The Moondrop MIAD 01 is one of the most distinctive Android devices of 2024 thus far. It has a 4.4mm headphone jack to go with the more conventional 3.5mm type. Furthermore, it seems it might be as appealing to teardown enthusiasts as well as audiophiles, and may, therefore, also be easier to repair than most modern smartphones.
I still don’t quite get why some people are defending manufacturers which remove the headphone jack on their phones…
3.5mm jacks don’t cost much materially. Removing it doesn’t bring any benefit at all, and you are forced to buy a bluetooth headphone or a Type-C-to-3.5mm dongle on top of that.
I don’t think it’s about the cost of the 3.5mm jack itself, it’s about the space it takes up. “Thinner and lighter” as a goal means removing chunky things they don’t think are necessary. Also waterproofing maybe?
I am not so sure about the waterproofability of headphone jacks, but does it benefit to make phones even “thinner and lighter”?
Completely fine. There are multiple phones that have been out with waterproofing and headphone jacks.
It’s not that much more difficult to waterproof than the charge port.
I’ve got no idea of the legitimacy of the claim, it’s just what the manufacturers claim. Likewise, they assume people want “thinner and lighter”, presumably because that’s what Steve Jobs said. It’s all just trying to make the devices appeal to the mass market.
They don’t even assume that anymore. If you look at the mean dimensions of sold phones in NL over the last 7 years, you’ll see that the ‘thinnest’ year is already behind us. Less then 6/7mm just becomes unwieldy for a lot of hands, and the sold phones dimensions reflect that.
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Obviously. If you can free up thickness and weight in one area, you can increase things like battery size, either alone or to compensate for a higher-power processor or something.
I don’t think the battery argument is convincing enough to me unfortunately, since it’s more likely that the recent increase in battery capacity is due to battery chemistry improvements rather than increased physical size.
I mean, I have two similar sized phones from different eras. One had 3000mAh, another had 5000mAh. They both include a headphone jack.
I don’t defend manufacturers that do this or anything, but personally I hate cords and want to go wireless for everything. Of course a headphone jack doesn’t prevent me from doing that, but given the choice of two identical phones except for a 3.5mm jack, I’m choosing the one without.
Why have a hole that I’m never going to use that can trap dust, allow water in, take up a tiny bit of space and make the phone look less appealing (to me)?
I don’t see how the jack can make a phone less appealing? 99% of the time you’ll be looking at the screen, you’re not going to see the headphone jack.
Though, perhaps it’s because of lifestyle differences between countries (I am not American), I simply cannot imagine not using the 3.5mm jack ever. I am still using AUX on my car radio.
I guess I just find a closed chassis more sleek or futuristic? I fully admit this is pretty dumb and it’s definitely not a significant factor in my phone purchasing decisions.
Fwiw I’m not American either. But like I said, I hate cords of any kind. I’d probably buy a phone without a USB port if not for the fact I occasionally need to charge at other people’s houses :p
I hate having cords too. For me at least no matter what pair of wireless headphones I buy, they never last as long as I need them to and when they die I am never around a place to leave them to charge.
Another thing is that my phone always tries to figure out what bluetooth device it thinks I want to pair with and it is wrong 90% of the time.
It also thinks that if I’ve been away from a bluetooth device for awhile that when I come back I want to switch from my headphones to that device and it is wrong 100% of the time.
Cords are irritating and I can’t tell you how many times the cord has caught on something walking by and ripped the headphones out of my ears, but it still way less annoying than bluetooth.
Not defending, just utterly couldn’t care either way. 🤷
They take up quite a lot of space (for a phone) that could otherwise be used for a larger battery. I’ll happily take a few hundred mAh of battery life over a headphone jack. I find bluetooth headphones much more comfortable to use anyway. But I understand that some people prefer wired headphones.
But that space usually isn’t. No company would make a battery with a tiny little protrusion where the headphone jack once was. That’d cost a lot more, and make it a lot more fragile.
They’d be more likely to leave it empty, or fit something else in that space, like a third speaker.
By removing the headphone jack and saving space, everything can be laid out in a way that creates more room for a larger battery, many manufacturers do this.
Do you have examples of this?
I only know the iPhone 7 certainly had enough room for the headphone jack https://youtu.be/utfbE3_uAMA?si=xcbQ3Lne9SaQfOX0
Just look at the inside any modern smartphone, it’s full of battery and other stuff, basically no empty space. The iPhone 7 was the first generation without a headphone jack, it still used the old case design though. Look at the iPhone X which was completely redesigned, it’s just marginally larger than the iPhone 6/6s/7/8 (they all use the same case design) but has a much larger battery. They went from 7.45Wh (1960mAh) on the iPhone 7
to 10.35Wh (2716mAh) on the iPhone X.
I feel like the bottom phone there looks more empty than the top, it looks like there is still some room at the top and bottom there.
But anyhow, they’ve removed the headphone jacks from iPads as well and those certainly have some room left
No. Most of the iPad lineup uses LCD displays which are relatively thick. The headphone jack only fits in old iPads, because of the large bezels. On newer iPads, the headphone jack would need to go under the display, making the entire device much thicker. With OLED, you don’t have this problem, but Apple either uses LCD or Mini-LED for iPads.
Space seems overblown when Samsung ultras fit in an entire spen that takes up way more space, and most phones do not have a stylus that can be stored internally. So I don’t buy the excuse of space. Always has seemed like more a company excuse to sell accessories.
If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.
I am trying to. My current phone has a headphone jack. But I fear that the possibility of getting a high-end phone with a headphone jack is diminishing.
Cool, just make alternatives actually available in a country, and also get them onto mobile carrier whitelists. Easy.
(Looking at Asus)
It’s getting harder and harder as there arent any options for phones that has 3.5mm headphone jacks.