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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 ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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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- zod000@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  My wired earbuds cost more than ten times that and will probably last me until I retire. The vast majority of those USB-c to 3.5mm adapters are cheap crap that have a worthless DAC and/or fall apart after a short time. I have purchased my wife three such adapters since she decided it was worth it to get a phone without a headphone jack and none of them have been good.
  
  I ended up having to buy her a separate portable music player to use. So thanks for that Google, Apple, and the rest of the greedy shithead OEMs.
  
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  - FG_3479@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Which brand of adpater did you get? If you got a generic one then a bad DAC and durability aren’t surprises.
    
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    zod000@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I’ve used three: one was generic (it was at the time the only way to get one that could charge and have a headphone out in the same dongle), one was from Fiio (surprisingly bad sounding, maybe worse than the generic in some ways, but better build), and one was the official Google dongle (sounded clean, but was super weak. Couldn’t power even my lightest headphones that weren’t IEMs). The only one I still have is the Google dongle because the others broke, but I don’t use it because it still kinda sucks. I ended up being forced to buy a phone without a headphone jack fairly recently because Google more or less killed my Pixel 4a and there were no replacement phones with headphones jacks that I could put GrapheneOS on. I ended up buying myself a portable music player to list to music on. My phone is now only for listening to music in the car and it sucks :(
    
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- WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  how do you charge the phone with a DAC plugged in?
  
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  - papertowels@mander.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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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    __dev@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    Wirelessly.
    
    FairPhone doesn’t do wireless charging.
    
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    WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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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  - FG_3479@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    You can get a USB-C splitter adapter.
    
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    WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    isn’t that against the USB-C standard?
    
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- ManOMorphos@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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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  - FG_3479@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    That’s why you don’t just buy the cheapest one you see on Amazon. Google/DDG around to know which ones are good.
    
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xvapx@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Just out of interest, because I too love the jack, then what are you buying in the future?
  
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  - InFerNo@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Motorola or whatever, depends what’s available within budget at the time I need the phone.
    
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  - Severalkittens@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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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    Benaaasaaas@group.lt ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Same, but it’s insanely expensive for a good phone with a horrible camera.
    
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  - xvapx@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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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- timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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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- dustyData@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  If you ask people what they want, they will tell you they want a phone that has 15 inch screen that looks perfect under the sunlight. But also fits into their pocket. And it has to have a battery that lasts a week, but it must not weight anything at all. But also has to play all the highly graphical games, and also have a professional level camera. It must do so and also last forever and be indestructible.
  
  That phone obviously can’t exist, and a lot of what people want are things that oppose each other from the engineering pov. That’s the point of surveys and market analysis. You don’t just look at what people say, you look at what they do, what they actually buy.
  
  It is true that the other side of marketing is convincing people that what the company is offering is what they would also want to buy. But it is never a guarantee. I mean, look at the Samsung Edge flop. Marketing is not magic, you can’t brainwash 100 million people to buy something they don’t want. Marketing is marrying what the company wants to do in terms of cost cutting and profit maxing, with what the market is actually willing to buy. If people keep buying slop, they will keep selling slop, and they will keep marketing slop to people to convince them they want the slop. To break the circle someone has to stop, and it won’t be the corporations.
  
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potustheplant@feddit.nl ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
You know why there aren’t more users complaining about this? Because they flat out did not buy the device for that reason (e.g. me). Removing the jack is also extremely hyprocritical coming from a “sustainable” company.

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- dustyData@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  And if it did have it you wouldn’t have bought it either because the company is hypocritical. So why do you care? Why should they care?
  
  The point is, the people who did buy it didn’t care, and the people who care don’t buy. It’s a conundrum. Pair it with performance data of other phones that do have a headphone jack, plus the engineering compromises over other very important features. Then the decision makes sense. You lot aren’t buying phones with headphone jacks either, so it isn’t economically worth it. It’s not like the motor g or the Asus rog phone are breaking sales records just on the headphone jack.
  
  It’s the same story as with small phones. People who aren’t buying phones like to complain about phone size. But then when a small phone is made, no one buys it. Then the people who didn’t buy the phone complain again, because the phone wasn’t perfect for them.
  
  It happens all the time, people are usually very vocal about things that actually don’t drive their decision making.
  
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  - potustheplant@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    Why should they care?
    
    Because they should want to capture more customers? Is that really your question?
    
    The point is, the people who did buy it didn’t care
    
    Yeah and how many were those?
    
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    dustyData@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Exactly, they want the most amount of customers. But they won’t sacrifice AxB customers to satisfy B customers. They’d be effectively losing customers or breaking even at a higher cost to them.
    
    We know this numbers must have a population of around 180 thousand customers. The known number of fairphones sold across all models so far. Now let’s make assumptions. Let’s suppose that there are 100 people who want headphone jacks and would absolutely buy a fairphone if they came with it, for each user that has advocated for headphone jacks in this thread. You wouldn’t even break 1% of the total number of fairphone sales, just this year (130k).
    
    Again, there’s a difference between wanting something a lot. And actually making decisions based on what we say we want. Fairphone removed the headphone jack on a model that broke sales records for them. Fairphone 5 was heavily criticized for not having a headphone jack. And it is selling comfortably well within their expectations. So obviously the people who stopped buying Fairphones because of the headphone jack weren’t that many actually.
    
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