I see a lot of people complaining that the Fairphone 6 doesn’t have an Aux jack.
Just use an adapter cable.
A 3.5mm Aux jack takes up a significant amount of space just to connect a few wires that could be connected through USB-C anyway, that space could be used for a bigger battery.
Even if there was a good enough reason to keep Aux it should be 2.5mm Aux and not the usual 3.5 as it does exactly the same thing but uses less space
Ok, so what should replace the aux port? Becuase right now it seems to be just an adapter … for an aux port. That’s not moving forward, that’s just adding extra steps.
USB-C can replace Aux
IMO, everything that can be USB-C should be, that way we can have one cable for everything.
So how do I charge my phone while also having it connected to my wired headphones?
Should I get a docking station for my phone now? Add multiple USB-C ports to phones?
Realistically you don’t NEED to do that, unless your battery is cooked. You can just charge your phone when not listening to music
If you really must then a simple splitter does the trick.
If this isn’t acceptable, then I’d argue that phones should have two USB-C ports, instead of one Aux and one USB-C
So what you’re me offering is limited use cases and additional equipment to achieve something that I can currently do with an AUX port.
This is not an upgrade or improvment … that’s just enshitification.
That is slighlty better, but a lot of headphones don’t actually support sound via USB-C and I’m also not aware of cheap, wired earbuts that use USB-C.
Sometime in the not so distant past I could have said: “but a lot of radio’s don’t actually support CD’s and I’m also not aware of cheap, radio’s that use CD’s, or a place to buy Cheap CD’s”
At some point we had to ditch tapes for CD’s or Digital media.
We can’t just stay stuck in the past because it’s convenient in the short term.
CD were an actual improvment. They could store more data with less space, didn’t need to be rewound or move physical tape to “scroll” to a song you want to hear, etc. They were actually better in pretty much every way.
Bluetooth isn’t. It’s offering one improvment in one area by trading off others.
Moving to USB-C could be very minor improvment, as you’re really just preserving the functionality while standardising the connector. Now, I am not against that. But that would require all headphone manufacturers to move to audio-via-USB and all the phone manufacturerers to add a 2nd port.
Seems like a lot of work and money for very little benefit.
The jump from Aux to USB-C is a even bigger improvement than Tape to CD. All manufacturers etc. eventually had to switch from tape to digital, yes it’s a lot of effort, but it needs to happen at some point.
I’m not arguing for a 2nd USB-C port, I think one is enough, but if you MUST have two ports, than USB-C offers so much more that Aux can’t
The use case of the AUX port is to listen something via a wire. USB-C doesn’t offer any improvements here (othen than having to carry one less cable in the longrun, maybe).
Sure, it might enable totally new features. But those are not really relevant when we’re discussing the removal of the aux port. That’s like trying to make an argument for CDs over tape by pointing out that you can use CDs as a mirror. Sure you can … but not really the “imrpovment” I was looking for.
Something funny about those: sometimes they just don’t work. Seriously. Depending on the phone, the brand, those splitters just will not function because the phone decided it cannot do both power and media from the same port at the same time, if it’s split up. I tried 4 different ones before finding out my phone is too dumb for it, and same with most friend’s phones.
Classic management response for problems they created: “You don’t use your device that way, and if you do you are wrong”
Bluetooth has replaced the aux port
i held out for quite a while, but i got a shokz bone conducing headset about five years ago and i had to admit, the sound quality is pretty good, so i got a fairbud xl more recently and they both work great with my phone. i still use a wired headset and mic with my pc though
No. It’s an alternative that trades sound quality and delay for being wireless. Not a replacement.
There really is no perceivable difference in audio quality between wire and bluetooth. Especially considering most people use Spotify. Also most consumer headphones aren’t great; you’d have to use audiophile level gear to maybe hear a difference.
I don’t think I’m an audiophile, but I stream my own flacs with 800-3000 kbps and there is a very noticeable difference in quality between the bluetooth- and the wired connection on my Bose QC Ultras.
Out of curiosity I did a quick test with Sennheiser Momentum 4 using 1000 kbps flac and I personally couldn’t hear a difference that I wouldn’t call placebo. If I wanted to I could convince myself that BT sounds better. But there really was no difference in quality. Only the tuning might be slightly different.
One cause of a difference could be whether the headphones use their built-in DAC or the phone’s.
Another issue can be proprietary codec support.
To the phone? Really, really doubt it.
Ah, here’s your problem, you’re listening to j-pop.
Sorry, that was a bit of a mean joke, but I couldn’t resist.
All good, I laughed!
it has though, at least according to most phone makers
the average person (me included) isn’t bothered by the minimal loss of quality and latency, at least on the move