>handsets without headphone jacks long before Apple did
This is not an innovation. Not every change is an innovation. In fact, this is the straw that broke the camel's back for me, and I intend on never buying an Apple product again.
This is not an innovation. Not every change is an innovation. In fact, this is the straw that broke the camel's back for me, and I intend on never buying an Apple product again.
There are a huge number of niche, speciality phones, such as phones with extra many SIM-slots - max I've seen is five - extra large batteries, up to 10,000mAh - extra rugged - huge extra antennas - water proof - models with walkie talkie functionality, and many other special purpose models. This is the advantage of reference designs that get copied and adapted over and over cheaply, allowing tons of different companies to churn out variations cheaply.
Given that, I'm sure there will be ones with wired headphone connectors for a very long time.
USB Type-C, if they were so inclined.
USB Type-C has provisions for putting audio directly onto auxiliary pins exactly for this purpose.
However, I suspect most won't get rid of the standard audio jack without a good reason.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/4nsp5p/usb_type_c_... [2] http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/ [3] http://i.imgur.com/y6xCS9u.png [4] http://www.anandtech.com/show/10273/intel-proposes-to-use-us...