this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Technology
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Just to be clear, this phone:
The mainstream electronics supply chain is tainted with literal blood and slavery. The importance of what this company tries to prove and achieve cannot be understated.
The fact that they remove the headphone jack might be annoying and feel like counter to their main goal. As an electronics engineer I can say that removing this jack makes the full phone circuit board more simple, decreases the space used and allows them to make the phone lighter or put a better battery in. As most people are now used to not having this port in phones anymore, this seems like an easy concession to make to keep the design load as low as possible. Remember that they are trying to compete with companies that are way bigger and have way more design resources.
I am all for criticizing companies so that they can improve, but these accusations of greenwashing and them completely disregarding their goal are simply untrue. The difference between them and literally any other smartphone manufacturer in terms of supply chain fairness, repairability and warranty is night and day.
Please don't make us lose this great attempt at improving the smartphone industry by making perfect the enemy of already pretty fucking good.
One of the main factors in me choosing the phone that I now use and have had for the last several years was that it had a headphone jack, and I don't remember the last time I used it. I thought bluetooth earbuds would be more of a hassle than wired earbuds, but I've found the opposite to be true. I don't have to replace my wireless ones every few months because one or both buds stopped working and I don't have to untangle them before I use them. I do lose one around the house every now and then but it's way less of an issue than I expected it to be as someone with an ADHD brain. When this phone becomes unusable I will no longer care if my next phone has a headphone jack.