Bagger Bagger!

The Xperia compact series were dream devices. 😩

I really hate that I think this might be an option for me, just because I’d really like a phone with a small screen and flip phone with outside screens that you just leave closed seem to be the only fucking option to get one.

Motorcycles are the best means to go camping.

When you’re travelling, you are outside. Open the visor, breathe in the pine wood air. Unlike a car where you’re effectively disconnected from your surroundings, you’re much more in them. You can also reach much more secluded places, so you can just go to “that spot” and spend the night there. It’s almost as good as bicycles or hiking in that regard but unlike those two, you can also cover distances, spontaneously deciding to just hit the road for a day and sleep 1000 km further south the next night.

I just explained how they are effectively doing that because a dongle is such a terrible solution that it’s essentially not usable. I can repeat my points, from charging over being pulled out, and add that they are either incompatible with some devices that don’t supply the analogue audio signal over USB (so you’re usually just buying one of those to see if they work, are happy if it does and then annoyed when you need to use it on another device where it doesn’t and boom you’re suddenly left without working headphones despite having one of those stupid dongles) or come with probably the cheapest, suckishest piece of shit DAC some underpaid Chinese procurement jerk could find anywhere on the market, so the audio quality will probably be terrible even when using wired speakers on a fucking dongle.

Is there a law that prohibits me from trying to keep using wired headphones? No, so you’re right there that they’re not technically forcing anyone. But in anything but making it technically impossible, they’re making it as unusable and unlikeable as possible, so effectively, there’s no way around using Bluetooth headphones.

when a better one already existed

Agree with everything, but it’s not just that it existed, it’s that it was also already widely adopted for literal decades. This was an established solution that is now getting replaced with something worse. This isn’t betamax that just lost the adoption race against a competitor.

You keep arguing that people can just use a dongle. I can keep arguing that a dongle solution sucks ass. I have used a dongle and even the way it’s just used sucks because it’s pulled out of the socket with much less force than headphones, so it keeps getting disconnected. If you like it, fine. I don’t and I still think that removing the jack is a dumb decision. This is getting nowhere.

I can’t have them connected to my headphones all the time because I connect headphones to other devices that all have a fucking headphone jack.

1. It’s an additional, and to most people superfluous, point for water ingress. Water damage is the most common type of damage in phones.

I’ve had watertight phones with a headphone jack over a decade ago.

2. It takes up space which could be utilised otherwise, like with a slightly larger battery or larger speakers or camera modules.

Yes. Anything you add to a phone is a tradeoff. No shit. These points are what is usually used to justify the lack of a jack. But maybe, just maybe, they don’t save as much money as they make with selling wireless headphones and this is just an excuse? Especially the big companies like Apple or Samsung that sell their own peripherals? And this whole thing is just an excuse to sell overpriced gadgets that need to be replaced every few years because of their batteries? Maybe, just maybe, it’d be valid if consumers still had a choice and could pick phones with or without a jack and would have to pay for the luxury of using decent headphones with a few milliamperehours?

3. It’s an additional part which needs to be manufactured, stocked, installed and purchased. Extra cost which only benefits a few. This is especially important to Fairphone in particular because they don’t use off-the-shelf components and promise to supply replacement parts pretty much indefinitely. I.e. Fairphone would have to design a custom module and then have that module in stock and manufactured specifically for them for the lifetime of each of their devices. That’s not a trivial expense.

Manufacturing a phone is not a trivial expense. Removing features is a business decision and a headphone jack costs money but doesn’t earn any whereas they can produce more cheaply without one. I get it. It’s just that doing so requires you to buy and use battery powered headphones that are much less sustainable than traditional magnets tied to a cable. How a company that lives off its promise to safe the world jumps on that wagon is a miracle to me. Companies that remove headphones don’t care about audio quality (which is why Sony still produces phones with audio jacks, I guess) or sustainability. Which is odd for a company like fp.

But there are other people in parks. Why the fuck would I want to deal with their bullshit when I can just have my own park?

USB-C to headphone jack dongles suck. You lose them easily, you can’t charge your phone if they’re connected and if you disconnect your headphones the device still behaves as if they’re plugged in. It’s so much less convenient and on the other hand there’s just no downside to having a dedicated headphone jack, so I still don’t get why they’re no longer including them.

It’s just different values. I could ask the same about the US and nudity. In German media, blood and violence is fine, but it’s considered a topic that you need to be able to handle, so you need to have a certain age, depending on how gruesome that is.

Tbh, I’m European and therefore biased, but the way the united states have no problem with people harming other in media but being offended by something like “bodies” or “sex” does seem a little weird. Like, if my kids normalised harming others I’d be much more concerned than if they normalised making love.

Finger gun ricochet eye injuries are on the rise again for women suffering from vertical eye socket orientation syndrome.

https://beehaw.org/comment/4517936

Testtomcels

That image has been living in my head rent-free since I first saw it.

Crepés

I don’t think that’s a German term.

Et tu brute force

Morty, I’m a potato!

I’ll have two ingots of that, please.

Warhammer and Warhammer 40k.