries?
My headphones use a proprietary interface on the headphone side so each replacement costs £20. I’ve never had an AirPod battery go bad, but apparently they replace them for £50 (or free in the first 2 years with AppleCare+).
However the main issue isn’t the cost, it’s the fact that I suddenly don’t have a working headphone until I get a new cable.
It's easy and cheap to get USB-C to headphone jack adaptors, so anyone who wants to use wired headphones can do so. (The Apple one is $9, and we know how they like to gouge on accessories.) I've also seen simultaneous headphone-and-charging variants for under $10.
Personally, I could never stand using wired headphones with my phone, so I wouldn't want to do it. But the option's there.
Have you ever tried to put a phone with one of those sticking out of it in your trouser pocket? The long USB plug ensures it doesn’t really work unless you fancy breaking your USB-C port.
(Used wired on-ears and IEMs for a while, tried using an adapter for a bit, switched to Bluetooth over-ears recently. Appreciate the convenience, don’t appreciate One More Thing I Must Charge.)
I'd wager that a small single-digit percentage of Fairbuds customers will ever buy a replacement battery. Very few earbuds will reach the end of the battery's useful life before being lost or damaged beyond economical repair.
Indeed. I go through a pair of TWS every 12-24 months - so far that has never been because of battery life. It's 20% dropping/damagingand 80% losing one of the earbuds.
>I'd wager that a small single-digit percentage of Fairbuds customers will ever buy a replacement battery.
We're talking about the sustainability of the products design since that's what the manufacturer can control, not the behavior of the customers which the manufacturer can't control.
The Fairbuds retail for more, and I'd wager they have smaller margins, so the cost is much higher. That alone implies a higher environmental cost upfront.
I didn't realise the fairphone didn't have a jack input. I had a fair phone 2. I'm slowly starting to think the company is a scam. My fairphone could have lasted quite a while longer but they stopped making the part I needed. I mean we need more things like this in the market place so there could be 3rd party but there wasn't any option (this was a couple of years ago now)
I'm still rocking an FP3, but the biggest issue is Android 13. It's great that they still provide these updates but 13 alsolutely blows on this device compared to 12. Everything is slow. I'd try Lineage OS but I have a feeling my banking app won't work, and tbh I'm done with all that messing around.
I'll likely upgrade once the EU finally forces all phone companies to release phones with user replaceable batteries, and someone produces a phone that isn't gigantic. There aren't any medium sized phones any more. Everything's half a foot long.
I’m surprised to see this is Still a popular opinion. I could never imagine going back to wired headphones. That feeling of my
head being tethered to a device is not something I’d want to revisit.
That said, they certainly
make much more sense Financially. I’ve spent far more money on headphones since going wireless.
You can get/buy a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter. Annoying that there isn't a 3.5mm port on the phone itself but in the grand scheme of things not a huge inconvenience & life goes on.
Notably Fairphone removed the headphone jack on their phones so that they could sell us these wireless earbuds. I appreciate that the battery is replacable on these buds, but not worth it imo! After all, wired earbuds don't even need batteries. :(
The industry seems to have settled on USB-C dongles as the solution for wired headphones. They’re a little clunkier, but they do work pretty well, and you get options for the DAC.
Headphone jacks were a major wear item on older smartphones, and waterproofing them is very annoying as well, requiring a ton of adhesives. I had to take the back glass off my old Xperia Z2C three times over its life to replace the headphone jack, and the waterproofing was totally shot after doing so. At the end of the day, I honestly don’t mind the trade off, although I can see how it can be annoying for others.
My experience has been that it's really easy to damage your USB-C port like this if you keep your phone in your pocket while walking/running. I always end up with the port loose and making poor connections.
I ended up buying a small battery-powered Bluetooth-to-3.5mm receiver that I keep in my left pocket, and then send Bluetooth audio to it from my phone in my right pocket. It's a pretty ridiculous setup.
The sideways force on the connector while in my pocket has always been a real concern to me. It's the main thing keeping me from regularly using a dongle.
Get a USB-C magnetic breakaway adapter and you shouldn't have concerns damaging the port. Mildly annoyingly will probably breakaway while you're jogging occasionally but at least it shouldn't damage the port.
I have been running (sports) 16km each week with my Fairphone 3 in my pocket and wires headphones, for roughly 3 years now on top of that less harsh daily use during commutes — still no issues.
As an electronics guy the jack is rarely the issue, a TRS jack has spring contacts inside, so wear should not be an issue unless they use the shittiest of connectors or you actually damage the bonding between connector and PCB. It is 100 times more likely for the plug to fail and a 1000 times more likely for the cable to fail.
The bonding between connector and PCB seems to fail a LOT in certain devices. I've been seeing a near 100% failure rate on the USB C connectors over a few years in some Lenovo X1 Carbon laptop generations.
I've not seen the same failure in TRS connectors in a long time now, but I think that's mainly because few people actually use them.
I'm an electronics guy too (if you count firmware :P), and I've always found the spring contacts on TRS jacks to be hit or miss. It's a big receptacle with lots of room for lint to get into, the plug rotates, and it can experience some big forces on drops or cable tugs.
Most jacks do just fine, but having the springs eventually wear out on some device or another wasn't uncommon for me 6+ years ago. Not having to worry about whether the jack is going to suck or not on a given product suits me just fine. Having it attached to an adapter means I can easily swap it out if it wears.
That said, some of the sibling comments are reporting wear on USB-C receptacles when used while running... The mechanical design of the Apple Lightning connector seems to me like it'd be more durable, since it's tapered and doesn't have that center alignment thing. But maybe the contact springs of Lightning wear out faster as a result? I haven't seen any data on this, just speculating.
I think it varies a lot from product to product, and much of it is the mechanical design of the phone housing, and the durability of the jack they selected. Plus it’s really easy to accidentally put a lot of mechanical strain on it when the cable gets tugged.
MiniUSB was a busted connector design from the start, which is why the industry moved to Micro USB so quickly. Many MiniUSB receptacles in the wild were failing after thousands or even hundreds(!) of insertions.
I haven't had a single headphone jack fail since my 2nd gen. original iPod (and I'm an avid headphone user). It had this special variant with a remote connection in an outer ring around the headphone jack, resulting in a weak plastic ring which broke a bit too easily from wear if you omitted the wired remote, and plugged your headphones straight into it.
But as others have mentioned, I too have had quite a few Micro-USB and USB-C connectors fail over the years. But almost never the trusty old and dearly missed minijack.
For me the Jack plug from the headphone would always break. Could repair it a couple of times with my own clunky soldering work, but eventually would just wear out too much and I would buy a new headphone. Since wireless I haven't looked back.
Yeah, never had headphone jack issues, it was always the USB port, including with type C now. Sounds like a ridiculous assertion to me, but maybe I use my phone differently.
The material and monetary cost of the number of wired headphones I've destroyed in the 6 years before I got wireless head phones (because there was no realistic way to stow the cabling for the activity I was involved in) probably approaches the cost of the 2 pairs of wireless headphones I've owned in the last 6 years.
I don't think they cut the headphone jack just to sell these headphones. While it is true that you can make a headphone jack as water-resistant as the rest of the phone, every hole you put in the phone adds to the design and assembly cost to maintain the same IP rating. And each hole significantly adds to the complexity of repairing that phone in such a way that it maintains that IP rating after the repair.
I've lost either the earbuds or case of so many wireless earbuds during the past 4 years that I could have afforded 2-3 much higher quality wired earbuds.
Pens: lol yes, it’s why I’ve never tried to get into very-nice pens.
I’d have lost my AirPods several times without find my. I’m certain I’d not have managed to keep both buds more than a couple months if I weren’t very diligent about putting them back in the case when I’m not actively using them.
It's way easier for me to lose something the size and weight of a nickel than a phone. Not to mention ear buds do on occasion come lose and fall. With wired headphones, they dangle, but wireless buds fall into all manner of nooks, drains, and bottomless caverns.
Same. I've been using a tiny pair of wireless headphones for ~5 years. If anything were to break, it is fairly easy to order replacements on Ebay which causes nothing new to be manufactured.
A set of small wireless headphones uses far less material than a large pair of wired headphones. Not saying it is a direct replacement, just that everything has some environmental impact, and fretting over one tiny device misses the forest for the trees.
people seem to forget that having a headphone jack doesn't preclude one from using wireless earbuds. if you grind thru many wired earphones for some reason, great, you do you. for others, they will hang onto it much longer and it will be more sustainable and cheaper.
And I'm not speaking to the fact that you can use wireless headphones with a phone with a 3.5mm jack.
I'm saying that for the objectives Fair set out for themselves, dropping the headphone jack is low-hanging fruit. Its one more piece that fails, it fails as a consequence of normal use (there's no way to baby the headphone jack, or the power jack, in such a way that it doesn't eventually fail from repeated usage. Indeed, they're explicitly rated for number of cycles (typically around 5000 for a headphone jack, which is consistent with daily usage for 3 years, well below their 5 year warranty. By comparison, I'm seeing 20k cycles for a cheap usb-c port, which is a lot more defensible for a 5 year warranty)), and it makes maintaining their IP rating after a repair much harder (doubly so, given that they want users to be able to repair their phones).
All for a feature that, given the price point, won't even be used by the majority of users.
Batteries are just one of the many issues when headphone jacks are removed. (Also you can totally use wireless/usb-c headphones with phones with jacks, but that's something hopefully people realize.)
"an entire USB sound card" is literally a single piece of silicon (plus some passive components like resistors and capacitors) that can cost less than 10 cents to manufacture. Not exactly a huge burden here.
Additionally, unlike a 3.5mm jack, you don't need to deal with a 'sound card' that can handle almost anything you can plug into it. You get to tailor your headphone/headset drivers specifically to your attached devices. The general-purpose device that can handle anything you can throw at it costs much more.
Except for the not-so-minor issue for us Android users: The default gain on Apples adapter is far too low for most proper headphones, and Android doesn't touch the gain and just relies on software-mixer for volume control. This results in a far too low volume. On Apple and Windows devices on the other hand, they are excellent.
Yeah, if only there were some kind of connector which would deliver the current to the earbuds. Then you wouldn't need batteries at all. Perhaps some manner of universal connector which would work with the earbuds everyone already has. But that seems too far fetched, we just don't have the technology for such a thing.
Sounds like you want usb type c! In addition to Audio Adapter Accessory Mode which allows it to drive a couple pins with analog audio exactly like the 3.5mm jacks (and therefore enabling completely passive adapters to support devices with 3.5mm jacks), usb type c also supports charging, high speed data, and video. That's a lot more universal than some silly jack that can only support audio.
Unfortunately it looks like at least the fairphone 4 didn't support Audio Adapter Accessory Mode and I haven't found information on whether the fairphone 5 supports it. Definitely a mark against the company if they don't support Audio Adapter Accessory Mode.
Plugging into a USB-C port in the center of the bottom side feels a lot less sturdy than plugging into the audio port closer to the side. Decreased the lifetime of the wires by a lot as well, it felt like. I've tried for a while before finally giving up and getting bluetooth earbuds.
It's not the end of the world, but it's the end of wired headphones. The dongle is a pain. Phonemakers know this, and that's why each removed the jack, to sell their new wireless earbuds. Even Samsung did this after criticizing Apple for it.
And most people who say "just use the dongle" are not using the dongle.
You got me there, I use wireless headphones. That being said, why is the dongle such a hassle? If your headphone has a detachable plug, you can easily buy a new cable with a USB-c DAC built into it.
Mainly it's an extra thing to carry around, and it probably won't be there when you need it. I tried buying 3 Lightning dongles and leaving them on all my aux cords, problem is they don't work with anything else (Mac, Windows, Android, or even older iPhones like the 6S), so you will disconnect them every time and possibly lose them that way. My wife accidentally banished all of mine into our car's seats. Then they also became incompatible with newer USB-C iPhones.
It's also less reliable than the builtin port, kinda like HDMI dongles but not as bad. My earbuds' inline mic wasn't working with them, idk why but it was fine using the jack. Sometimes my phone didn't realize headphones were plugged into the dongle and it kept using its internal speakers. Irritating when you can't rely on basic functionality like that.
Lastly, leaving the dongle plugged in can wear out the port as others have said, and you also won't be able to charge at the same time. Particularly an issue in cars; I even tried wireless charging and found that my phone overheated if it was also running nav.
With all those caveats added, the dongled jack is far more hassle than Bluetooth, and it's not because BT is particularly good. iPhones had both for several years, and BT headphones never really took off until the built-in jack was removed.
Advocate of the devil, but I've never replaced my earbuds / headphones because of the battery life. Usually one of them gets lost, or actually crushed and breaks.
I've had 2 sets of AirPods die because of the batteries aging and losing their ability to hold a charge. Though to be fair, their microphones failed much earlier then their batteries, and noise cancelling gets some really annoying failure modes when the microphone has issues. I should have replaced them sooner. I also should find a brand that doesn't have consistent manufacturing quality issues...
I have not yet had this issue because the ANC has improved enough with each generation that I wanted to move up before the batteries became unusable in my old pair. But I could see this changing in the future, as ANC levels out. Also, it's easier to avoid losing AirPods these days thanks to Find My, which can also now find in-case AirPods.
I have owned WF-1000XM3, 4, and (currently) 5. I got the 5 with discount as replacement for the 4 since the battery of one earbud was dead due to a firmware bug.
The noise cancelling gets slightly better each iteration. There's another thing the 3 and 4 are better at than the 5: easier to get out of the charging case.
Also, while you could replace the batteries in each of these versions, the IP rating would be in practice regressed.
> Old batteries should never be the end of your earbuds. That's why we designed the Fairbuds with replaceable batteries - in the charging case and both buds!
This is awesome. At first I thought they cheated and only made the case battery replaceable.
It's their first iteration and I applaud their effort. It takes at least a year to develop something like this and the sales quantities will be lower compared to the big brands, so the price is understandable.
You seem to belong to group of consumers that wants to compromise lifespan and sustainability in favor of features and price. That's fine, but it simply means you are not their target audience for this product.
Isn't more advanced codecs just software? The hardware support should be there, given its bluetooth 5.3. Is it just a case of them not licensing the advanced codecs?
Think about the device that is performing the decoding.
At its core, It's an ultra-low-power microcontroller, and the low-power requirements to hit the battery life specification while maintaining audio quality may or may not allow the kind of software abstractions that make these codecs "just software". Once you've licensed the codec, you then have to implement it on the micro's architecture, in a way that's actually performant. Which in turn may or may not require actual Assembly work.
You wouldn't be implementing anything in software. The hardware would have decoding built in, so it's really just a question of choosing a bluetooth audio soc with the codecs you want and paying the licensing fees.
I didn't know that codec handling was done at the hardware level. Interesting.
So the underlying idea of my post ("you can't just add new codecs in software") is ultimately correct, but for reasons completely unrelated to what I mentioned. That is, I'm wrong, but sort of stumbled into the right answer. Doubly interesting.
Now I have a ton of questions about how bluetooth audio is produced on the phone side, so that headphones only have to decode one (or a few) codec on the other side.
It is their second wireless earbud model. The first was non-repairable. And a current feature set would be especially important if the product should be used for a prolonged time. No need to be snarky. I just don't want to buy that stuff now and throw it away 2 years later when the next iteration comes out.
Please read my full comment. First, AAC is not even used for duplex audio such as in telephony. For that, the Bluetooth standard downgrades to SBC mono 16khz at best. Additionally, AAC is high-latency, even it is used. So it is not "perfectly fine" at all.
AAC is perfectly fine for listening to music transparently, and watching video.
And no one cares enough about the duplex audio stuff for it to matter. Phone and Zoom calls sound decent enough with pretty much all bluetooth devices now. If you care about that you'll be using a real microphone anyway and can have the headphones not in duplex mode.
People are different. I don't do the "true wireless" thing at all because I would lose them in under a month. My wife just upgraded her Airpods from late 2017 only because the battery life had degraded to about 20 minutes.
Repairability is good and will reduce waste, but I am not sure this is going to actually attract customers unless they’re already fans of Fairphone for other reasons (like ethics or sustainability or privacy or independence from big companies or whatever). To attract new customers, they need something else to stand out from a very crowded space, where there are many good choices as far as sound quality, mic quality, noise cancellation, etc. I am skeptical that these will be any better than the competition on those facets. And keep in mind, 150 Euros means it is competing with everything from budget sub-50 products on Amazon to AirPods.
I'm interested to hear how the AirPods solved the problem of everyone around me hearing me speak to my computer, definitely causing them annoyance and possibly violating my NDA, depending on where I am for that meeting.
Sure, it's possible to make the battery removable, but why would they do that? It was the manufacturers (e.g. Apple) who decided to make the battery non-removeable in the first place, as it allows for a more compact design and more revenue.
Also the batteries would have to be ordered as a spare part years after the product launched, and most cheap manufacturers are horrible with sustained support.
I'd use them. I got my Airpods Pro v1 replaced once already because of the battery life. The v2 has no significant benefits to shell out $250 after only using the v1s for 2 years.
Apple will recycle any of their products, earbuds included.
They also sell refurbished AirPods. With the right tools and process, it's just a bit of time, solder, and fresh adhesive. Impractical to do at home, but at scale, it can be done.
It has always been green washing. Apple agresively fights any repair laws and spare parts laws. Their claims about recycling are there just for show just for the eco crowd. Most people will feel good thinking the products wont end up in waste but they all buy new anyway.
Absolutely this. Recycling electronics is the option of last-resort; it takes lots of electricity, requires being shipped around the globe, and you're still left with waste too.
The goal should be to reduce and reuse before resorting to recycling. Our dependency on new electronics should be brought down to marginal utility, and we should be enabled to re-use unsupported, partially-broken or repaired smartphones. Instead, we're corralled into a box of compatibility and told to trade-in once we get angry enough at our OEM. I know I'm not the only one with a box of iPods that can do precisely jack-shit now that Apple doesn't update them anymore.
I have two pairs of perfectly good wireless headphones I don’t use anymore because the batteries are screwed. No replacement method, it’s just ewaste. Basically $200+ destroyed.
I have since bought a phone with a headphone jack and stopped buying wireless headphones.
Old generation, wired Bose in-ear go for under $50 on eBay. Sound quality is better too.
The wire interfering with my jacket took some getting used to again.
EDIT: oh yeah, the batteries don’t die while you’re using wired headphones, either. No more 1-ear’ing so there’s always a bud with battery.
Considering every new generation of Samsung buds (along the same product line) sounds magnitudes better than the last, I don't see why I would ever need to replace a battery. The batteries in my buds plus lasted me until buds pro were released, and my buds pro batteries lasted me until buds2 pro were released, so I have no reason to doubt my buds2 pro batteries will degrade before buds3 pros come out. And of course they will be the best sounding buds on the market so I'll buy them, because why even own buds if not for the sound quality.
The frequency response graph of the buds2 pro is only a little bit flatter than the buds pro [1]. In fact, it seems worse in the treble region. How else are you comparing?
No offense, but you sound like the perfect consumerist. I'm pretty sure you're going to hit diminishing returns pretty soon, esp. if your claim that every new gen is "magnitudes better" than the old one is true.
Personally, I was completely happy with the sound quality of my first TWS (FreeBuds 3). The only reason I felt I needed new ones was a failing battery in one of the buds.
USB-C is a plus. No wireless charging is a bummer.
Something built to last for ten years would be intriguing. I'm still using my Samsung Galaxy Buds+ from 2020 as my daily driver. I prefer the capsule case to the box design of later models, and all of the internals are still "good enough" that I haven't really felt the need to upgrade. Even the lack of ANC hasn't been a dealbreaker--the passive noise cancellation just from having a solid seal around the ear has been enough to happily use on a plane.
I can't wear earbuds that stick inside your ear canal. They just don't fit me and are extremely uncomfortable. I have two pair of galaxy buds live for this reason. I've even swapped the batteries on both pair to keep them going as well. I'm not switching until someone comes out with a better alternative.
Within the past year, on Amazon there was a rather sudden influx of earbuds in a variety of designs that wrap around or clip onto the ear instead of going in it. The key term to search for is "open-ear" earbuds.
I'm the same and fixed the issue by getting some custom eartips made. They aren't cheap but have made my AirPods Pro usable.
On-ear headphones hurt my earlobes and over-ear headphones make my head get hot so I can't seem to find happiness anywhere. The custom eartips I think have gotten me the closest though!
Have you tried the vanilla AirPods? I have the Huawei equivalent, and they are very comfortable to the point it's easy to forget I wear them. Recently, new designs (like Huawei Clip) started to appear which are apparently even more comfortable.
I've tried the vanilla Earpods which are pretty much the wired version of that. Those ones at least stay in my ear, but my ear starts to hurt after 30 mins or so.
where did you get custom tips for airpods pro? I feel the same way about the stock tips - great sound quality, but I couldn't wear them for more than 5 minutes.
oof, didn't think about them fitting in the case. have you noticed any wear or play on the earbud/airpod interface from having to do this all the time?
I'm the opposite, I can't use regular airpods since they won't stay in my ears, but airpods pro do so just fine. I think it's just one of those cases where multiple types will be necessary due to physical differences in ears.
Definitely true. People are shaped different so there's room for more than one type on the market. I just wish there was more options for me other than the galaxy live and the original airpods.
The bigger problem for me isn't that I'm listening for 6 hours nonstop and the battery runs out. It's Bluetooth and the seeming lack of sleep on the devices when they're not playing anything. What happens is after a commute, I'll leave the earbuds in my pocket but the Android phone stays connected and they drain overnight. This might be because of the noise canceling staying on.
Either way I have to remember to turn off Bluetooth on the phone, because who's going to manually unpair and repair.
And the earbuds have no light on them in one case (Ankers) and no obvious way to turn them off without listening to a chime (Shures).
I'd like to just blame Bluetooth out of spite, but it seems perhaps a limitation of the drivers of those devices.
I've never had this problem, because from the very first time I got wireless earbuds I got into the habit of taking the case with me whenever I take the earbuds. So if I want to take the earbuds off I just put them into the case out of muscle memory. The other benefit of doing this is it's a lot harder to lose them.
How does "dual point" compare to "multipoint" advertised in some newer (even some decent/cheap) ones?
I'm looking to "upgrade" but only because the batteries in my current pair are shot. It feels so bad to have things like this just go into a landfill when they're perfectly fine other than the battery.
edit: oh, these are also 5x as expensive as the $30 earbuds I bought 2 years ago that have a really decent sound profile. Oooof. Sustainable, at a 5x premium? :/
There are many other aspects of good headphones than just sound quality.
Like your cheap ones certainly don't have ANC which can be a dealbreaker. Other important things are responsive touch control, good set of microphones, app with equalizer, ear detection, wearing comfort...
For my main use case (podcasts), the sound quality is actually the least important aspect of headphones.
Well the pair I have have quite decent ANC. Frankly, earbuds are in the consumer device category where a loooot of people fall for brands and hype.
The only criticism that holds is that these have touchy touch controls, but for a cost savings of $120, and that being the only compromise for me, it's a no-brainer.
This blog is invaluable. I bought a number of the sub-$50 pairs a couple years back, and compared them against my favorite wired IEMs. They're not the same of course, but damn good for the money. https://www.scarbir.com/guide/best-sounding-wireless-earphon... I wear them 6+ hours a day, or did when the battery was in better health.
If you skim the reviews, you'll see that there are a number of them that have good frequency response, comfort, multi-point. ANC is more or less table stakes, from what I can tell. Etc. Things change fast, you really don't have to spend $100 to get decent earbuds. Hell, even the Galaxy Buds FE, which are very well reviewed can be had for $70USD.
Without mentioning the model I have to believe you, although at least where I live, you can't get ANC earbuds for $30 today, let alone 2 years ago.
> Things change fast, you really don't have to spend $100 to get decent earbuds.
It's a matter of what you value. I use my earbuds every day, and good ergonomics is something I'm willing to pay a bit more. I was recently researching headphones and there was always some ergonomic compromise. It might be a good value if price is an important concern for you, but it's just not worth to compromise in this aspect for me.
The "dual point" they advertise is identical to "multipoint" offered by other earbuds on the market. Pretty much all earbuds that advertise "multipoint" only support max 2 devices.
Do you know what the experience is like with multipoint for Apple phones and laptops? I played the “buy AirPod with apple care and request new ones at the end of warranty” game and apple sent me replacements where the case and pods batteries died within a month or so.
I’m not really looking to spend, overtime, 250 bucks every 3 years on AirPods and seeing Anker space a40s are $40 with this multipoint feature and 10ths of battery life I am tempted to run away from apple or any ear phones above $100 but when Bluetooth is bad, it can be really bad.
I think it works fine? Multipoint is mainly controlled on the earbud side, what audio sources you have usually doesn't matter.
The only issue I've come across though is many earbuds will only play one audio source at a time. Which is annoying but further hampered by some audio sources that will emit an imperceptible audio signal even when they aren't playing any sound, causing the earbuds to never switch away from that device.
And of course they don't ship to the US. I'll be picking these up as soon as I can find a way to buy them. Maybe Murena will sell them soon, like they do the Fairphone.
I wish I could look at things like this without cynacism anymore. I just dont see any value here. The biggest issue witb earbuds to me and i suspect many others. Is that earbuds are easy to drop/lose/break. The nature of the product exposes it to water,sun,body fluid.
Ill have long replaced them before i need a new battery due to degredation. Wireless earbuds are a massivly oveesaturated market and you can get comparable earbuds for <$20.
I suspect this is fair co losing its way and engaging in blatent greenwashing.
Here is an earbuds public service announcement : remember to clean them with alcohol on a regular basis. (inner ear pimples can be painful) Worth buying a little cleaning kit with small cleaning sticks and some pipe-clean like brushes. Also watch out if there is a fabric or glued cover on the sound hole: alcohol will probably dissolve the glue (these aren't really designed to last long or be cleaned) Its usually fine to just let the rubber hold it, or use a tiny amount of RTV silicon to glue it back in place.
Small thing / pet peeve: the website sets language based on my location rather than on what my browser is telling it is my language of choice in every single HTTP request.
I have recently become a fan of bone conducting head phones. These go behind the ears. Sound quality is good for listening to podcasts while walking. No wires. You can still hear the road noise, which is important when you are walking outside. It also feels more sanitary.
I’m most curious about if the connection issues have been resolved for non-AirPod earbuds, I have AirPod pros that I’m looking to replace, but last time I looked at all the alternatives it was really annoying to switch between devices.
Multipoint Bluetooth (which these feature) covers my use case 95% of the time. The gist is that certain headphones can connect to 2 Bluetooth endpoints and switch between whichever one is actively sending audio. If you step away from your desktop and start playing something on your phone, it will grab the phone's input and take over from there.
It's not a carbon-copy of Apple's approach, but I've had issues with iCloud switching too so I'm rather glad it's not. Plus, the Multipoint approach works with all my weird stuff like my Switch and smart TV.
> The gist is that certain headphones can connect to 2 Bluetooth endpoints and switch between whichever one is actively sending audio
I hate multipoint bluetooth. It only seems to work in the most basic of scenarios and nobody appears to have been testing the damn thing out of that in real life. Yes Bose I'm looking at you.
Good <deity> that is stupid hellhole of having audio stolen from you because some audio happened to play on the second device because you (or an unattended browser autoupdate) (re)opened some youtube tab, or constant nags about "foo disconnected / foo connected" when at range limit, or you took a call on your computer and moved and got out of range and sure enough it swaps to your phone which decides "oh sure you probably want to enjoy some loud music" and helpfully proceeds to blow your eardrums.
<Deity> forbids you have more than two regularly used devices in which case it's completely useless anyway.
Meanwhile my Beyerdynamic is not multipoint, it merely remembers what it has been paired to (I'm up to six devices now) and just connects to the last one on power up. If I want to use them from another previous one I just pop in bluetooth quick settings and choose "connect to FreeBYRD" which disconnects them from the other one, y'know, like we used to do when there were actual wires plugged into actual physical plugs, which BT is a glorified copperless version of anyway.
I'm not steelmanning Bluetooth as a whole, or wireless audio as a sterling concept. Multipoint Bluetooth is better than iCloud switching, in my experience. In the rare situation where I'm juggling three devices at once, I turn off Bluetooth on whatever I'm not using and keep on rolling.
I can believe that some manufacturers dropped the ball on it, but none of my headsets are really that finnecky. Jabra, Sony, JBL, Samsung and even Skullcandy all seem to have good implementations from what I've seen. Fundamentally, any protocol-level solution is better than playing Monkey in the Middle with Bluetooth MAC addresses online.
Oh I'm not using any iCloud switching either, just straight up Bluetooth connection requests from previously paired devices.
It just turns out that two clicks/taps when I want my headphones from the device I'm currently using is a mindboggingly more simple, consistent, and reliable solution than whatever a headphone's vendor firmware tries to intuit about what I actually want to do from the fact that it's receiving audio.
> In the rare situation where I'm juggling three devices at once
If you're not running into that situation very often, then you're not going to consider problems with it a problem. Personally, between my personal phone and laptop, and my work phone and laptop, turning off Bluetooth isn't a good enough solution,
especially because I also have a Bluetooth keyboard, and mouse in the mix as well.
When I do carry two computers, they're not going to both feature iCloud syncing. Multipoint is still the more seamless option for me, but I guess you could pass the point of utility if you own 3+ iDevices with nothing else to sync.
Speaking of bluetooth, does anyone know of a USB bluetooth dongle that is Linux compatible and has a range of like 30 meters? Asking because my headphones always lose connection when I walk to the kitchen.
they've managed to hit a good starting price but it still feels positioned like their phones.
for context: you can get better sounding non-anc tws for a third of the price, or good budget anc options under 100 usd. i have been personally using a pair of jabra (non-anc) for more than past couple years that i bought for under 40 usd on discount.
if they sell individual headphone for those who lost an individual piece for a fair price, perhaps there is a niche for them in terms of value. otherwise the one-off just buy a new pair for competing offerings are very close alternatives.
Very cool! I am curious if it takes standard batteries, or something custom from them that will be unobtainable in a few years?
I'm also curious if the noise cancelling is any good... I'm tired of being locked into overpriced low quality Bose products, but historically they have been the only ones with truly good noise cancelling. As I have ADHD I need really good noise cancelling to do my job in an open work environment.
Lastly, I'm wondering what the deal is with the earbud tips, as I've found I often need a custom or weird sized one to get things to stay in my ear. The Bose ones generally work for me, as they come with a large array of sizes, but the photos make this look like just a single size.
I'll keep an eye on these- if I can answer these 3 questions/issues I'll buy a set.
Do consumer standard lithium-ion batteries exist yet? (Aside from 18650s, which might barely count).
It's 2024; how come companies like Sony, Panasonic, Energizer and Duracell haven't jumped on offering one or two standard replaceable lithium-ion cells, with integrated circuit protection and slim enough for modern consumer electronics, that people can buy off-the-shelf in drug stores? Many devices are still running on alkaline batteries these days, like smoke detectors and kitchen scales.
It didn't take that long in the old days for standards like AA and AAA batteries to hit the market, and they didn't worry too much about applying them to new chemistries with differing voltages. And with efficient DC-DC converters that are cheap enough to introduce into consumer electronics, battery voltage hardly even matters that much nowadays.
Kind-of, you can typically get rechargeable lithium versions of the same form factor as alkaline batteries, as well as the fact that many "proprietary" batteries like digital camera batteries are actually pretty common and standard, or widely available. For example, if you design a device to take standard gopro batteries, that will be easy to get for a long time. Standard button cells, which have been lithium for a long time, can be obtained in rechargeable versions.
However a major issue is that the charging circuitry/method/design is not standard for rechargeable versions of non-rechargeable standard batteries. So you often need to remove it and charge it with a charging system from the battery manufacturer instead of charging in place.
I've had a few gadgets -- for example, an Instax bluetooth instant photo printer -- that ran off of batteries originally introduced by Nokia for phones around 2000 (BLC-1/2), including charging them. I doubt many people buy them for their Nokia 3310 these days, but they're readily available from many manufacturers[1]. I think some old Canon DSLR battery form factor is used similarily.
[1] Many manufacturers, possibly a single factory somewhere in China.
Are any of those rechargeable li-ion batteries sold at the drug store to put in your smoke detector? Industrial standards exist, but that's not the same as consumer standards.
I think you are moving the goalposts. The batteries I linked to are consumer standard lithium chemistry batteries that people can buy off-the-shelf in drug stores and be used in smoke detectors and kitchen scales.
In order for them to function: They've each got charge circuitry, buck converter circuitry (to get down from 5v to ~3.7v lithium voltage for charging, and from ~3.7v lithium voltage down to 1.5v to be compatible with end-user devices), and each one includes its own USB C port.
No we’re talking about rechargeable batteries here… disposable lithium are too expensive and wasteful for frequently used high drain devices. I love them for emergency equipment like spot trackers and emergency strobe lights
I bought a set of AA lithium from Amazon not too long ago, hoping to solve the problem of disposable batteries. They had a micro USB port in the side for recharging and everything.
Sadly, they were crap and stopped working after one charge. More e-waste.
I don’t think they’re standard batteries given the specialized form factor (size/shape/weight). On the spare parts page for the Fairbuds (https://shop.fairphone.com/shop/category/spare-parts-4?categ...) there is nothing mentioned about the battery specifications, so I assume it’s proprietary. That said, the parts are cheap - less than 10 euros for replacement earbud batteries is very reasonable.
For earbud tips - you can get aftermarket replacements of many sizes and shapes for cheap. Look on Amazon or Alibaba, but some brands are more well known like Spinfit.
As for active noise cancellation - my experience has been that anything outside of Bose or Sony is only OK at best. I doubt these are any better than the average set out there. But with the right aftermarket tips you can improve the quality of isolation on cheaper earbuds significantly.
EDIT: others have pointed out that the batteries are indeed standardized.
I guess you miss the selling point(s) as you see the phone only as its final product and the direct benefits to you. That has never been the ambition. Here's why I bought Fairphones for my family:
* Fair supply chains. This was their original selling point and is still an incredible unique feature. They changed cobalt and copper supply chains and established tracing mechanisms that now other manufacturers can also use.
* Self-repairable. I switched two screens so far, probably not a huge cost difference to the neighbourhood dirty phone repair shop, but I feel better about it.
* Social enterprise, giving back to the community
* Nice to know my funds go mostly to a good cause and everyone in the supply and production chain is treated well (they even pay a premium to manufacturers so workers at the assembly line get paid a fair wage).
I am well aware it's not the best phone. It's rather clunky, camera used to be weak (got much better with the latest update), and I had some small issues. But overall a solid phone, I support a de kind of ecosystem that really improves things down the line and I don't need to feed Sony or Apple execs money.
After many years of working in Quality Control and Quality Assurance, Supplier Quality Management (I've been on both ends with this one) and related fields (lead auditor, product safety, material safety) for companies large and small, I can safely say that "fair supply chains" is just a marketing fairy tale. Without going too deep into this rabbit hole:
A) You only have so many suppliers. If they don't comply, and unless their performance and/or behavior significantly affects your reputation, contrary to the common belief, you don't just go to somebody else. You give them another opportunity. If they keep failing, you change your evaluation specs, wait a year, and repeat. This becomes a thousand times more of an issue once you include China and generally other countries outside the US and Europe (there are exceptions) into the equation.
B) Good luck auditing suppliers in China.
C) Good luck finding experienced auditors. They are incredibly rare and expensive. You cannot outsource it either.
D) The auditing process is expensive. That's why even the largest companies in toy manufacturing do not audit their supply chains end-to-end. Instead, you have your direct suppliers sign documents binding them to cascade your rules downstream. What happens when you find out they don't? See A.
I've got one a 3+, had a 2 for six or so years before. It's an adequate phone, does what I need. I'm far from a heavy phone user, though, so it's not so important to me that I could've got better specs for the same money elsewhere, I'd rather companies have Fairphone's focus than Samsung's focus, so I chose to buy from them.
(I also quite like that they only have one model so it's easy to decide which one to get)
I think the key differentiator here for audiophiles is that they are allowing EQ from their app. I think if Resolve, Crinacle or similar gets their hands on it (though Crin has his own competition in the wired space) and creates a good EQ profile and it's competitive, I think this could carve out an important niche.
It's not clear to me whether they allow arbitrary equalization of enough points (say, 10 parametric or 40+ fixed bands) or just a selection among their presets.
Personally, I treat wireless earbuds as essentially disposable items. Even if they're mechanically reliable, they fall out on a ride/run, they fill up with earwax, and are otherwise way too vulnerable to invest hundreds of dollars on.
The sound quality of $30 Bluetooth earbuds from no-name vendors is plenty good enough in the terrible acoustic environments I use them. If you want good sound quality, no earbud is ever going to come close to a good set of full-size headphones, so I'd prefer to invest money in those instead.
Yeah, active noise cancellation would be nice but I imagine that the next generation of cheapie earbuds will have that too.
While I get the desire for reducing environmental impact, the total mass of these earbuds is so small that it hardly seems worrying about in terms of the millions of tons of crap that goes into landfill every year.
You should try the Moondrop Space Travel, you can buy them for USD 24.99 on Amazon.
- Moondrop is a pretty well known brand in the ChiFi (Chinese Hi-Fi) space.
- They support AAC so they even have good audio quality on Apple/iPhone devices (most cheap earbuds only use cheap Android codecs).
- Normally, their latency is pretty high, but they do have a low-latency mode in case you ever want to play games + take a call.
- It's Bluetooth 5.3 and communicates directly to each earbud (e.g. if you want, you can only use one at a time).
- And, they have active noise cancellation that's surprisingly good (in fact, it's amazing for $25!).
IMO, the main downsides are:
- Their app is meant to be horrible (I didn't even bother to install it). Not a big deal, unless you want to play around with EQ, customizing what the touch controls do, or upgrade the firmware.
- There's no way to control the volume via touch controls (although maybe the app allows you to change this)
- Even though it supports Bluetooth 5.3, I don't think it supports Bluetooth LE Audio and the LC3 codec.
These earbuds are probably completely uneconomical to recycle, but at least at $25, they probably didn't have too much of an environmental impact when they were created (assuming that the cost of the item is roughly correlated with the environmental impact of the item).
Why did they not use a standard battery like a 18350 or 16340 for the case? Other advantages too (easy to find alternative chargers and can keep a charged spare).
I presume size constraints would make it difficult to find a commodity battery size for the earbuds?
