Unpopular Opinion

No.

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.

I hate how small the USB-C connector is though! They're fragile and wear out pretty quickly. Everybody discounts the round barrel jack size as if it's a bad thing, i think it's the exact opposite. It's large and the internal contacts are similarly large which keeps them working forever lol

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 suspect this is unpopular in the tech community, but if this were truly an unpopular opinion, then phones without a headphone jack wouldn't sell, and they would be replaced in the next generation. Instead, it seems like I get fewer and fewer options each time I look for a phone at the intersection of qualities that matter to me (unlocked bootloader, sd card, headphone jack).

Used for a bigger battery? Lol. OP has never taken a phone apart. Aux port might get you another 20mah. Out of that 4,415mah battery.

I'm still rocking a 7-year-old Galaxy S9+. A few years ago my headphone jack wore out and the gapped hole no longer retains my earbud cable. Since then, I've been using a USB-C adapter, but the combined earbud and charging use is starting to take it's toll and the port is beginning to feel loose.

Adapter use seems more abusive to the USB port than just charging, as it occurs when the phone may be in a tight place (like a pocket), with torque applied to the adapter body. I'm convinced that if I was limited to USB-only over the full life of this phone, I would have lost wired headphone and wired charging capability a long time ago.

Everybody gangster until they lose an Air Pod.

Counterpoint: I haven't ever plugged my phone in to charge. The USB C port is now full of lint and crud. It definitely wouldn't work for headphones with an adapter. A headphone jack would still work if I had one. If it didn't work a toothpick could clean it out. I have a stylus inside my phone instead which I use once every few months.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't think phones should have any ports. A micro SD card spot next to the SIM card inside is everything necessary. Wireless charging doesn't require you to hold the phone and cable at the right angle for the charging to happen. Just drop it on the charger and forget about it. Hell, they build wireless chargers into couches and tables now. I have a portable speaker that does wireless charging. That's true wireless charging. I could charge my phone in a hurricane.

I know this is unpopular opinion but using the charging port for anything but charging or the occasional data transfer is unnecessary wear. I could never deal with "hold the charge cable at juuust the right angle" again. It starts going bad and you get to see it getting worse until you can't trust it charging and you buy the new phone you've been thinking about for months now. The USB C port in my phone is where I keep my collection of pocket detritus and I wouldn't miss it if it was gone.

People don't forget you can buy usb-c earphones and they are just as good as 3.5 jack and are widely available now. USB-C earphones come with a DAC integrated in them so you can get a proper sounding pair that may sound better than any 3.5mm you may have used.

Bluetooth still sounds meh

Also mp3 is way overdue for a replacement please check out .opus compression vs mp3

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.

Once again, remember folks, this is unpopular opinions. Which means this is a good post, not a bad one.

Well, that's definitely an unpopular opinion.

For me, there are two reasons losing the aux port sucks. First, it means I have to pay extra for functionality I want. It's not like the phone is cheaper without the aux port so it's just more money out of pocket for me. Second, it means I have to keep track of a dongle. Something I'd be using nearly everyday.

The funny thing about battery size; they could make the phone 1mm thicker and you'd get way more battery capacity from that than removing an aux port.

Also, wireless sucks dick. May as well give my own unpopular opinion.

If the solution to a problem that didn't exist before is "buy an extra thing" it's not a solution. It's bullshit to sell you even more garbage you shouldn't need.