Fairphone Fairbuds launch with replaceable batteries, titanium drivers and ANC
Fairphone Fairbuds launch with replaceable batteries, titanium drivers and ANC
Really happy to see replaceable batteries! It's a wear item and guaranteed to brick your device after a number of years if they aren't replaceable.
Replaceable batteries are coming to the EU in general, at least for portable devices, via the EU Batteries Regulation, which is in force already and requires all portable batteries to be easily removable and replaceable by the end user from 2027
guaranteed to brick your device after a number of years
But what's the number? Also, a battery not lasting all day is hardly bricking.
I think that's an issue of semantics. If someone needs their device to last all day and it doesn't anymore, then it is effectively bricked. Could one find a workaround to the issue? Oh probably, something as simple as lugging around a battery bank should do the trick, but ultimately users being able to just swap the battery in their device themselves isn't a big ask. It gives a modicum of ownership back to the person who actually bought the device.
iPhone batteries are covered under warranty if they drop below - I think - 80% of original capacity. Using that as a benchmark, something between that and 50% is going to be frustrating for the average user. Perhaps frustrating enough to replace.
“Brick” caught me off guard too. When thinking about a product that can’t be used while simultaneously charging has a battery that’s nearly shot, though, it struck me as a fair description.
The comments on this post are entirelly missing the point. Jesus christ lemmy. Yes, we know you like 3.5 mm jacks. That is not the point. The point is that FairPhone launched earphones with ANC with replaceable batteries. This is good!
Yes, it is good, but this step forward is only the result of an arguably bigger step backward, which is why people are bringing it up.
Well, my point is that we wouldn't need wireless headphones if Fairphone still had a headphone jack
I don't think that would fit on the earbuds.
Not to mention we already had repairable wired headphones that we can't use now if we get a fairphone.
Counterpoints:
Let's not forget this here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRdL0StldJM
Wired headphones do not have the need for replaceable batteries.
And get caught on everything.
I can't be bothered with the inconvenience of wires. Bluetooth quality is good enough for what I need it for, and the convenience of simply putting them on gives me sound is hard to beat.
I have a pair of noise-canceling Bluetooth headphones (not buds) from 2008 that still work. Battery life isn't what it was, but whatever - they work fine for how I use them (as one pair of several). I could replace the battery if I felt like it, just not worth the effort.
But I get that some people prefer the wired for their use-case.
A follow-up video "Why I was wrong about fairphone" by Louis Rossmann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAogtqyN22M
Still critical of lack of audio jack but praises FairPhone for including list of all components and board view of where each part is located and a complete schematic. In comparison to other phones manufacturers that's night and day of repair-ability.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=EAogtqyN22M
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I have yet to use a USB-C to 3.5mm dongle for my phone that hasn't gone bust in my pocket in a few months. Probably time to see about a cable for the earphones that terminates in USB-C on the phone end, but that was difficult to search for.
I love my wired ones, and have been nursing some BT earbuds for years, but it's hard to use wired and not to move to BT anymore without buying a phone specifically for the 3.5mm jack.
I'm the same, those dongles don't last, and are annoying to use. I picked up one of these cables from aliexpress to use with my iems and it works a treat. There's better quality cables out there, but for 10 bucks these are solid.
People keep whining about this but honestly people who listen to music with wired headphonea are a small fraction of a 1%. And they probably have this data from their telemetry.
They are now a small fraction cause this trend is already 8 years old.
Don't wanna be a whiner but wireless in ears never last long enough for me. I'm forced to stop using them after a while because they need to be charged. Even a 2 and a half hour phone call is enough to deplete them. This is a non existing problem with wired ones
But also see:
Yep. I refuse to buy a FairPhone for this simple reason: I hate bluetooth. It means I have to buy a new expensive device to get audio quality that's worse than before and requires batteries again. Fuck that.
I also find it ridiculous that they call themselves "fair" but making bluetooth buds probably increases pain and suffering, because more materials have to be used to make them than a simple jack headphone.
I don't know about the fairness of this particular company but by that rationale nothing can ever be fair, just by existing we increase the suffering. Its how the world is.
Think headphones jacks don't cause suffering at some point in the chain?
Not that I'm disagreeing, just not sure how things would get named under this specific scheme.
Does it assume that it's generally understood that everything is a little harmful in some way, so as long as you don't claim otherwise, it's cool or would everything need to be measured on some sort of average harmfulness scale and then include the rating in the title.
Like "Horrendously harmful Apple" or "Mildly harmful Colgate"
A bit hyperbolic perhaps.
Genuinely not trying to start a fight, actually interested in what you think would be a good way of doing this, as I've occasionally pondered it myself and never come up with a good answer.
Incidentally, this is one of the core plotlines to later seasons of "The good place"
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=bRdL0StldJM
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I wouldn't trade my wireless stuff for wired ones at this point. Wireless earbuds have gotten so good that dealing with a wire would be a downgrade in most cases. When I work with mixing I always use my monitors with a wire, for obvious reasons.
Also as an aside; any company that claims to do anything "green" is profiteering off of greenwashing. Of course making stuff environmentally friendly would become trendy in the cringe corpo world. I think the most egregious example is Apple's autumn 2023 iPhone event. Just thinking back on it is making me cringe.
The "greenest" product is the one that is never made to begin with.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Apple's autumn 2023 iPhone event
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
You just need replaceable wires that are bound to get replaced more often and more expensive instead
Why the fuck use wireless phones? Just use a classic wall phone you fucking dummies! Why use SSDs? Just use good ole floppies!
Fuck sakes man, pull your head out of your ass. It’s called modernity and it’s okay
Bluetooth headphones are not modernity, they should of course be an option, but increasingly they are the only game in town. Wired is still king for loads of things, not the least of which is reliability.
You wanna know how many times my wired Sennheiser's have been unable to put music in my ear holes? Never. They always work. Care to guess how many wireless headphones have been able to provide sound every time I've wanted it without delay or failure? None. I've owned more than 2 dozen wireless this, that, and the other, headphones & earbuds, and none of them have been even a shadow of the reliability offered by my old wired headphones. Which is to say nothing of the fact that the wired experience usually sounds better (Still don't think you can get any comfortable phat 600ohm monster cans that don't have a wire) and has no issues with making sound when you're in a space that is saturating the 2.4Ghz band (my Costco is usually so full of idiots on Bluetooth that you can't get a reliable experience for anything from any wireless audio device.)
You seem to think it's "backwards rhetoric" to want a feature that will never be offered in a wireless setup, and that's just fucked man. There are a wealth of reasons why wireless does not fully replace wired. It's why anything that doesn't have to move generally gets a fixed connection, it's just more reliable and often more efficient. That's not backwards, it's just a priority that you don't value above others. If landlines or floppy disks offered any advantages over anything else they'd still be around today (and arguably they are in some limited niches,) but the replacements for those technologies have had no downsides against their replacements while wireless tech still has some significant downsides (again, maybe you don't weight the pros and cons the same, so this may not apply to you) against the technology they are meant to replace, and will likely never see 100% capture of their role as a result.
TL;DR: Stop trying to frame this as some sort of crusade against the future, there are legit cases where wired is just better than wireless.
I like wired headphones it has nothing to do with modernity but the functionality I prefer. I dislike dealing with battery life. Same reason I have a wired keyboard. Also I've been in power outages that lasted long enough I wished I had a wall phone to do things like let my family know I hadn't frozen to death or to call into work to update them so I was less likely to be fired. Me wanting a company to sell wired devices doesn't affect your ability to buy wireless devices this isn't a zero sum game, no need to be hostile.
Buds can be used without an app, but they really should open source it if they really care about long term sustainability.
They should also have a wired option. But I guess that they removed the headphone jack from their latest phone for a reason.
only support AAC and SBC codecs
available for 149
Eh.
Hard disagree that earbuds negate codec importance. I love open-back over-ears, but one of my best pairs of headphones are Moondrop IEMs, and I can hear differences in audio quality more noticeably on them than a lot of speakers. I very often plug them into a Bluetooth receiver for semi-wireless convenience, and I can absolutely hear the difference between LDAC and SBC.
However, yeah definitely agreed that $150 is fair for what's being offered here. Limited codec support is common (if unfortunate) enough in similarly priced gear without the other benefits these bring, so I'd say it's fair enough unless the drivers themselves are bad.
In-ear phones have the potential of having the highest fidelity of all headphone types. So, no, being a "codec snob" is completely justified. Though I personally won't be using BT phones before we get lossless connection as a standard. Wired are cheaper, last longer and have less environmental impact during production and after EOL.
It's not just about quality (AAC is perfectly fine quality-wise), it's IMHO more about the extreme latency, and the fact that they have to to drop down to terrible-sounding HSP/HSP when using the microphone, since A2DP is monodirectional. Sucks that they don't support LE Audio.
Turning your nose up at SBC isn’t being a codec snob; it’s having functioning ears.
And if you’re on Android, AAC is not well implemented compared to on iOS / MacOS. Maybe this has changed in the past couple years but it was immediately noticeable to me when I upgraded from the WH-1000XM3s to the XM4s, I could immediately tell that the audio was worse if they weren’t using LDAC. And these don’t have LDAC.
Unlike with competent compression codecs (mp3 vs AAC vs FLAC), where most people genuinely cannot tell the difference between a well-compressed song vs a lossless one, many people can immediately tell the difference between AptX and AAC or SBC on Android.
There are plenty of true wireless headphones out there that support LDAC or AptX for less than $100. It’s not surprising to me that people in their target audience would think $150 for something that sounds terrible to them isn’t reasonable.
I had at least hoped for FastStream. (Essentially bidirectional SBC for good quality audio while using the microphone)
Please, just give us back the headphone jacks!
Or let us amputate the legs of techbros (they're obsolete in the world of cars and electric wheelchairs).
My 3.5mm AUX says hello
(Downvotes incomming) People still use wired headphones? It's a very small market these days and Lemmy users are simply bubbled power users
I imagine phones no longer having headphone jacks isn't helping the wired headphones market. I'd gladly use wired headphones if it meant I didn't need to charge mine or worry about them dying on me. Aside from working out, it's not like the wire is exactly in the way...
I still have 200 euro wired in ear headphones that are my favorite pair so I need to 3,5mm port. But I never got the loud commotion over the disappearance of the port, because you can easily use a 3,5mm to USB-c cable. Having said that,I do still appreciate such a port in my phone because sometimes I forget to take the cable with me or I lose it.
I mean for working out and on the go I use Bluetooth ear buds.
But damn do I sometimes wish I still had a headphone jack on my phone. Like just grabbing my nice pair of open ear headphones, throwing down on the couch and listening to music for example.
And of course I always had backup wired ear buds with me, just in case the battery ran out.
But eh, I can live without the headphone jack, now I just wish they would have used the space for a bigger battery.
I use both wireless and wired, depending on what I'm doing. The earbuds fall out when I'm exercising, but have better call-quality because of the noise canceling.
And I use wired for chatting, when playing games with friends on playstation. And I still have an ipod I use occasionally... so I just kinda have both.
I prefer to have a headphone jack on my phone, but I have a dongle adapter for usb-c, if I want to use my wired ones. I would just prefer not to use the adapter if I didn't need to, because I've already had issues with my phone's charging port trying to crap-out on me. The charging port isn't as robust, and you do lose some quality with the dongle. I deal with it just fine; but a headphone jack on a phone might tip me towards purchasing that one, if I were looking to buy a new phone. It depends for me, but it's not the end of the world, just an inconvenience that could easily be avoided
There's no way I'm spending a lot on a headphone I need to toss in the garbage when the battery becomes useless.
Some devices cannot use Bluetooth audio devices, or it's buggy or laggy af. I don't mind wireless buds for the gym, but they sound worse and die before a flight across the US is complete. Wired headsets so don't have to be charged, or if they do have ANC, its usually a replacable battery instead of a rechargeable battery.
I dunno if it's just my Fold 4, but when I ride the train or visit an apartment, I get bombarded by pairing requests from Bose headphones and other bluetooth devices like home speakers. It's probably some setting that Samsung quietly flipped on in a recent patch, but it's really annoying. Fuck off, 𝙳𝚊𝚟𝚎'𝚜 𝙱𝚘𝚜𝚎 𝚀𝚞𝚒𝚎𝚝𝙲𝚘𝚖𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚝 𝟺𝟻 𝙷𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚙𝚑𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚜, I don't need pairing notifications every 10 seconds.
Pretty sure the market would be bigger if manufacturers didn't remove the feature in order to push to wireless.
What I like about them is not having a battery, meaning they have a lot less impact on the climate. And it isn't needed when they are always connected to an other device with a battery that is less than 1m away.
Nah I like em because I'm paranoid. I had paranoiac family who weren't power users who behaved similarly at the dawn of this shit.
Nowadays there is an earbuds with USB C wireless adapter like Anker Soundcore P10 or JBL Quantum. that is good and no pairing
Nobody knows what they're missing out on after the early mp3 era conditioned people to be used to shitty audio quality.
Did you guys notice how many ventors that website shares your data with??
816, oof. The internet is unusable without the proper precautions
Every time it comes up I must lament the switch to screens too tall to watch content, the decision to remove wired 3.5mm jacks in order to drive sales of wireless headphones, the switch to increasingly fewer physical buttons. No more IR blaster.
I think you're just finding reasons to nitpick. I agree with the jack but the fuck you need and IR blaster for?
cause it's cool and I like it, which should be reason enough. more practically it works for cases when you lose your remote, maybe cases where you want to change the channel on some TV in a pub somewhere, shit like that. it's fun.
Is their app open source?
Their website has a page that says they "embrace open source"
I couldn't find the source code specifically for their app. Maybe this?
https://github.com/fairphone/android_device_fairphone_FP5
Honestly have no clue what I'm looking at there. There seems to be no iOS equivalent, so who knows.
Otherwise, their app permissions seem pretty reasonable:
• discover and pair nearby Bluetooth devices
• Access Bluetooth settings
• Pair with Bluetooth devices
• connect to paired Bluetooth devices
But yeah, if no open source, that can definitely be a deal-breaker for the market they seem to be targeting.
This seems like part of their android os for FP5, TWRP is a common open source android recovery image: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWRP_(software)
Probably a attempt to open source the component they can, in the release note, they list the components that are not working.
If only they shipped to the US...at least, I didn't see that option.
First thing I looked at as well. Shame. I’ll buy them when my AirPods die if they offer shipping to the us.
I'd much prefer a 3.5mm jack
There are a plethora of cable earphones.
I don't understand why people complain about wireless.
You're not the target demographic.
The "demographic" of human being who doesn't want to wreck the planet if Fairphone's target.
If Fairphone is not trying to be universal anymore you should see that as a problem. So should every fairphone customer.
I'll buy a more sustainable phone than the fairphone when my phone loses support in 2027. I'll encourage everyone to buy a more sustainable product today.
Seriously, people act like there aren't solutions to that "problem" that aren't basically identically inconvenient to how it was before you needed an inline usb c to 3.5 mm adapter.
To preempt those that are gonna say "the adapter is inconvenient..," no, the 3.5 mm jack that takes up space in my pocket that is unused 100% of the time is the inconvenience. You want a jack. You can have one. You get to have the inconvenience that goes along with it.
You're being downvoted, but yours is a legitimate request.
This!
Then buy the dozens and dozens of models that are wired. Yall are worse than vegans.
Wired 3.5mm jack.
Hear me out. I don’t use Bluetooth headphones. They don’t last the commute and work day.
With a jack you can listen and charge you phone at the same time and never worry about charging your headphones/iem.
If I need to use Bluetooth for connection I still can but overall better battery life
Which ones are you referring to? What's is your actual use time, like 8+ hours a day without charging? I use cheap generic MPOW ones I got for $40 and they easily last me at least 2 days
fun edit:
With a jack you can listen and charge you phone at the same time
With wireless headphones you can also charge your phone and listen at the same time
But any reason to prefer wireless is sort of moot because having a 3.5mm jack doesn't preclude a wireless headphone feature.
So… I was more referring to a 3.5mm jack on the phone.
Commute time is a little over 2hours each way. Office use is 6-8 hours. Listening + calls and needing a microphone.
Would rather not to have to do the dance for multiple devices and chargers vs just one and a single usb input.
Some of the bushes busses and trains have a usb but you have to get lucky and then decide what needs charging more…the phone or the buds.
Give me a wired option any day. Also used less battery power and sounds better.
edit... typo
One thing sibling comments miss is how you can offer a jack & them, as a user, can still use whatever style you want & disregard the jack. It’s a cheap part that takes up some volume but not enough to force an entire redesign. But when manufacturers remove the jack, you are forced users into consuming either the wireless earbuds (that they all ‘conveniently’ sell branded) or cosuming a dongle which takes up the one charging port, are unruly in a way that puts additional stress on the port & make the wires hang awkwardly. Almost all other gear with audio that isn’t a modern smartphone includes the jack which means you can’t bring your existing gear—or it starts prompting every apparatus to start adding Bluetooth capabilities which includes the latency, flakiness, slow pairing but also the security & fingerprinting issues of keeping devices with Bluetooth always on in the first place. Even with replaceable batteries, you still need microcontrollers & firmware delivery.
That is to say, if Fairphone cared about sustainability, they can offer a better earbud on repairability (pressing doubt on the frequency-response curve tho), but they should still be offering a jack on their phones since wired headphones/IEMs are a more sustainable (& private & secure) personal audio option.
With removable batteries, you can swap in a fresh pair. Not ideal, but a possibility now.
If you add a 3,5mm jack to those small earbuds, there definitely won't be any space for a battery. It's one or the other.
I think he meant having the 3,5 mm jack in a phone.
Just to be pedantic; a battery is significantly larger than 2 tiny wires of copper. The battery is almost 50% of the volume in the earbud.
The buds don’t need a jack. Just the lead that connects to the phone or whatever. That takes no real space.
I'd give up the space of a battery for a jack, yes
Nvm replaceable batteries, I keep buying 2-3 pairs of ear buds a year because I keep forgetting them in my pants when I wash them, or I give them a pat down and don't feel them inside of them.
My wife wanted me to buy her a pair of air pods.
I'm like, get a pair of headphones to last you more than a month, then we'll talk.
I can't tell you how many pairs of cheap earbuds we've gone through. Either lost or eaten (damn dog). Almost always just the right earbud. Never the left. I have so many lefts left.
My dog chewed on one of my Buds 2 Pro earpiece after owning them for two months cause I left the door open. Managed to open the case and everything lol
They sell cases for you to attach an airtag to your headphones case. And the pro version of the iheadphones have individual find my capabilities. Should allow you to locate all three items provided you remember to look while they still have batteries.
Fairbuds: replaceable batteries
Fairerbuds: open source app
Fairestbuds: open source firmware
here's hoping the next Fairphone finally launches new in the US.
Really would love to finally use one.
Wait, why don't they launch in the U.S.?
The US market has three big gatekeepers named Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. They charge huge money to certify devices to work on their networks. No certification and phones won't work properly for mission-critical stuff like VoLTE, VoWiFi, and in some cases 5G. Without these features, no-one will buy the phones.
You also need to be selling a big number of those phones to eat the cost of all that certification. And what do you know, the telcos operate the stores that sell the lion's share of phones in the US market.
All that adds up to niche handsets only working on 1 or 2 of the telcos, or only partially, and only selling direct to consumer or on Amazon or Best Buy or wherever in negligible numbers.
And that's why you can't buy a Fairphone at retail in the US.
I'm not sure, I assume due to the lock in to carrier stores in the US? Or just expenses of doing business. I can't even order those earbuds to the US.
there is the fairphone 4 on Murena with e/os/ but they don't even have fairphone 5 😭
Nice, how make one with the earbuds attached to each other with a wire and I’ll buy it for sure!
The thing about wired earbuds and headphones is that they're already pretty sustainable. A good pair can last you decades, while wireless buds are usually throwaway products. So I think it's pretty cool that they're doing something about that for those that want wireless earbuds.
Why would you want that? I can't imagine to ever going back to non wireless buds
Because if you do any kind of outside activity including uh work? Once it falls out - it's gone forever. That's a pricey accident.
I know we are all made different but Earbuds do not stay in my ear for shit. That's why I just use headband headphones. >!Shout-out to Shockz. Dam near impossible to lose running.!<
All of these honestly ought to just come with a small hole and bring your own 'lanyard'/'string'. I can't imagine it would require much in terms of design to put a hole in a corner.
You may like Shokz. Their headsets are wireless and bone-conducting. The drivers get pressed to your temples with a flexible wire connecting them and you hear the sound conducting through your head instead of your ear canal. The only downside I've experienced with them is that they can only drown out so much noise, so if you're planning on using them in a noisy environment, probably go with another choice.
A friend of mine has a set of them at work and they work well in our noisy environment - machine shop.
The rule for earbuds is that you can only have one in so the bone conduction are gaining popularity at work.
I wish they fit in my motorcycle helmet. My earbuds fall out all the time when I take my helmet off.
There have wireless headphones that you can use a USB-C wire with, but that's not an earbud.
Cool. Their first gen Fair buds were kinda pointless. The headphones though, the Fair buds XL are excellent. I bought a pair recently and I love them.
Now I just wish that they would bring their phone to a US provider that is not T-Mobile. I can't buy their phone until it runs on a network that I can use.
Jesus your country is so messed up :(
wat? you cannot buy the phone and then choose the provider yourself?
Can you not buy the phone and then get whatever sim you want?
looks kinda cool. will probably get them
Awesome, but I'm skeptical. Not because it's Fairphone, but because previous bad experiences.
I bought Sony buds, after reading loads of reviews and those were the best! They cost me around 300 and what I got was just shit.
I (still) own a number of lg 800 Bluetooth headsets (those with a thing you wear around your neck) that cost me 50 bucks each, that have better audio quality, louder audio, better noise cancellation, are more comfortable, and after over 4 years still have a battery life of around 10 hours where those huge ass Sony ones cut out new after like 3-4 hours and they died after 1,5 years. I think those wearable bugs are just too small to be any good at all.
https://scarbir.com/ is my go-to for TWS reviews.
You can get decent TWS buds without paying tons of money. I currently have the Soundcore Space A40, and the battery still lasts for 6-7h after almost two years of constant use (8-10h brand new).
If you're paying over $100, you're probably overpaying.
Oh yeah, I overpaid badly. Well, my employer did anyway as theyg pidfor it, I just selected what supposedly was the best. It sucked.
They going to get all my business.
"I want my two dollars!"
I've been looking for buds with replaceable batteries ever since my first pair degraded. Good to see FairPhone offering one that does it this time!
I have Samsung Bluetooth earbuds that I have had for a few years and they work great but I rarely use them. I rarely listen to music through headphones. If I were to buy a new pair I may consider that ones from Pine.
Bluetooth is okay. But, I wish they offer USB c dongle connection like JBL or Anker. I hate pairing
They got rid of the headphone jack for this PoS?
wireless charging is not supported
This is 2024, right? Heckling aside, I'll look for the next release.
They're only showing the battery replace in the CASE though, do the headphones themselves not use batteries?
What are you talking about? They show the headphone battery being replaced in the same image as the case. It's a little button cell that hinges out.
I didn't see that piece, just the case battery.
that’s cool, ill never buy silicon tips again tho. why is apple the only one making real ear buds?
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. I’m a person with ears that do not work with silicone tips either. I love the fit of AirPods. Tried AirPods Pro, and for my ears, they suck. Doesn’t matter what size tips I use, they seal poorly and fall out constantly. Regular AirPods fit great.
Edit: grammar
Edit 2: that being said, I want to try these because I really want replaceable batteries for my earbuds. It may be moot for me though as I live in the US and currently they aren’t shipping to the US.
These in-ear things never worked for me either until they started making custom hearing protection with removable filters which are compatible with most in-ear headphones. And the best thing is that you don't need active noise canceling (depending on the openness of the headphones) because the thing is made to cancel noise. Downside is that they usually amplify bass much more than regular tips so you need to use an EQ.
Btw, it's possible to get some custom in-ear headphones where everything, including the tip, is one piece of plastic, which is supposed to sound fantastic, if you're willing to spend a ridiculous amount of money.
Only 899,- and your first born kid. One could think it's on purpose...