It does suck. I've remedied it by using bluetooth earphones & also bringing an adapter (which is pretty small) in my wallet, along with a microusb-to-lightning adapter. And now I'm pretty happy with my phone.
All this subsidizes apple's decision to not offer an effortless solution for very common use cases.
Bringing a dongle is an effort. Replacing existing headphones is an effort. Paying extra ateention to which Apple-made earbuds I bring is an effort. Buying bt headphones and charging them is an effort.
What am I buying with the extra efforts I need to invest in activities which required no such efforts before?
The sound is not better. I am not going to swim with my phone.
My only conclusion is that I do this for Apple, not for me.