This is a great unpopular opinion and while I hate you for saying this, I do have to agree with you.
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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Unpopular Opinion
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2.5mm plugs suck ass. My first smart phone had one and I HATED it. It's so tiny, fragile, and I DETEST working with it.
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RING RING
Bah. Where is it? It was right here. I just have to
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find the fucking adapter. It was right in my bag in the side. Why
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is it not in that pocket? It's always there. Could
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it have fallen out? Into genpop where
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my gym clothes were? Why doesn't it fit in the winder with
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the earbuds anyway? I always lose it. Aw shit. It's Steve from
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confidential, and he is under 60 so he hates voicemail. But so do I so..
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I guess I'll have to wait until he can leave the secure area and turn on his phone and send me an SMS.
Been waiting a while, though. How long is this gonna take? I have to drive home before the sitter leaves.
Look. He's not calling me back. He's probably pissed because I was so insistent and now it looks like I flaked. And now, we've been idling in the parking lot for 10 minutes and so we gotta go before Laurie's mom comes.
Okay. Onto the freeway. Home in 30.
RING RING
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S-tier
What does AUX stand for? Or do you just like shouting "aux?"
All 'Aux' stands for is auxiliary, which could technically mean a lot of different things depending on context; but we're talking about phones, so it's pretty commonly known to mean the auxiliary audio/headphone port. Ie; the 3.5mm TRS/TRRS socket used for audio output/input.
Aux means the auxiliary port.
I know what "aux" is short for, but what does the acronym AUX stand for? Auxiliary Utility Xylophone?
In the case of this post, it is just incorrect usage.
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I was very pissed when they took the aux from us. But I think its fair now that everything and everyone is being forced onto USBC.
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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.
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.
Z space is not at a premium, X and Y space are. A 3.5mm jack takes up a TON of space in all dimensions. The PCBs of modern phones are TINY compared to the phones of old.
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I used to be a big fan of rhythm games on android, but the loss of the headphone jack has completely killed it for me. Bluetooth latency is still like 200ms, it's insane. I can't stand to even watch video with it
You can have wired USB C headphones with no latency.
Also any good headphones should compensate by delaying the video a bit. At least on iOS with Airpods the audio and video are almost perfectly synced. Same with any other bluetooth headphones I've used. I did have a REALLY old BT speaker with like a 500ms delay and that was very noticeable. But that speaker is over 10 years old and cost $20.
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What needs to happen is the underlying direct feed path needs to still exist, but a modernized connector to bridge it. Because you are right, people don't understand just how much area the connector port requires.
I have no idea what it takes to bring such a thing to market, but I know that from a hardware perspective you're looking at two wires.
I feel this is a very good unpopular opinion, as I think a lot of the annoyance about the fair phone not having a headphone jack is that they bill themselves as a sustainable phone maker who prides themselves as reducing waste and increasing repairability of their devices, something that dongles kinda fly in the face of from an ewaste perspective.
The same target group that they are aiming at generally likes stuff like expandable storage (so that they don't have to upgrade devices just to hold all their photos and stuff) and having a dead simple headphone jack so they can use one of the oldest standard ports in the world to use their headphones.
Since most newer phones have multiple days worth of battery life, I'm more than willing to sacrifice a few hours worth of runtime (maybe even a days worth) just to have a headphone jack. And you could say that I am in the minority of phone users, which is apparently true, however I'd argue I am pretty solidly in the target demographic for a fairphone, which I'm not getting due to the lack of a headphone jack. I instead, got a Sony Xperia 1 V (stupid name for a very nice phone) which offered a 3.5 mm, expandable storage, and decent repairability.
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On top of all other issues, those fucking dongles wiring breaks really fast
And wears out your USB plug exponentially faster.
Also, the 3.5mm audio port on your phone has another reason to exist.
Your music is digital until something converts into an analog waveform that your headphones or speakers can use. That thing is the digital to analog converter aka a DAC.
The quality of the DAC directly effects the quality of the audio. The cheap dongle you buy on amazon for a few bucks is the cheapest pos that exists. Most phones with a 3.5 output will produce better sound because the manufacturer can elect to put a better DAC in the phone hardware. In fact, a high quality DAC built into the phone would be a nice selling point for audiophiles or a nice upgrade for those who might otherwise choose to buy an external dac--now they dont have to.
When a headphone is connected to the USB-C port via passive adapter, the phone detects this and uses the USB-C port in a pincompatible way; nothing electrical changes.
This came with a cheap phone I bought in 2017 or so, there are no active components in there as far as I know.
Apples dongle is $10 and very high quality. It uses the same chip that was previously internally in the iphone. Good adapters aren't that expensive.
Dedicated DACs for phones started taking off right as the 3.5mm jack was getitng killed anyways. All the hardcore audiophiles I know that listen to music on their phone use one of those because they can actually drive good headphones. It was kinda perfect timing.
Admittedly I was very stuck in the 'I hate phones not having Aux' camp because I preferred wired headphones for the longest time.
I was given some fairly poor wireless headphones and was pleasantly surprised by those, so I bought a good quality set myself. Now I've gotten so used to being untethered from my phone while listening to music, or podcasts, etc that I don't think I'd go back to wired headphones while mobile.
That just leaves stereo systems, portable speakers, vehicles and the like. All of those, instead of carrying around or leaving an aux-aux cable, swap that for a usb c to aux cable.
Or even one of these:
As OP said, more space for battery. It's also one less opening to waterproof. It took me a good long while, but I've come around to agree a headphone jack just isn't worth the extra space it takes up. It's not worthless, but there's better ways to use the space.