I’ve taken apart a phone for the purposes of replacing a battery. While everything is very compact as you can imagine, there is also a surprising amount of unused space. I’ll admit I’m not an engineer, so I don’t know if this space is error margin for manufacturing tolerances or something, but there is certainly enough room for a jack to be installed were this space tightened up just a little.
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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Unpopular Opinion
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Yah, I couldn't give a fuck about aux, and up until last year I always had one. I moved on to Bluetooth once it started working properly.
I agree with the fact that I don't need one anymore. Bluetooth connections (MULTIPLE simultaneous connections) is great for me.
Why are you guys still using corded headphones on mobile? Is everyone an audiophile but somehow also using mobile phone as a primary media device? Allergic to charging? Too cheap to upgrade your gear? What is the use case that makes this an unpopular opinion? I'm not saying use USB C instead, I'm saying ditch the physical connections altogether.
Because my car requires an expensive trip to the dealer to update the Bluetooth to be compatible with my phone.
I would love to ditch the wires. But I can't afford to.
So more specifically then the perspective is that if you had to choose between new phone and car Bluetooth you choose new phone yes?
Not being judgey but rather trying to understand.
I brought my stereo in the car with me back in the day that I couldn't do the upgrade from cassette built in to new CD player but we all have different preferences for sound I suppose.
In the previous car I used a cassette adapter to plug in my phone.
I live check to check. I can't afford a new phone, a trip to the dealer or a new stereo.
My preference for sound is that I would rather pay rent and eat food than waste money on technology to remove the wires. Sure it would be nice, but lots of nice things are just not affordable.
Fair enough.
It seems to me that, if money were no object, it makes sense generally to go wireless. We don't all have to agree on that point, which I guess is the whole topic.
Money IS an object and not everyone can full replace for every new technology, but in the long run audio tech has gone through several wholesale changes. The pace of those changes are driven by what is profitable I suppose, so really it's a question of how long to hold back. It certainly seems like we are on the cusp of a changeover.
Sorry, but that comes off as a bit arrogant. There's still plenty of use cases for wired connections.
Older cars that either have aux or still need a tape deck adapter, that don't have Bluetooth.
Until recently, you couldn't use wireless headphones on planes.
On top of that, there's vanishing few USB C to headphone adapters that also allow you to charge your phone, so if you're using wired headphones, and you need to charge your phone, you have to stop listening, in order to plug in to charge.
There's a lot of compromises and trade offs.
I'm not saying that one is definitely better or not, there's a thousands of ways to connect everything that works. Not every solution is going to work for every person and every use case.
I get what you're saying, but no. Just no.
Wireless charging exists, but i still agree with you because that's still not a fully standard feature.
Yeah.. I disagree. One only thing that I got to give to bluetooth headphones is dealing with the cable - sometimes it's just more preferable to have no wires, especially during sport activities.
I'm still on the lookout for the next phone with a headphone jack. I was so hoping for it to be the next fairphone, but sadly that's not it. (Old small ZenFone was perfect but software support of Asus is ass)
that space could be used for a bigger battery
This is the truly bizarre part. Removing thr 3.5mm port is about thinness.
It is the antithesis of increasing battery life.
Yes, optimizing thinness is the antithesis of increased battery life.
I 90% agree, I swapped to wireless earbuds about a decade ago when my aux port on whatever phone I had then broke, and I immediately preferred it. I went from buying £10 wired earphones from a supermarket what sounded shit and broke every month to £25 wireless earphones that sounded shit and broke every 6 months, so for me it was am improvement. I was also a chronic "catch headphone cable on every handle" victim, to the point that I immediately preferred the wireless solution. Another thing is when my wireless headphones break, they fucking break; I go with one earbud for about a month then inevitably buy a new pair. When my wired headphones started to degrade, I always fought it, ending up in a losing battle of finding that perfect way to hold them to make them still work. The only downside I have nowadays is when I'm listening to music or a video and realise I've misplaced my phone, which isn't really an issue, just that it was impossible when it was tethered to my ears.
But I'm probably part of a very small minority when it comes to my preference. I carry a compact camera any day I leave the house intending to take photos, so my ideal phone would have one rear camera that prioritises efficiency over quality. I'd have no headphone port, and to be honest, I could live with no ports and wireless charging and data transfer. I've had two smartphones in the last that had their USB-C ports fail as chargers (both galaxy S8s), and I could go years without needing to use the port for anything else. My dream phone would have no ports, one rear camera without a bump, no front camera, minimal tactile side buttons, be pretty slim, have a swappable battery and run a FOSS OS and mostly FOSS apps.
I respect the voices that want a smartphone equivalent to a ThinkPad a lot, but I don't really think it's anywhere near as necessary as a ThinkPad would be, because for most tasks that need something like that, I'd just use that.
That being said, there's two reasons I don't 100% agree. The first is to do with the fairphone specifically. More battery space and better waterproofing don't really apply to a phone where I can swap the battery and it comes apart so much that it's not really competitively waterproof. The second is larger, which is that I can just not use a headphone jack if I prefer wireless, while people who prefer wired are having increasingly few options available on the market.
STRING THEM UP, FELLAS 
Dafuq kind of take is this?
notices what sub we're in
oh, I see. Carry on.
I like having a separate connector for audio because it gets a lot of use and this lots of wear from the constant plugging and unplugging, and I'm often moving around with the headphones plugged in. I don't want to have to worry about breaking something from doing this.
Small USB connectors tend to be the first point of failure in most of my devices, and a broken USB port would render a phone completely unusable. I don't want to take that risk.
Aux jack is much more reliable than usb-c and can be plugged into any orientation. It is a superior connector. The size difference is negotiable and phones should be made a few mmm larger anyway to fit peoples hand better.
Counterpoint:
External DACs on multiple recent generations of Pixel devices frequently experience severe distortion and Google seems to not give a shit about fixing that.
I literally cannot use wired headphones or speakers with my phone even with relatively high end equipment without horrific audio glitches.
I have issues even with the simplest Apple USB-C to 3.5 mm dongle on my phone. The USB side rocks back and forth, disconnecting from the phone and exploding my ears with popping noises.
It's also flimsy as hell.
I ended up bying a phone without a jack. I got 2 dongles that split into a jack and a charging port, so i can charge in bed while watching videos. One of the jacks has static noise and whine, the other has i think some kind of digital to analog interface that cuts the sound conpletely when the audio is too low.
So i hear static or when i watch a video or listen to an audiobook, when there is a pause in speech i hear the sound cut out completely, or if a video has soft background music on it, it might not pick up on it at all.
It's very distracting.
And if you go online to buy a dongle, they dont really say what they have in them, or you dont know how your phone handles the conversion etc.
So I don't think "just buy a dongle" is the solution. It works but now i have all these problems i didnt have with my old phone that had a jack...
My dongle that supports charging and analog audio for my car has a whine that changes pitch with the motor speed (guessing it's very sensitive to the voltage or frequency of the alternator or something). Though at least it's low enough that it's almost unnoticeable when actual audio is playing.
It also requires the phone be unlocked to start sending audio through the USB interface. And maybe about 10% of the time whe I get it all set up and music/podcast playing, the motion of hitting the lock button on my phone to turn the screen off also bumps the usb port enough for it to briefly disconnect, which stops my audio and forces me to unlock my phone again to get it playing through the cable.
The phone needs to have a DAC anyways if it wants to drive its speakers. I could live with a smaller analog jack, but hate having to use a separate device with its own DAC that is probably way cheaper than the one already in my phone plus they probably don't even isolate the audio signal from the charging signal because the main selling point is just the ability to play audio and charge at the same time.
Clip a ferrite core filter around the audio cable, that should get rid of the whine. You can find them pretty cheap on Amazon or your favorite electronics store.
I did some research about it and it sounds like what I need is a dongle that isolates the charger and audio grounds from each other. Though a ferrite bead might help with the charge whine I get on one of my indoor chargers.
I also did some searching again and came across the usb-c alternate modes. There is an alternate mode for "Audio Adapter Accessory Mode" and this needs certain architecture of the adapter you are connecting to be automatically detected.
From the spec: "The analog audio adapter shall identify itself by presenting a resistance to GND of ≤ Ra on both A5 (CC) and B5 (VCONN) of the USB Type-C plug. If pins A5 and B5 are shorted together, the effective resistance to GND shall be less than Ra/2.
A DFP that supports analog audio adapters shall detect the presence of an analog audio adapter by detecting a resistance to GND of less than Ra on both A5 (CC) and B5 (VCONN)."
So the host has to support it, and the adapter needs to be manufactured so that it turns this feature on.
But i find it difficult to find firstly if my phone supports it, and if the jack is designed with it in mind.
And after that we apply the complexity of also charging in this mode, and chespest possible manufacturing of these things, or they just throw their own DAC in the adapter and call it a day so from phones dac -> usb-c alternate audio mode -> adapters dac -> headphones.
And nowhere have i ever seen the manufacturer of these dongles say how its constructed.
But i will stop here and forget about this because it is way outta my league.
I also have absolutely no idea about if anything i say is correct so readers beware feel free to correct me on all thing usbc!
Extremely misinformed post. Upvoted.
Not enough room for a 3.5mm audio port, but we absolutely must have a 50MP dual camera plus TOF sensor!
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(4 replies)
I disagree. My phone has perfectly acceptable battery life and a 3.5mm jack, I use it all day and get home with over 40% left every day. I need the jack to use my earbuds at work, and to listen to music in my car - and I'm gonna be honest with you something as small as an adapter WILL get lost by me. Everyone's got a different use case, and it might not be important for you, but your use case isn't everyone's.
My 2yo phone is still virgin on his aux jack port.
it should be 2.5mm Aux and not the usual 3.5
true
that space could be used for a bigger battery
for what? for like 10 minutes of extra time?
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(2 replies)
I disagree, truly unpopular well done.
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