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by meragrin_ 1726 days ago
Fairphone says it had to nix the jack to get IP54. If another phone can include the jack and get a much better rating, it goes to show that Fairphone is not telling the whole story. The 3.5mm jack was nixed for reasons other than IP rating.
1 comments
Vinnl 1726 days ago
I feel like I'm just restating my parent comment, but Fairphone has the rating while being user-repairable. Not being glued shut is what makes it more challenging to get that rating, as I understand it.

(In the live stream they also mentioned that a headphone jack would make the phone bigger still. And also that they had a lot of back-and-forth on it - I don't know why you would attribute this to malice rather than a balancing of constraints.)

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meragrin_ 1725 days ago
> I feel like I'm just restating my parent comment

Because you are not listening that it is only about the 3.5mm jack. If they can do a USB-C port, they can do a 3.5mm jack. A USB-C is quite a bit more difficult to deal with than a 3.5mm jack.

> but Fairphone has the rating while being user-repairable. Not being glued shut is what makes it more challenging to get that rating, as I understand it.

What does that have to do with dropping the 3.5mm jack? There are other holes which present the same problem as the 3.5mm jack.

> (In the live stream they also mentioned that a headphone jack would make the phone bigger still.

Making the phone bigger would give them space to add seals to keep stuff out. See, nothing to do with the IP rating.

> I don't know why you would attribute this to malice rather than a balancing of constraints.)

Attributing it to "reasons other than IP rating" is not attributing it to malice. It was pretty clear it was more about making it thinner like every other phone and not IP rating.

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Vinnl 1724 days ago
It was "not telling the whole story" that sounded like attributing it to malice, but if you meant that part of the reason was making the phone smaller than I agree.

I imagine (but know little to nothing about these ratings) that the more holes and crevices there are, the harder it is to be water and dust resistant. Modularity and the USB port add these, the jack might have pushed it over the limit, and when forced to choose between those three, the jack seems to me to be the sensible one to sacrifice. Still a shame, of course.

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