Fairphone 6 is switching to a new design that's even more sustainable

Was lucky enough to get my Fairphone 4 on sale, but I'd happily pay full price now - even though the Fairphones are pricey for the specs, unless you absolutely need 24 cores etc. I'd say they are worth it, knowing the company is at least trying to improve the parts supply chain, and knowing you stand a chance of fixing the devices yourself (luckily I've only had to replace the USB-C port, which was trivial)

About the only thing I'd ding Fairphone on is not communicating earlier that they were having trouble getting Android 14 out to the FP4s, but the security patches have been consistent.

(Okay I'm also dinging them on getting rid of the headphone jack, yes I know it's a lost cause... )

Not really a lost cause in general, there are a bunch of regular phones that have a headphone jack. But fairphone seems unwilling to listen to all the feedback they are getting telling them this is a blocker, so yes, in that way it is a lost cause there.

A shame really.

+1 for headphone jack. At least they got the MicroSD correct!

I've been very happy with my Fairphone 4 that I've had for 4 years now running CalyxOS.

I could probably use it for a few more years but I may upgrade to the 6 if the speakers/microphone are better (and to support the company).

The removal of the phone jack is so obviously planned obsolescence, it is ironic that this project for sustainability follows the trend.

Wired headphones still have better sound quality. Don't need charging. Don't break with software update. But because of that it means less consumption.

Think about how insane it is that companies can remove the phone jack and glue in the battery with the very obvious goal of planned obsolescence. And this is legal.

After years of a Fairbuds XL (never again!) and Bose QC for my Zoom sessions, I've ordered a Sony MDR-7506 because it does not need to be charged, and bluetooth doesn't need to be reconnected etc. Hurray for headphone jacks.

I don't think it's about planned obsolescence. It's about cutting costs and having one less hole water can get in.

Also wired headphones are a very niche market. If you care so much there are wireless DACs that can feed your wired headphones better than any phone in history.

How do they avoid lossy compression?

My hotter take is that this is the same problem as IR blasters, and relative to the old normal -- when device makers like LG were specifically advertising how awesome their built-in DAC was -- this whole thing could be solved in a much more elegant, flexible way if anyone at all would just give us a second fucking USB port.

By applying Psychoacoustics. Lossy compression is a problem long solved.

> It's about cutting costs and having one less hole water can get in.

That's a lazy excuse. Every single IP68 rugged phone has a headphone jack. And the ones that are more waterproof even made for diving with them also have one.

that's not avoiding lossy compression, that's choosing a form that people (hopefully) won't notice

I use my USB-C port to listen to my wired headphones all the time, no problem. Phone jack is now redundant now that USB-C can output audio

Still no headphone jack in fairphone 6? Damn, I was almost sure it will by my next phone :(

By that logic, so is using 16 bits and 44khz sampling rate.

I've replaced the USB-C port on a few Samsung devices as well, recently a Note 10 Lite (my second, I loved that phone enough to replace it with the same model). It was trivial, even opening the back case was not too difficult. And the battery was right there had I wanted to replace it as well.

These things are not as difficult as tech writers make them out to be.

Unfortunately there are major, intentional, compatibility problems with USB audio.

During early COVID, USB audio worked perfectly, but an Android update disabled, supposedly for "security" reasons.

That USB-C jack is not nearly as strong and robust as a proper headphone jack.

16-bit 44 Khz almost perfectly reproduces human hearing. It wasn't a coincidence that the makers of CDs chose it. Anything above is studio-grade stuff to give extra headroom for editing (applying filters in studio editing can amplify noise which is unwanted, for just playing audio there are no advantages).

With standard Bluetooth codecs you get nowhere close to that and there is a significant noticeable delay for video content. Headphone jack is easy to make IP68. All rugged phones have it and all non-rugged ones have a USB port which is bigger and more irregular than a frigging circle.

> just give us a second fucking USB port

So much this. I had an nVidia (Tegra?) based phone with USB, headphone jack, HDMI.

While I don't think a USB port would allow for FM radio using the headphone cord simply having more would be fantastic! But if laptop designers can barely fit two USB-C ports I'm not sure what chance we have against the phone designers...

No, that’s not planned obsolescence. Why would it become obsolete faster due to the lack of a phone jack?

Not delivering updates, that’s planned obsolescence.

I do agree however, that a jack is nice. Wired USB-C headphone do exist though, if you insist on wired.I am not an audiophile, wouldn’t that provide an even better sound quality potentially (digital to analog conversion happens later, not distortions due to cables for example)?

A proper headphone jack will always and forever be superior to needing a dongle.

There seems to be more movement in the standards space on wireless headphones. The wireless standard today could be very different in 5-10 years time. The 3.5mm jack is over a century old, it isn't being changed dramatically in any way.

Personally, I am just not a fan of something that requires both a software connection that usually isn't always the smoothest thing rather than a direct hardware connection. And having yet another battery to deal with and the down stream impact of that. Typically all on hardware with the battery sealed inside that will die long before the rest of the hardware will.

Nothing wrong with wireless as an option but mandating it, I do not like that one bit. It is now the first thing I check on a phone as it is an absolute deal breaker for me.

Sony tried to compete with the best camera, best DAC and I don't think those phones sold. Manufacturers build products the market wants. Wired headphones are not what the market wants. If you are a true purist you buy stuff from fiio and carry more then one device.

This is the same thing as with small phones. A vocal minority cried far and wide that they wanted them. Apple made them.. and they did, not, sell.

>Wired headphones still have better sound quality

I don't know about that, I still get analog noise all the time. Maybe it's just due to using a cheap DAC?

They also sell wireless earbuds and headphones with replaceable batteries.

I think the solution is to ship wireless earphones with a usb-c capability, and ship smartphones with multiple usb ports.

Those rugged phones are also thicker and more expensive for what you're getting. Mainstream companies have tried offering the headphone jack in some phones and every single time, those phone have undersold their jackless competitors.

I don't know if you meant it but you seem to imply that that vocal minority only cried but didn't buy the small phones?

You know a minority is a _minority_, even if everyone in that minority bought a iPhone Mini, the sales number is still not going to be high.

(Edit: just checked, in 2022, 3% of iPhones sold were 13 Minis. not high but surely someone out there can run a sustainable business out of that 3% of mobile phones)

Two yen: buy Sony phones before Xperia gets shutdown. Sony obsesses about sound quality to the extent that they try to develop specialized solder materials (!) for the DAC-Jack pathway.

Bonus: Sony's AOSP program also releases images, and even oddballs like Sailfish release images spec. for Sony devices.

Sony's problem is not their device; it's software/marketing/price and their release process.

And wired headphones have less latency if you want to play music (although touch screens usually have huge latency).

Blackview n6000 has no headphone jack.

Wireless headphones use lossy compression, so the sound is of worse quality. Also some of them use low bitrate profiles like 256 kbit or even 128 kbit to get longer battery life. Also as I understand they are a pain to use because you need to charge them daily.

I've almost pulled the trigger on a Sony phone multiple times specifically because they are the last non-camera-cutout, headphone jack phone on the market. Unfortunately, they don't work on Google Fi, and I don't (quite) care enough to switch my carrier for it....but I'm really close.

A more accurate statement would have been "you can get better sound quality out of wired headphones at every price point". But you definitely aren't guaranteed to get better quality.

However much money you are willing to spend on headphones, with a tiny bit of research, you will find a wired option with dramatically better quality.

But also, the very low end of wired headphones are truly, truly abysmal, but getting wireless at those price-points is just literally impossible.

$20 is enough to get pretty decent sound quality (better than my ~$100 Samsung Galaxy Buds)

There is a market, fiio is capitalizing on it.

https://www.fiio.com/utws1

I remember seeing something like this for over ear, you just stream tidal to them so there shouldn't be compression issues. Might be a delay idk.

I just took a look and the most recent Xperia looks to be 3x the (already high) cost of a Fairphone 6? I buy my phones outright and that is quite prohibitive.

> If you care so much there are wireless DACs that can feed your wired headphones better than any phone in history.

Don't they all have 50-300ms of latency?

If you have a quality non-bluetooth suggestion, or I'm wrong about the latency of bluetooth, I'd be excited to hear it.

> Mainstream companies have tried offering the headphone jack in some phones and every single time, those phone have undersold their jackless competitors.

What, when?

I hope you don't mean when the flagship phone has no headphone jack, and a mid tier phone does. It's not the choice between the headphone jack and 3% more battery making the decision in that situation.

I'm not sure if comparing Xperia 1 to Fairphone makes sense. Xperia 10 is probably the fairer comparison, but I don't think Sony is releasing them outside Japan :(

The Xperia 10 is available in many countries. I'm in Germany and could buy it like any other phone.

Nothing stops you from using wired headphones with USB-C.

I had to settle for a phone with no headphone jack. I thought it can't be that bad, I got a usbc adapter. It's a strictly worse experience:

- It disconnects easily

- It's much more uncomfortable to keep in the pocket with it plugged on, since it's longer

- I feel like I'm stressing the usbc port much more

- I can't charge and use headphones at the same time (unless I buy a different, bulkier, adapter)

- If I don't have the adapter on me, I can't plug my phone in some music system that doesn't have bt. This has bit me in the ass twice already in four months.

- The adapter already seems to be breaking down (I didn't get the cheapest one available) and sending weird inputs to the phone which pauses the music or causes the assistant to tell me the time

So yeah, nothing's stopping me, but my experience is worse now for the sole reason that Apple decided they wanted to sell Bluetooth headphones

But what about usb-c wired headphones, as I suggested?

I was suggesting usb-c wired headphones

That is an acceptable compromise... it would be nice to have a second USB-C (for reduncancy, if nothing else).

UCB-C headphones use the same USB-C connector as the charging one (there are no smartphone with 2 usb-C connectors), therefore increasing the wear every time you plug/unplug. When using USB headphones you cannot charge at the same time, and when using USB-to-{usb+jack} the behavior is sometimes strange (e.g. does not detect and switch to internal audio when unplugging the jack). Besides, in many situations (especially when walking/moving), a USB-C connector tends to unplug itself so easily while a jack connector will just stay in place. Nothing really replaces an internal jack port ! (+ in some cases, the jack connector would also provide a debug UART :).

In comparison, Moto G84 has LineageOS/Calyx support, headphone jack, 2 SIM (or 1 SIM + SD-card), 12G RAM, and 7/10 repairability score in France (although I lack the details - I hope at least it's relatively easy to replace the battery and USB-C slot) + it weight 160g => even though I'd like to support Fairphone, I won't buy again a phone without jack port !

I totally agree with previous comments which highlight that we used to have removable jack + batteries + SD + root easily 10 years ago (and we also had more options for tiny phones, such as Galaxy S4 Mini).

Personally, I have several decent headphones with 3.5mm connectors. Having to buy a separate pair of headphones for phone use is dumb.

> Manufacturers build products the market wants.

Every single person wants smaller phones. What do we get? No small phones.

Apple doesn't count… they are priced at 3x 4x what an android would cost.

People want small phones but don't want to spend their whole salary on a phone.

> I can't charge and use headphones at the same time (unless I buy a different, bulkier, adapter)

Well, that's better than things used to be...

I had a Zen Stone that I used to play music in the car by plugging a cassette tape adapter into the audio jack.

For convenience, I bought a cigarette lighter adapter to power it, so that I wouldn't have to take it out of my car when it needed charging.

Except it turned out not to be able to play audio while charging. Not because it charged through the audio jack. It charged through a USB port. You just weren't allowed to do both at once.

> I could probably use it for a few more years but I may upgrade to the 6 if the speakers/microphone are better

I don't get this. Isn't the whole concept of the company modular parts? Shouldn't you be able to put the better speakers in your existing phone?

USB-C to jack adapters exists. Even USB-C to jack cables exists if you own headphones with removable cable.

Not saying it’s a good situation, I also miss the jack connector. But you’ve got the option to keep your headphones :)

Security patch once every 3months... I regret buying a FP4.

It's not modular, and each fairphone is not compatible with the previous one. FP3 had an update camera if I remember well but it was the exception.

Hot take maybe but I think it would be a worthwhile endeavor to come up with a replacement for the 3.5mm audio jack. It’s served us well but there’s several improvements that could be made to it that’d make it more durable and less prone to issues like becoming loose. It’s probably longer than it strictly needs to be too.

I don't know of a single person who has switched to a smaller phone after having a bigger one (though also don't know anyone who bought a phablet, so maybe that's too big). As people moved most of their computer use to phones, bigger phones where you can see more of the web on your page, while still fitting in your pocket or purse, have won decidedly.

By and large, the only people who want small phones are those that still do most of their computing and media consumption on a PC or laptop. And that's becoming much, much rarer (and gaming doesn't really count here - lots of gamers have a separate stream or something on their phones while playing).

Yes, people often get that wrong, it's not modular or upgradable, it's repairable, which is already great.

IMO we are far past the point when we should have decided smartphone hardware is good enough, and stop having people upgrade over and over. But I guess capitalism needs to be fed and everything is made to make sure that never happens (including making sure everyone thinks we do need better hardware)

I have no idea if those numbers are correct, but I'm curious - why would latency matter for high quality audio? Jitter is the only thing that impacts audio quality, unless you are doing two-way communication.

I'm curious. Why is this such an important thing for you? I seems like a usbc to 3.5mm jack would solve most of the issue.

>I don't know of a single person who has switched to a smaller phone

It's difficult to do that when the available phones are just getting bigger. Ten years ago you could still find sub 6" phones easily. These days, not so much.

> Those rugged phones are also thicker and more expensive for what you're getting. Mainstream companies have tried offering the headphone jack in some phones and every single time, those phone have undersold their jackless competitors.

Yeah… the budget Moto G3 from 2015 with IPX7 says hi. To the limited surprise of anyone who was familiar with the brand back then, the top model (16GB/2gb) sold out in less than a week.

You can’t tell me it’s harder to waterproof a headphone jack in 2025 than it was in 2015. And could you please tell me how a rubber gasket adds appreciable thickness to a phone? Because I find that a bit hard to believe.

> I don't know of a single person who has switched to a smaller phone after having a bigger one

Similarly, I don't know a single person that likes to eat dodo eggs.

My headphone cables (usually Sennheiser CX 300 II In-ear) would break consistently within about 2 years. Airpods have been going strong for much longer than that. I use my AirPods with my iPads, my Linux Laptop, my Kids' Android tablet.

Expensive yes, but planned obsolescence? Meh.. I also got an (Apple branded even) USB-C to headphone jack plug which also work flawlessly, so I really don't see the issue here.

> Wired headphones still have better sound quality.

High-grade studio quality wired headphones have better quality than wireless ones. But anywhere lower than the highest tiers, they're both in the same ballpark.

For the devices used by 999‰ of the people, the difference is unnoticeable.

> Don't break with software update.

Why would headphones break when you upgrade your phone? It sounds to me like your phone broke. And an audio jack can also stop working with a botched software update.

I've been using cellular phones since 2004. I've never used a headphone jack. Most people haven't either. Sure, some people would use it, and some people would use a DisplayPort connector if present (I would), but it's hard to justify putting one in every single phone when an adapter is so cheap.

Shipping a 3.5mm audio jack on every single phone in the world is more wasteful than just manufacturing an adapter for people who actually need it.

I do agree USB-C physically sucks, especially compared with lightning or audio jack.

But “reusing the same port for multiple purposes” can’t mean “planned obsolescence”. Making that port unrepairable, that, yes.

Minor nitpick - ASUS ROG phones have two USB C ports, I think some other gaming focused phones do as well.

Yeah, last patch is from 5th March.

I regret buying FP4 too. Unfortunately the hardware is very sturdy and does not break justifying buying a different one. But the software feels half ready in a few critical parts (GPS and phone/sms in my case) and the support is non existent (very bad) for my two issues I had (still have).

I also had a Zen Phone (if that's what you meant) and it definitely played audio while charging.

All the phones that I have had with a audio jack would charge and play audio without any issues, ranging from a lot of different Samsung Galaxy to Wiko phones.

Regarding the length, the smaller 2.5mm jack used to be pretty common on smaller devices. Now the only thing that I know uses it is the input on Bose QC headphones.

I'm generally a fan of wired-everything but headphones are the one thing that I love to have wireless. Not only is it not a tangle with the cord but I can go grab a glass of water without any interruption even still listening to a meeting while I do.

The biggest downside is worrying about the battery level. But they last so long on a single charge that it isn't even an issue if you forget to plug them in many days in a row and the battery charges fast even on a slow charger.

Because I press buttons and want immediate feedback.

And I want it to work with calls were any extra latency is bad. And I want it to work with my desktop where I play games and extra latency ruins things.

I would pay $2000 without a second of hesitation, if that's what it took, for an Android phone with

* headphone jack

* usbc port

* removable, large battery

* under 5 inch screen (with phone body size to match)

* dual sim

* sd card slot

* cameras just good enough to take pictures of license plates on illegally parked cars

* 5g antenna

I don't care if it needs to be hella thick to accomplish this, I don't care if the screen is OLED or has a >60hz refresh rate, I don't care about telescopic cameras or faceid or anything like that. I just want a small fat phone that I can plug my IEMs into and use as a wifi tether for my laptop without the battery dying in a couple hours.

Samsung Galaxy Xcover 4s

Olympia Neo Mini

Slightly larger:

Samsung Galaxy Xcover 5

Cyrus CM17 XA

None with 5G though.

I will not buy another phone without a headphone jack.

Either I will have to buy Xperias or stock up on old Pixel 4 phones.

I do not think I have owned a single device where the headphone jack was the first item to have issues or fail. Even unused debris would trigger switches changing sound sources. I am happy to be done with wired headphones being yanked off my head.

> I also had a Zen Phone (if that's what you meant)

No, that's not what I meant. I said Zen Stone. Turns out, I meant Zen Stone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Zen#ZEN_Stone/Stone_P...

Mine don't last an 10 hour day :-(

I'm wondering now how much time you used to find that single one that has no headphone jack and is also IP68 certified.

Congrats, I guess?

Thanks. I'll keep an eye out for the Xperia 10 VII in Canada.

> it's not modular or upgradable, it's repairable, which is already great.

Well, I was going to observe that I broke my phone recently for the first time out of more than 10 years of having a smartphone.

But I remembered that while I didn't break it, my Nexus 5 spontaneously broke and couldn't be fixed, causing me to lose about a year of chat history that I would like to have back.

That said, if the parts are replaceable, there is no good reason to prevent you from replacing them with upgrades. That is by far the highest-value use of the ability to replace parts.

> The removal of the phone jack is so obviously planned obsolescence

I'll keep repeating it; I worked in a hardware company (and one with very toxic upper management) and really, I don't buy the "planned obsolescence" for most products.

Employees are usually not villains (I know, it happens, as proven by Meta recently where engineers essentially built a malware into Meta's apps, and as proven by printers - if that's still the case, I don't own one). Most of the time they are not.

What happens most of the time is more likely "premature obsolescence": the product could have been engineered to last for 10 years, but it would have taken more development time and it would have cost more, so the company chose not to invest there. Regulations enforce a warranty period, so the company optimises around that. But it's not the same as planned obsolescence.

The result is the same: we need regulations that set the framework into which companies optimise. But the intention is different.

Also specifically for the jack, the reality is that nobody cares. You want a phone with a jack? Congrats, you're part of a small minority (don't worry, I am, too). How does it feel? :-)

Since 2019, I replaced once the battery of my FP3.

I often see people with broken screens. USB ports can get damaged by too many plug cycles etc. None of these reason should justify buying a new phone, but in practice if replacing the part is not relatively cheap and straightforward, this is what happens.

And yes upgrade can be cool too but much harder and probably unrealistic for a small company like this one. Look at how well it works for PC, after 10 years you have to still change everything to upgrade anything (your new CPU socket forces you to change the mother board, and the CPU fan, then your old ram is not compatible, etc and at the end you keep the case and maybe the PSU. And this is on a relatively open ecosystem compared to the mobile world with their SoC/SoM, high space constraints and a single supported kernel etc...)

> None of these reason should justify buying a new phone, but in practice if replacing the part is not relatively cheap and straightforward, this is what happens.

The reason that is what happens is that you can't upgrade the old phone. But you have to upgrade the phone anyway, so you take advantage of the only way to do that, buying a new phone.

I wasn't upset when I smashed my phone screen recently, because that phone already needed to be replaced for other reasons.

> Sony tried to compete with the bet camera, best DAC and I don't think those phones sold.

They were also priced like it -- and worse, many of them weren't available through US carriers, which is prohibitive to a market that often won't spend Kaz Hirai money all at once on a phone.

You're otherwise restating my point, though. Many of the niche hardware features don't have to be built into the device if you just offer more baseline extensibility.

> I don't know of a single person who has switched to a smaller phone after having a bigger one

Consider how small the overlap is between devices in a product lineup in the first place and an audience that can buy them -- whether that's through carrier availability to put them on plans if in the US, or the resources to spend on them up-front.

That trend also is based on touch as the primary method of interaction -- but given the tethered AR devices we're starting to see trickle out, and Android's desktop mode finally hitting prime time, that assumption might not hold long-term. I'm not saying this will be the timeline we live on, but considering some of the experiments with dedicated, external devices for powering them, it's not hard to envision the pendulum swinging back toward smaller phones that focus more on things like the compute and sensors and less around a screen you look at all day.

Think of the (modern) Moto Razr. You could, hypothetically, have a compute device that more so resembles the folded-down version of this -- aimed more toward external displays, and less toward being regularly looked at.

> None with 5G though

Exactly. I should have added "up to date security patches, and functioning google and banking apps" to my list as well to cover my bases on why I can't just use an old phone with a custom ROM. Otherwise I'd just use the Galaxy S3 for the rest of my life.

I just happened to have that model on my desk when I read your comment.