I don’t want to buy additional Bluetooth headphones just for a smartphone.
You don’t have to. You can still use a USB-C dongle. Phones in 2025 have considerably longer battery life and charge considerably faster than phones when manufacturers started phasing out 3.5 mm jacks in phones, so charging should rarely conflict – unless you’re frequently doing wired data transfers too. A dongle is about $20. You’re also entirely free to get a smartphone that still has the jack if it’s an important feature to you. As I said in my above comment, nobody’s saying you aren’t allowed to factor this into your purchase.
Why do I have to buy additional gears just to be able to use my perfectly usable old ones?
“Why do I need an external optical drive to read DVDs on my laptop? Why can’t they just build it into the device?”
A 3.5 mm jack is just more stuff that needs to go into the limited thickness of a smartphone. They also need to be made water-resistant, and it’s just another potential point of failure. And for those who don’t use them, they’re a useless lint trap. Overall, they just cost more to produce which puts more cost onto the consumer. And now that Bluetooth audio is so widely used because it’s no longer complete trash, the vast majority of users not using the 3.5 mm jack would end up subsidizing the very small minority that do.
Or do I have to accept that Smartphones nowadays are just not for music?
No, you definitely don’t. Like what? Wirelessly they’re better than they’ve ever been by a mile. If you care deeply enough about audio quality that even modern Bluetooth quality bothers you, your alternative isn’t 3.5 mm – it’s an external DAC via USB-C. Space and streaming bandwidth are basically no longer considerations for high-bitrate music. If you care about music, smartphones are in a much better position than they were when the 3.5 mm jack was thriving.
“Smartphones nowadays are not for music” is such a histrionic distortion of “I personally have to use a $20 dongle when I listen to music on my smartphone with the headphones I alreay own.”
A 3.5 mm jack is just more stuff that needs to go into the limited thickness of a smartphone. They also need to be made water-resistant, and it’s just another potential point of failure. And for those who don’t use them, they’re a useless lint trap. Overall, they just cost more to produce which puts more cost onto the consumer.
Thus is straight up a lie. They cost less than a dollar to buy and put in a phone. Even the thinnest iPhone could have one without it impacting space and finally they are just as easy to waterproof as usb c port.
But yeah keep regurgitating the same facts big companies want you to use cause a extremely backwards compatible analog audio standard is less “convenient”
What I mean by listening to music on the phone is, listening to lossless files from the phone’s internal storage using my old JBL or Sony. Even if wirless are better now a days, what if my old headphones are not bad too? A new Bluetooth headphone of the same quality cost a fortune too. Of course there are Smartphones still has the 3.5mm jack, like my current Sony. Or a USB-C adapter is the only way to go in the future? The problem is, why take people’s options away if you don’t care about ultra thin thickness? Fairphones themselves are not thin either.
And DAC is simply a different thing. If listening from home, there are different set ups for that with speakers. And my home sound systems are even older. They are not consumer products that you throw away every five years.
You can only use the USB-C dongle for as long as your USB-C port functions, which for my last 3 phones including the one I’m typing this on, isn’t for the life of the phone. So once that fails which it always does, how do I listen to music? I shouldn’t be forced to use Bluetooth headphones/earbuds when they are objectively worse options that the collection of wired headphones I’ve gotten over the years. What about when the phone manufacturers decide that contact charging is good enough now and remove your USB-C ports, where does the dongle go now?
Your point about optical drives on computers is fucking dumb, since computers are still 100% modular and customizable, the point is that phones are not. I CAN put an optical drive on my PC, I can’t put a 3.5mm jack on my phone.
(Different guy here) the same thing applies to 3.5mm jacks. I also the “slippery slope” argument on USB-C ports feels a bit premature, though I’ll never 100% say that a CEO wouldn’t ever do anything like that.
Their point about optical drives literally said the word “laptop” and no, laptops are not modular to the point where you can just slap any old disc-drive in them. You can, however, get an external one that will take a USB slot but you’ll live. It’s going to be hard to successfully argue against the other guy if you’re not even reading his comments properly.
I read the comments properly. Laptops are modular where you can slap any old disc drive in them, I have one in my basement right now where I can do exactly that. If I couldn’t swap it easily without taking apart the laptop, I can easily open the laptop and attach it to the board as well, something that I can’t do with modern locked tight phones without specialized tools. Last resort would be using USB and an external drive. Tech literacy is dead when people are arguing against having a 3.5mm jack and don’t know that you can open a laptop with a screwdriver.
When was the last time you saw an even semi-modern laptop? There’s no space to jam disc-drives in them and you’d have to cut the body for the slot if there was no option to switch out part of it for something that had one. I frickin’ love modifying stuff and tinkering but that’s just not a reasonable expectation to have for everyone.
I am aware of how to open a laptop, I even have all the bits to do it, I’m just not living in the early 2000s and understand that my needs and how I use stuff are not the only valid ways.
Yes, tech literacy had a small window and now we’re all dumb again but I don’t think it’s why you think it is.
You can only use the USB-C dongle for as long as your USB-C port functions
Sure. At that point, you have bigger issues than the headphones, and your phone is probably very well past its natural lifespan, but sure.
which for my last 3 phones including the one I’m typing this on, isn’t for the life of the phone.
??? Holy shit what? I had a phone with a micro-USB port that lasted nine years, and the plastic power button failed before the port did. My current USB-C port shows absolutely no signs of wear after nearly three years. USB-C is generally sturdier because it’s symmetrical, a bit thicker, and lacks sharp corners.
Dude, I’m sorry, USB-C phones started showing up in like 2015; generously, that’s about three years per phone. I don’t know if you just needed to clean the port and didn’t realize, but at some point that stops being bad luck or poor manufacturing and starts looking like user error.
So once that fails which it always does, how do I listen to music?
Bluetooth headphones until you get a new phone? Again, nobody said you can’t buy a phone with a 3.5 mm jack. If your use case is that you’re chronically negligent with your USB-C ports, then go off, king. But nobody’s going to consider this a half-decent argument for bringing it back to most phones.
I shouldn’t be forced to use Bluetooth headphones/earbuds when they are objectively worse options that the collection of wired headphones I’ve gotten over the years.
Okay, again, if you care about audio quality so much that the Bluetooth standard is your bottleneck, you’re using an external DAC plugged into the USB-C port anyway, not whatever DAC the manufacturer decided to throw in for the 3.5 mm port. Wired headphones are better than wireless at the high end, but that’s also when you’re not sending the audio through a generic smartphone DAC.
What about when the phone manufacturers decide that contact charging is good enough now and remove your USB-C ports, where does the dongle go now?
“What about this scenario that I made up in my head just now? What then?? How will I be able to select my audio playlist when the corporations take away the phone’s display and project it into my retinas with Bluetooth, liberals??”
Your point about optical drives on computers [sic] is fucking dumb, since computers are still 100% modular and customizable
Yeah, sure, I’ll just build an optical drive into my laptop whose bottom chassis is thinner than my smartphone. Wait until the engineers at Lenovo see how far I’ve pushed optical drive technology so I can watch Shrek 2 with director’s commentary while I check my email.
the point is that phones are not. I CAN put an optical drive on my PC, I can’t put a 3.5mm jack on my phone.
I can fit an optical drive into my laptop about as well as you can fit a 3.5 mm jack into your phone (but actually, it’d be easier for you). Your comment below talking about “unscrewing a laptop”… Hi, yeah, I do that all the time. The fact that you not only can’t see the giant problems with trying this but also equate installing an optical drive inside of a generic laptop that was never meant to have one with being able to pop open the lid is so egregiously fucking stupid that I don’t know how/if to entertain it.
I can honestly see how you broke your phone’s USB-C port three times in a row if this is how you understand technology.
What would you consider a natural lifespan for a phone? I’m currently using a Pixel 6 that I got in 2021, it’s still well within it’s 8 year lifespan (which is around what I would call reasonable for something that costs me $800) and the USB-C broke at around late year 2 early year 3. It’s been the same issue with each phone of the USB-C getting loose and eventually failing to charge. As for your point about the micro USB port outlasting the button, same vibe those ports were indestructible, this is an issue that has only come up and consistently come up when phones started switching to type C. My blackberry bold is still kicking and usable so you can call “user error” all you want but I’m not convinced I suddenly became bad at maintaining my phones suddenly when the port swapped.
So I’m supposed to solve the issue of not wanting bluetooth headphones by…using bluetooth headphones? For five years while I wait for my phones natural lifespan to pass? K. Like yes I get the audio quality argument, you’re going to use a DAC anyways as I do on my desktop, but having the possibility of my headphones dying on me, as well as the price to performance when compared with wired options is enough for me to not want to deal with it. Sure I can get 100$ bluetooth buds, but they’re going to not only not be high quality, they’ll sound like shit at best.
The “scenario I made up in my head” is coming in the next few years, guaranteed. I remember when “the 3.5mm jack is going away” was a stupid argument that wasn’t going to happen too.
Just like I can buy a phone with a 3.5mm jack (with increasingly limited options for that each year) that isn’t my only criteria when buying a phone, it’s about weighing pros and cons of it. Sure you can’t fit an optical drive in your razor thin Lenovo, but you have options to buy a laptop that can, it all depends if you’re priority is buying something functional or something pretty.
You’re probably right though, it’s on me for having a broken port on the only piece of tech that I can’t easily open and tinker with, I just don’t understand technology.
You don’t have to. You can still use a USB-C dongle. Phones in 2025 have considerably longer battery life and charge considerably faster than phones when manufacturers started phasing out 3.5 mm jacks in phones, so charging should rarely conflict – unless you’re frequently doing wired data transfers too. A dongle is about $20. You’re also entirely free to get a smartphone that still has the jack if it’s an important feature to you. As I said in my above comment, nobody’s saying you aren’t allowed to factor this into your purchase.
“Why do I need an external optical drive to read DVDs on my laptop? Why can’t they just build it into the device?”
A 3.5 mm jack is just more stuff that needs to go into the limited thickness of a smartphone. They also need to be made water-resistant, and it’s just another potential point of failure. And for those who don’t use them, they’re a useless lint trap. Overall, they just cost more to produce which puts more cost onto the consumer. And now that Bluetooth audio is so widely used because it’s no longer complete trash, the vast majority of users not using the 3.5 mm jack would end up subsidizing the very small minority that do.
No, you definitely don’t. Like what? Wirelessly they’re better than they’ve ever been by a mile. If you care deeply enough about audio quality that even modern Bluetooth quality bothers you, your alternative isn’t 3.5 mm – it’s an external DAC via USB-C. Space and streaming bandwidth are basically no longer considerations for high-bitrate music. If you care about music, smartphones are in a much better position than they were when the 3.5 mm jack was thriving.
“Smartphones nowadays are not for music” is such a histrionic distortion of “I personally have to use a $20 dongle when I listen to music on my smartphone with the headphones I alreay own.”
Thus is straight up a lie. They cost less than a dollar to buy and put in a phone. Even the thinnest iPhone could have one without it impacting space and finally they are just as easy to waterproof as usb c port.
But yeah keep regurgitating the same facts big companies want you to use cause a extremely backwards compatible analog audio standard is less “convenient”
What I mean by listening to music on the phone is, listening to lossless files from the phone’s internal storage using my old JBL or Sony. Even if wirless are better now a days, what if my old headphones are not bad too? A new Bluetooth headphone of the same quality cost a fortune too. Of course there are Smartphones still has the 3.5mm jack, like my current Sony. Or a USB-C adapter is the only way to go in the future? The problem is, why take people’s options away if you don’t care about ultra thin thickness? Fairphones themselves are not thin either.
And DAC is simply a different thing. If listening from home, there are different set ups for that with speakers. And my home sound systems are even older. They are not consumer products that you throw away every five years.
You can only use the USB-C dongle for as long as your USB-C port functions, which for my last 3 phones including the one I’m typing this on, isn’t for the life of the phone. So once that fails which it always does, how do I listen to music? I shouldn’t be forced to use Bluetooth headphones/earbuds when they are objectively worse options that the collection of wired headphones I’ve gotten over the years. What about when the phone manufacturers decide that contact charging is good enough now and remove your USB-C ports, where does the dongle go now?
Your point about optical drives on computers is fucking dumb, since computers are still 100% modular and customizable, the point is that phones are not. I CAN put an optical drive on my PC, I can’t put a 3.5mm jack on my phone.
(Different guy here) the same thing applies to 3.5mm jacks. I also the “slippery slope” argument on USB-C ports feels a bit premature, though I’ll never 100% say that a CEO wouldn’t ever do anything like that.
Their point about optical drives literally said the word “laptop” and no, laptops are not modular to the point where you can just slap any old disc-drive in them. You can, however, get an external one that will take a USB slot but you’ll live. It’s going to be hard to successfully argue against the other guy if you’re not even reading his comments properly.
I read the comments properly. Laptops are modular where you can slap any old disc drive in them, I have one in my basement right now where I can do exactly that. If I couldn’t swap it easily without taking apart the laptop, I can easily open the laptop and attach it to the board as well, something that I can’t do with modern locked tight phones without specialized tools. Last resort would be using USB and an external drive. Tech literacy is dead when people are arguing against having a 3.5mm jack and don’t know that you can open a laptop with a screwdriver.
When was the last time you saw an even semi-modern laptop? There’s no space to jam disc-drives in them and you’d have to cut the body for the slot if there was no option to switch out part of it for something that had one. I frickin’ love modifying stuff and tinkering but that’s just not a reasonable expectation to have for everyone.
I am aware of how to open a laptop, I even have all the bits to do it, I’m just not living in the early 2000s and understand that my needs and how I use stuff are not the only valid ways.
Yes, tech literacy had a small window and now we’re all dumb again but I don’t think it’s why you think it is.
Sure. At that point, you have bigger issues than the headphones, and your phone is probably very well past its natural lifespan, but sure.
??? Holy shit what? I had a phone with a micro-USB port that lasted nine years, and the plastic power button failed before the port did. My current USB-C port shows absolutely no signs of wear after nearly three years. USB-C is generally sturdier because it’s symmetrical, a bit thicker, and lacks sharp corners.
Dude, I’m sorry, USB-C phones started showing up in like 2015; generously, that’s about three years per phone. I don’t know if you just needed to clean the port and didn’t realize, but at some point that stops being bad luck or poor manufacturing and starts looking like user error.
Bluetooth headphones until you get a new phone? Again, nobody said you can’t buy a phone with a 3.5 mm jack. If your use case is that you’re chronically negligent with your USB-C ports, then go off, king. But nobody’s going to consider this a half-decent argument for bringing it back to most phones.
Okay, again, if you care about audio quality so much that the Bluetooth standard is your bottleneck, you’re using an external DAC plugged into the USB-C port anyway, not whatever DAC the manufacturer decided to throw in for the 3.5 mm port. Wired headphones are better than wireless at the high end, but that’s also when you’re not sending the audio through a generic smartphone DAC.
“What about this scenario that I made up in my head just now? What then?? How will I be able to select my audio playlist when the corporations take away the phone’s display and project it into my retinas with Bluetooth, liberals??”
Yeah, sure, I’ll just build an optical drive into my laptop whose bottom chassis is thinner than my smartphone. Wait until the engineers at Lenovo see how far I’ve pushed optical drive technology so I can watch Shrek 2 with director’s commentary while I check my email.
I can fit an optical drive into my laptop about as well as you can fit a 3.5 mm jack into your phone (but actually, it’d be easier for you). Your comment below talking about “unscrewing a laptop”… Hi, yeah, I do that all the time. The fact that you not only can’t see the giant problems with trying this but also equate installing an optical drive inside of a generic laptop that was never meant to have one with being able to pop open the lid is so egregiously fucking stupid that I don’t know how/if to entertain it.
I can honestly see how you broke your phone’s USB-C port three times in a row if this is how you understand technology.
What would you consider a natural lifespan for a phone? I’m currently using a Pixel 6 that I got in 2021, it’s still well within it’s 8 year lifespan (which is around what I would call reasonable for something that costs me $800) and the USB-C broke at around late year 2 early year 3. It’s been the same issue with each phone of the USB-C getting loose and eventually failing to charge. As for your point about the micro USB port outlasting the button, same vibe those ports were indestructible, this is an issue that has only come up and consistently come up when phones started switching to type C. My blackberry bold is still kicking and usable so you can call “user error” all you want but I’m not convinced I suddenly became bad at maintaining my phones suddenly when the port swapped.
So I’m supposed to solve the issue of not wanting bluetooth headphones by…using bluetooth headphones? For five years while I wait for my phones natural lifespan to pass? K. Like yes I get the audio quality argument, you’re going to use a DAC anyways as I do on my desktop, but having the possibility of my headphones dying on me, as well as the price to performance when compared with wired options is enough for me to not want to deal with it. Sure I can get 100$ bluetooth buds, but they’re going to not only not be high quality, they’ll sound like shit at best.
The “scenario I made up in my head” is coming in the next few years, guaranteed. I remember when “the 3.5mm jack is going away” was a stupid argument that wasn’t going to happen too.
Just like I can buy a phone with a 3.5mm jack (with increasingly limited options for that each year) that isn’t my only criteria when buying a phone, it’s about weighing pros and cons of it. Sure you can’t fit an optical drive in your razor thin Lenovo, but you have options to buy a laptop that can, it all depends if you’re priority is buying something functional or something pretty.
You’re probably right though, it’s on me for having a broken port on the only piece of tech that I can’t easily open and tinker with, I just don’t understand technology.