Correct. …but I would prefer to have the dock as a separate unit in case I do need to travel with it. Still… Separate or built-in would simply be a choice.
Then again you connect the one usb-c to the dosck which has all sort of connection options. I struggle to find a usecase for dual usb-c ports on a phone.
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Charging the device on one USB-C port while listening to music with a USB-C DAC when traveling and no dock can be used and when no headphone jack is available.
During travel need to charge when I want to listen to music can occur frequently
Two-port use cases
- Charge both phone and powerbank simultaneously.
- Use a wired active noise cancelling headset while charging.
- Listening to audio from external storage through an external DAC.
- Copy from one external storage unit to another external unit.
- Use a TFA key while talking on the phone with a wired ANC headset
- Use “bolt-on” wireless Qi charging while leaving the OTG port for other things.
- Using the phone as connected bike dashboard with a second port for a headset.
- Back up the phone even if one socket is broken.
Many of those are as niche as the phone having a switchblade build in in case someone attacks you on a walk.
We need to keep it reasonable.
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just wanting to act as an advocatus diaboli on this case challenging the direction this discussion is taking:
How common are these use cases in reality? (Granted, effectively zero at the moment since hardly any other device on the mobile phone market has such an ability)
More holes usually results in much less dust and water protection.
Not necessarily reflecting own opinion, but questioning.
Without the second USB-c port we are all back to carrying a dock (or adapters) everywhere we go.
As a side note.. The Liberux phone mentioned earlier in this thread has two USB-c sockets.
Hadn’t heard about that one yet, and all the info I can quickly gather is an unreachable page and a scam warning. Hope that’s not the way to go for Jolla.
Most phones now have one USB-c port and a 3.5mm audio socket.
People want to have headsets with active noise cancellation so they turn to battery-powered bluetooth units.
People choose big headsets with big batteries but still need to keep an eye on the remaining battery time.
Others need better sound quality than is possible with bluetooth so they turn to 3.5mm headsets but now connected to external DACs powered by the USB-c socket.
So now some companies create wired headsets with active noise cancellation, but those need digital signal processing and thus need power. …from the USB-c socket.
That means that the 3.5mm jack will be less used because it would be necessary to use a USB-c-powered DAC to get the active noise cancellation that people want.
So now that people have the ANC headsets that don’t need batteries, their only USB-c socket can’t be used to charge the phone unless they use an adapter.
So…
- Skip a built-in 3.5mm jack.
- Include a simple USB-c-to-3.5mm adapter in the box, and…
- Add a second USB-c socket to the phone for charging (and more).
The thing is that phone- and single-board-computer tech is converging. The Liberux device is powered by a SBC system-on-chip with an added modem. In fact, Jolla’s Mind2 is based on the big brother of the SoC used in the Liberux device.
Most SBC SoC have multiple ports because that is what people expect from a computer (even if it’s just a tiny one). Two or even three displays, USB-ports of different speeds, Ethernet, etc.
As a comparison both the Pinephone and the Pinephone Pro were pretty good attempts to create phones from SBC parts. The Liberux unit is along the same lines, although faster and slighty less open-sourced.
So whether it is a pure phone SoC or one built for a single board computer the components inside are fairy simillar already. Roughly the same number of ARM computing cores, some gigabytes of memory, an integrated graphics co-processor (GPU), etc.
This slow convergence also means that people will view their phones differently. When the phone becomes a mobile computer, used for things usually done with a computer, then people will start asking for the things that they already have on their computers. …such as a port for a bigger display or simply more ports. One port has been OK for phones for a long time but new technology (like two-factor-authentication keys or the wired active noise cancelling headsets mentioned earlier) forces changes now. We didn’t have to use those technologies before but now we do. The same thing applies to NFC, btw, it too is becoming a necessity.
The second USB-c port is simply the next step in the process of a phone becoming a mobile computer. It’s a small step, though.
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The Liberux phone, being vaporware, actually has zero USB ports. While the Next gen Jolla phone doesn’t exist yet either, I’d say their odds of eventually releasing something is an order of magnitude greater than Liberux
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Would the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro change the mathematics behind your argument?
I’m admittedly just one user, so I might not be representative of the majority, but…
…I would honestly much rather just have a 3.5mm jack instead of a 2nd USB-C. If I’m gonna have to carry around a USB->3.5mm dongle for my headphones anyway, I might as well also carry a USB splitter dongle, for the odd few cases where I also need to charge at the same time.
And while the prospect of being able to dock my phone is cool, but… don’t phones already do this just fine with just one USB-C? I could’ve sworn the PinePhone and some Samsung phones do it like that.
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likewise, give me a regular phone that is already made, allowing jolla to tap into economies of scale to provide a high-level of handset quality at a commercial price that it does not have the volume to achieve itself.
whatever else might be said of the xperia 10 series - they were not the typical junk grade of “landfill android”. i appreciate that.
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Would you say no to having a second USB-c port if you could have the 3.5mm headset socket as well?
Just curious.
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Yes, carefully choosing the components of the phone would probably be more costly, but it would also quite possibly improve the level of integration with SailfishOS.
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Liberux is a new star on the sky and unfortunately there will be more. Jolla clearly said it got already an offer for the hardware. We were invited to chose some features. The rest is a surprise I guess.
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Could you explain that? I’m not sure I understand what you mean.
there’s a difference between carefully choosing the components to improve integration with SFOS, and asking an ODM to build a unicorn rainbow device with a 4k 5-inch Oled panel, two USBc ports, and full other-half backward compatibility… with a production run of fifteen units! 
we all want (and expect!) Jolla to carefully choose the components, but they also need something already flying off regular production runs that can be easily reflashed with SFOS.
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But this thread isn’t about such a device.