Do any new flagship Android phones have headphone jacks?

Less and less. Sony still does and Asus still does on their ROG Phones, but dropped it for the Zenfone 12 so not sure how long they’ll last with it still (I love my Zenfone 9, so a bit sad about it).

But anyway, mid-range Android phones have headphone jack

Shockingly little nowadays. If I search between 300-500 euro, I can only find Sony, Poco and two Samsungs (A25 and Xcover 7).

Agreed on the headline, but having to ID yourself as a developer to Google even if you’re not using the Play Store is fucked too. It’s a big step towards a walled garden.

Not a bad suggestion, but I’m not sure that’d work. Online payments are tightly integrated with the banks apps here. I can try it though

For stuff like banking apps. It’s not perfect, I know

what can’t I get in the Play Store or the App Store that I actually want?

For me, it’s an independence from Google thing and a privacy thing. I am logged in to the Play Store on my phone, but I try to get whatever I can from F-Droid. On other devices like my TV, tablet and e-reader, I’m not even logged in and use F-Droid and the Aurora Store instead. Not having to rely on Google is great.

Honestly what is the argument for staying?

There are still Android phones with headphone jacks

Expensive tapes can come close to CDs, but generally tapes are noisier (outside of just the tapedeck), have a worse dynamic range and frequency response and they degrade over time. And indeed it’s not all about sound quality. CDs are more convenient in quite a few ways while not really sacrificing quality and affordability and that does help a lot.

The only convenience BT adds is not having wires, which is valid, but that’s about it. In case of headphones and earbuds, BT also has inconveniences like batteries, BT pairing bs, more latency, worse mics and generally being way more expensive than a decent pair of wired earbuds.

With added cost for a feature few use.

Barely any cost, if any noticable cost at all. Phones are more expensive than ever. A headphone jack is not going to make much difference compared to the price increase of decent BT headphones/earbuds. And the reason few use it anymore is because everyone was forced to move to BT (or a dongle, which also sucks) due to phones almost collectively dropping the jack.

You’d have to be a serious audiophile to notice the difference

Sure, I didn’t say otherwise. It’s enough for most people. A compressed bitrate is just not lossless. But again, for use with Spotify, which most do and isn’t more than 320kbps, it’s plenty. But that doesn’t negate that it’s still not better than wired.

your phone with its shitty DAC?

Totally depends on your phone, just like your BT headphones/earbuds. Not all phones have shitty DACs.

You drew a comparison between tape and cd, one of which is clearly superior. That’s just not the case between wired and BT. Both can be together in one device.

A data rate of 352kbps for aptX and 576kbps for aptX HD is hardly cd quality. It’s plenty for Spotify of course.

I’m not against BT headphones, but you don’t need to remove the headphone jack for it.

That’s a bad comparison tbh. Bluetooth audio isn’t a superior technology over wired audio (in many ways it’s inferior). The two have always been included together with no issue until one company decided to drop one of them in order to more easily sell more expensive and less durable stuff. Other companies followed like sheep.

We don’t sell cars into Europe.

Ford and Tesla don’t count I guess?

Is Apple Music the same as iTunes?

This can happen to any store unfortunately. If a publisher withdraws, you’d no longer be able to download it. Qobuz has this too. Some publishers are quite scummy with this and upload a slightly different version, which no longer qualifies as the album you’ve purchased. You need to download it asap after buying.

It is, but I found it strange not seeing it in the actual purchaseable music section

Qobuz also does purchaseable music, not just streaming.

Worth noting about Startpage: they’re part of System1, an American advertising/marketing company. Sytem1 claims that privacy is one of the biggest focuses though. Make of that what you will.

Please no

So, are our governments finally going to see US software as a risk? Because this can shut down entire governments

Bully behaviour

For me it’s more about supporting local businesses. If we want to gain more consumer independence from the US, we need to support our own businesses, big or small. I give preference to smaller businesses of course. Of course, being purist about it is not a good thing either imo.

It’s in the actual Terms of Use that’s linked in the article: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/#you-give-mozilla-certain-rights-and-permissions