AirPods require neither of these things. The case is always charging them. You want to use your beyerdynamics? Fine. Your phone came with an adapter for them.
I honestly don't care if I have a "headphone jack": I totally agree with Apple that it was a shitty jack. It was a fragile hole that made it impossible to waterproof the damned phone. How about they just give me two lightning ports? Or a lightning port and a USB-C port, to make my dreams finally come true of only having to carry around one (USB-C) cable while still getting to be compatible with all of the stuff Apple already sold for these devices?
Yeah, it's petty. But literally no one benefits from the absence of jack (or at least no user), so why inflict even a petty annoyance on some users with nothing gained for it?
The real annoyance for me isn’t the lack of the jack, it’s that they haven’t also replaced the jack on the MacBook line yet.
I’m typing this out on my iPhone 6 (which I will keep until it disintegrates because of its headphone jack) and it is plenty thin. I think only Apple themselves are obsessed with thin devices.
Neither seems insurmountable, but if you want to try and remove as many obstacles as possible in the search of those two things then the headphone jack is apparently one of the simpler ones.
Speakers, camera lens, physical buttons, charging, and data transfer are the remaining ones I can think of, and many of those have already been replaced in some models.
I think the headphone jack is a very practical component of the phone, and miss it regularly, but removing it does remove a few limitations on the designer.
At some point, in perhaps the not too distant future, I wouldn't be surprised if phones had been reduced down to look like not much more than a piece of glass. Maybe even a piece of flexible glass!
That's definitely been the trend for a while now, and things like edge to edge screens and wireless charging move us further in that direction. Thankfully neither of those seem to have necessitated the removal of some other function. There have been other casualties other on this path to simplification, such as the removal of the physical home button, but I don't think any which leave as big a gap as the headphone jack.
In my home office, I have it wired to my simple mixer and amp with which two other computers also connect to. And from that split into my speakers and a pair of headset.
All non-digital and no USB involved with other things that can go wrong. I am no Hi-Fi buff, I just like one volume and power button when I need to silence or amp things.
Whilst commuting on the train I also use the headphone jack, even though I also have a Bluetooth headset, but it is limited to two sources which are already used up by my iPad and phone.
I don't want to yet again swear internally whilst standing on a busy tube with 1000 other people with Bluetooth devices, and having to reset the pairing on my iPad/iPhone.
Ps. I have an old phone with a 3.5mm jack, but I never use it. I use audio on my phone only when commuting or walking and then use Bluetooth. But my old iPad and MBP are stationary so I only use 3.5mm devices with them.
My wife also brought Lightning headphones, which didn't work with anything except her phone, leading to her using the cheap airline ear buds for the in flight entertainment system.
For example, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E5AHZYA
Except people often use same headphone with both - phone and pc, so you will have to remove the adapter anyway.
I’ve been using a pair of beats for over a year now, and have never run out of batteries with them, even on multi-leg long haul flights. I use them constantly, and almost exclusively charge them when I have to go to a meeting, which doesn’t usually happen more than once a day. I used AirPods before then and their battery life was even better.
Not anymore
https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/12/17827970/no-more-free-iph...
To paraphrase some marketing slogans from the days of yore:
IBM said "Think" [2]
Apple said "Think different" [3]
I say "Think wisely"
[1] https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/whyred
No, no, no. Can we please get rid of this adapter hell? It's awful and just way too much overhead. In every situation. No matter if phone or laptop
No need for a phone that requires an adapter. There are great phones that drive all audio gear nicely.
Those phones will win in the market too.
Cost / benefit ratio is more favorable. Has been, will continue to be, and that will be true because digital audio does nothing new.
Video does! We have great reasons for DV.
Those do not apply to audio. Ears are not like eyes.
Why do you say they'll win?
With video, there's a lot of those. And today in the market we have a mix of analog and digital, mostly digital, and it mostly makes sense.
That isn't really true of audio. And it's not true because audio works very differently.
No pressure.
Again? Samsung "dropped" the headphone jack once already and then decided to reintroduce it in their current line of phones. At least that is my understanding of their products with the S7/S8 having removed the headphone jack and the S9 once again featuring a headphone jack.
I said it in my comment(s) above.
Video, for example, works differently than audio does. Digital video brings advantages that generally outweigh costs in the majority of use cases. Analog video, like audio, does take fewer resources and can still be indicated for projects, depending.
For ordinary consumers, DV is a general win. They will move willingly and their older gear will age out and become not so useful.
DA is not a general win. Their gear will not age out, will not become less useful, etc... Unless that is artificial!
And that is exactly why "no headphone jack" is so contentious right now! Most forced migrations make sense. This one really doesn't, and it's due to the nature of audio, existing gear investments, and the fact that going digital really doesn't get a person anything new.
Above that we've got some real spiffy bits. No wires is probably the best of the lot. That's a win, but the cost of it, when one is forced to adopt only a digital path is much higher than it needs to be and everyone knows it.
Should the entire electronics industry abandon analog audio, there will be startups who embrace it. 70's era gear remains entirely relevant. And it will, again, unless forced artificially.
70's era video is marginally relevant. NTSC / PAL at SD resolutions, and on analog gear, have a few sweet spots left, but for almost everyone, using that gear does not make too much sense today.
This is absolutely HUGE.
Put another way, the winners from "no headphone jack" are largely the people not wanting to include a headphone jack. Ordinary people can get all the spiffy stuff and abandon analog as they see fit without ever being required to do or spend on things having basically no value.
I don't get anything new, and my personal cost and risk exposure related to audio goes up! And this is true for very large numbers of people.
That's a losing proposition.
I just happened to think of a great parallel: HD Radio. It's got some nice advantages, but basically does nothing new, and it does so at a very significant cost to everyone.
Said that one would fail, and it basically has. Nobody needs digital radio, and what they failed to understand was that (due to commercials and other annoyances already impacting radio), and how people use radios, and the value of the installed base of radios out there now.
Right now, if you get one of those expensive radios, there are literally give away stations, no commercials! That's how poorly the dynamics surrounding radio are understood by the bigger players. They can't give it away!
I know I would not take a free phone, sans the jack. It's way too much of a hassle to be outside a production proven, time tested, high value, audio ecosystem.
These are all reasons why people who don't really get how their customers do things are going to lose in the marketplace.
Heck, I have not even read a single reason why it has to be done!
Big content wants it, because piracy. (laughable at this point, and that's no joke)
Apple wants it, Google probably wants it, because friendly to big content, also up selling, accessory replacement selling.
Samsung shows us it's entirely possible to make an awesome phone with the jack in it. I own one, and it is actually an awesome phone. Apple has nothing on my Note 8. (But I do love Apple's approach to user data security / privacy.)
There just isn't any value added here. Worse, the cost "savings" from removing the jack is what? $50 bucks tops?
How much do adapters, new earbuds, and related bits cost over the life of the phone? What about a person's time, existing knowledge, investments in gear?
Losing proposition across the board. Again, that's why I do not see a win on this.