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Comment by bigstrat2003 | Hacker News Reader

bigstrat2003

I don't think there's anything "environmentally friendly" about making users have an extra dongle to get basic functionality.

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I personally know absolutely no one with a dongle. I know many people who still use phones with jack that are not using it (or have earbuds). I was using wireless headphones before anyone heard of "earbuds" - they are much more convenient in situations where I'm using headphones. Of course, it's anecdotal but it seems that there are much more people like me/my friends than people missing Jack...

IMO the biggest utility of a headphone jack is not for earbuds, it's that it enables you to play music from your phone on basically any device made in the last 30 years. Want to hook up to some random stereo? No problem, you can do it. Want to play music in your car, but you have one of the many cars without Bluetooth? Easy. There's a lot to be said for having a damn near universal audio connector. Bluetooth is nice, but it's not there yet in terms of ubiquity.

My personal use case for the headphone jack is playing music in my car. My car doesn't even have an aux input (I have to use a cassette adapter), let alone Bluetooth. And when I'm on a long drive, being able to play music while charging is a must. I will only very rarely hook up a pair of wired earbuds to my phone, but I absolutely must have a headphone jack.

I'm not claiming that there is no use for Jack. I just think that this is a niche and doesn't require a separate connector in every smartphone. Having a universal connector that can be used for various niche scenarios is IMO enough. We should push for improvements in that regard (e.g. make it easy to charge the phone and use the dongle at the same time).

I wish I had the same problem as you do with your car. Mine is old enough that it doesn't have Bluetooth (I'm not the first owner and Bluetooth was an "extra" in this model) but new enough that there is no cassette player (and no built-in aux input) :)

Only if you think in absolutes. We shouldn't; we should view the issue in birdview, pragmatically with all pros and cons. The people for whom 3.5mm is a dealbreaker are loud, but seem rather minor if we look at the general market.

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