A couple hours before I was on the edge of getting a Fairphone 5 but I read the specifications and didn’t see 3.5 mm audio jack anywhere. So I thought to myself…why? The community has been requesting this for a couple years ago now so why not. They’re already making money on the phone, they’re really pushing for people to get their wireless headphones? Just add the headphone jack, shouldn’t be too hard.
They said they’re treating their workers fairly, sourcing from ethical sources, renewable claims, repairability claims, and supporting foss projects (they donated a fp4 to CalyxOS to support development). All of these are amazing, so adding a little headphone jack shouldn’t be that hard in the grand scheme of all this.
*Add the headphone jack and I’ll be happy to support and get a fp5.
USB headphones is yet another product manufactured with a narrow usecase, the audio world by and large outputs to either 2.5, 3.5 or 4.4 every step of the way. USB is completely phone centric.
Lack of a unified USB standard, meaning you will still have to deal with adapters to have compatibility across all devices. My PC for example only has USB A, my phone has lightning, my wifes has usbc, many peoples office PCs will also not have USB C just yet, although it does become less common to have a device without USB C.
USB output is digital, that means that you need to convert it to analogue, so your headphones need to put a DAC into them or the wire.
In many cases of headphone use you will actually not want the USB such as working with them in professional environments where you will be plugging them into an audio stack, where the autput is analogue already.
Some headphones need an AMP so power straight off the USB is not an option.
Balanced output.
A standard jack covers most usecases, headphones will never move to USB standard, they are analogue devices and should not have to have USB support on their end.