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Comment on Fairphone announces the €599 Fairphone 6, with a 6.31" 120Hz LTPO OLED display, a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chip, and enhanced modularity with 12 swappable parts

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dustyData@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

Let me expand, as I usually deal with surveys and population feedback. There’s loud feedback, and there’s statistically significant feedback.

People who want a headphone jack are very loud. They will interject this issue into every feedback opportunity given. They will mention it on the comment sections, forums, q&a sessions, answer their surveys accordingly, etc. That’s all fine and their prerogative.

However, when you look at the statistics. They are unfortunately a very tiny minority of the entire population. They are not statistically significant for decision making. They don’t have the volume to move sales significantly. This sucks, of course, and I personally wouldn’t mind the return of headphone jacks, smaller phones and bigger batteries as a fair trade for thicker phones.

But unfortunately, the vast majority of the market is pre-occupied with other things. The phone screen is too small, the phone weights too much, the phone is too thick, I want to bring my phone to the pool without fear of it breaking, etc. They are not as passionate about it, not like the headphone people are, but they far outnumber them in several orders of magnitude. In the end, if the product doesn’t sell, it won’t matter how much it was worth to a single passionate person. It will sink the company if it doesn’t have mass appeal. Making phones is already an extremely expensive endeavor.

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FG_3479@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
You can get good Bluetooth earbuds for under $50 and a USB-C to AUX dongle for under $15.

The average person is fine with Bluetooth earbuds or an adapter, and audiophiles would not find the inbuilt DAC/amp on a phone to be adequate.

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- ManOMorphos@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Maybe I chose the wrong $10 adapter but I notice a big drop in sound quality using that vs Bluetooth, to the point that it’s not worth using unless there isn’t another option. I’m not really an audiophile, though I can notice the general quality of sound.
  
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- WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  how do you charge the phone with a DAC plugged in?
  
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  - FG_3479@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    You can get a USB-C splitter adapter.
    
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    WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    isn’t that against the USB-C standard?
    
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  - papertowels@mander.xyz ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    If we revisit the “loud” vs “statistically significant” paradigm, while it is a shame you will not be able to charge the phone with a dac in, how often does the average person do so?
    
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    WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    so you need a dongle for the DAC, and an additional dongle for charging that is also, if I recall it correctly, violates the USB-C standard. did I understand it correctly?
    
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  - 46_and_2@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Wirelessly.
    
    Or you switch to your bluetooth buds during a wired charge.
    
    I’m all for audio jacks, but have been using a phone without ine for 4 years now, and there are so many options to not be incovenienced.
    
    Also I don’t use my audiophile headphones with the phone at all - DAC, just isn’t good enough, prefer to use them with my desktop PC amp.
    
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    WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    good luck charging my phone wirelessly! wireless charging is also very wasteful, and it does not support idle charging (powering the phone without wearing the battery), even if the phone otherwise does. doesn’t it also take up a significant amount of that precious space inside the phone?
    
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    __dev@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    Wirelessly.
    
    FairPhone doesn’t do wireless charging.
    
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xvapx@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

People who want a headphone jack […] are unfortunately a very tiny minority of the entire population.

People interested in paying more for fair trade materials and repairable phones are also a very tiny minority of the entire population.
Of course I don’t have any statistic, but I would guess that the proportion of people wanting a Jack is significantly higher in the group of people interested in buying Fairphone tht on the general population.

In my particular case, I’m still using my Fairphone 3, and I’m not buying a Fairphone again unless it has a Jack.

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- falcunculus@jlai.lu ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  I don’t have any statistic, but I would guess that the proportion of people wanting a Jack is significantly higher in the group of people interested in buying Fairphone that on the general population.
  
  Fairphone literally does have that statistic. They spent effort to gather that info in order to inform their business decisions. And they report:
  
  We also looked into the consumer data and Fairphone 4’s weight and thickness were more of an issue than the lack of a minijack
  
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- squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Have a look at their impact report. They themselves claim that they don’t spend more than €5 per phone on fair trade or environmental stuff.
  
  You are only paying more for that phone because they are a tiny boutique manufacturer who has to outsource everything. The fair/eco stuff is just fair- and greenwashing.
  
  If you buy a phone because you want to look fair/eco, buy a Fairphone. If you actually really care for fair/eco, get an used phone and donate some money to the correct NGOs or charities.
  
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  - __dev@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    Have a look at their impact report. They themselves claim that they don’t spend more than €5 per phone on fair trade or environmental stuff.
    
    I’ve looked through their report and I can’t find this info. The only thing I’ve found is a ~€2 bonus per phone to their factory workers, which is only a small fraction of a phones supply chain. Can you provide a more detailed reference supporting your claim?
    
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    squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Read through the whole report, sum up all the money they mention. It comes out to $16 000. Double that for the stuff where they don’t mention money (because they surely would mention anything that costs more than the things they do mention). Double it again, for a safety margin. Double it again, because we are really generous. Now we are at €128 000. Divide that by the number of devices sold in 2024 and you get $1.24. Now add the $1.20 (Page 29) they pay as a living wage bonus and you arrive at $2.44 per device.
    
    And now let’s be super generous and double that guess again, and you end up with the <€5 per device that I quoted above.
    
    The picture becomes clearer when you look at what they say about their fair material usage.
    
    Take for example the FP5 (page 42 & 67). Their top claim here is “Fair materials: 76%”, which they then put a disclaimer next to it, that they only mean that 76% of 14 specific focus materials is actually fair. On the detail page (page 67) they specify that actually only 44% of the total weight of the phone is fairly mined, because they just excluded a ton of material from the list of “focus materials” to push up the number.
    
    The largest part of these materials are actually recycled materials (37% of the 44% “fair” materials). The materials they are recycling are plastics, metals and rare earth elements. That’s all materials that are cheaper to recycle than to mine. You’ll likely find almost identical amounts of recycled materials in any other phone, because it makes economical sense. It’s just cheaper. Since these materials cost nothing extra to Fairphone, we can exclude them from the list, which leaves 1% of actually fair mined material (specifically gold), and 6% of materials that they bought fairwashing credits for.
    
    Also, the raw materials of phones are dirt cheap compared to the end price. The costly part is not mining the materials, but manufacturing all the components.
    
    With only 1% of the materials being fairly mined and only 6% being compensated with credits, you can start to see why in total they spend next to nothing on fair mining/fair credits.
    
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- Benaaasaaas@group.lt ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Just out of interest, because I too love the jack, then what are you buying in the future?
  
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  - Severalkittens@lemmy.world ⁨35⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
    I have a Sony Xperia that has both a jack and a SD slot. I shelled out for the top of the line one, but since it has good specs I plan on keeping it for many years.
    
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  - xvapx@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I have no idea, I’m hoping for my F3 to still last a couple of years.
    I’m honestly pretty tired of Android, and that’s another can of worms. Maybe I’ll try with a linux phone, but I’m still undecided.
    
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  - InFerNo@lemmy.ml ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Motorola or whatever, depends what’s available within budget at the time I need the phone.
    
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- timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Like I’ve said before- their market is small enough they should be trying to get everyone they can to buy it.
  
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  - Havald@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    That’s what they’re doing. That’s why they remove the headphone jack in favour for a slimmer, lighter phone. Their market research showed that’s more important to a bigger portion of their customers.
    
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    interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I’ve never met someone that cared about a thinner phone, they’ve been too thin since 2015…
    
    People that want their ducking hradphine jacks? They are everywhere.
    
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phantomwise@lemmy.ml ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
What statistics? People buying thin phones over thicker phones doesn’t mean much when that’s almost all that’s being sold nowadays and every phone is trying to be as thin as possible. It seemed to me that 90% of what we’re told people want is actually just what companies want to push on us because it’s cheaper and more profitable.

All the people I know who are average users couldn’t care less about how thin the phone is, two mm more or less doesn’t make any difference. They care about screen size and being able to use it without too much hassle. If they get a phone without an audio jack half of them will just assume that they can’t plug earphones at all. And they are not the ones who will complain. But then, Fairphone isn’t marketed towards average users, so maybe their users have different priorities? Idk

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