The Moondrop MIAD 01 is one of the most distinctive Android devices of 2024 thus far. It has a 4.4mm headphone jack to go with the more conventional 3.5mm type. Furthermore, it seems it might be as appealing to teardown enthusiasts as well as audiophiles, and may, therefore, also be easier to repair than most modern smartphones.
I don’t think it’s about the cost of the 3.5mm jack itself, it’s about the space it takes up. “Thinner and lighter” as a goal means removing chunky things they don’t think are necessary. Also waterproofing maybe?
I am not so sure about the waterproofability of headphone jacks, but does it benefit to make phones even “thinner and lighter”?
Completely fine. There are multiple phones that have been out with waterproofing and headphone jacks.
It’s not that much more difficult to waterproof than the charge port.
I’ve got no idea of the legitimacy of the claim, it’s just what the manufacturers claim. Likewise, they assume people want “thinner and lighter”, presumably because that’s what Steve Jobs said. It’s all just trying to make the devices appeal to the mass market.
They don’t even assume that anymore. If you look at the mean dimensions of sold phones in NL over the last 7 years, you’ll see that the ‘thinnest’ year is already behind us. Less then 6/7mm just becomes unwieldy for a lot of hands, and the sold phones dimensions reflect that.
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Obviously. If you can free up thickness and weight in one area, you can increase things like battery size, either alone or to compensate for a higher-power processor or something.
I don’t think the battery argument is convincing enough to me unfortunately, since it’s more likely that the recent increase in battery capacity is due to battery chemistry improvements rather than increased physical size.
I mean, I have two similar sized phones from different eras. One had 3000mAh, another had 5000mAh. They both include a headphone jack.