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Comment by Unklejoe | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure there will be at least some who go out of their way to maintain the 3.5mm jack just to differentiate themselves.

If I had to guess, I would say that Samsung would be one of the manufacturers to abandon the jack, but I feel like at least LG, HTC, and perhaps a few others would keep it.

LG's latest flagship even had a removable battery (which is pretty unusual for a flagship at this point).

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There were already Android phones who got rid of the 3.5 mm jack, like the Moto Z. But from now on if the same companies bring out a new phone without the jack, many people will call them out for copying Apple.

No 3.5mm jack goes back for years. It was only around the time of the iPhone 3G that it was standard in smartphones (I'm not saying that Apple caused it to become standard, it's just it that time frame). Earlier models of phones either didn't have one, or you needed an adapter. I think the first Android phone required an adapter.

I think that's partly because the idea of using your phone as an actual music player also happened to take off around the same time.

I remember when phones had the smaller version, but it was used primarily for headsets.

Yep, 2.5mm was the standard on phones that had a jack. There were also phones that used an adapter that went into the micro USB (or was it mini USB) port.

I fondly remember the Sony Ericsson Walkman series, which were phones intended to be one's personal music player. And they had Sony Ericsson's thick, wide, proprietary connectors. It was such an annoyance having to carry those earphones just for the phone, or when the included earphones (with the proprietary connectors) broke down and you couldn't just use another pair of earphones.

A little while later, someone released an adapter, and that lessened the annoyance.

But later phones that had 3.5mm (or 2.5mm) in-built were definitely better.

Don't kid yourself. The vast majority of smartphones released in 2020 won't have a headphone jack.

How much do you want to bet?

I don't think so. Not until there's a true unified standard (on the Android side at least).

Maybe I'm wrong. I'll check back in 4 years.

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