I'd buy one if it had a headphone jack!
It has to have a headphone jack, it has to have wireless charging, it has to have cameras as good as the iphone, it has to have an AV1 video decoder, etc.
Same problem with the Framework laptop. Everyone has a different set of obscure hard requirements.
very reasonable requirements, imho
Couldn't get a work phone with headphone jack... privately I dread the day where I need a new phone and need to probably forfeit both headphone and microsd to get something that's not seventeen inches in diameter or released more than three years ago so already out of support. Internal storage is overpriced, and I use that headphone port literally every day when falling asleep with an audio book; bluetooth buds are too thick to lay/lean on and would also get lost under the blanket and crushed overnight.
Also, bluetooth earbuds designed for sleep [2].
[1] https://www.apple.com/ca/shop/product/MYMC2LL/A/beats-flex-a...
[2] https://ca.soundcore.com/products/sleep-a10-a6610z21?ref=nav...
The sleep ones cost 170$ O.o
The ones you get for free with some phones, or the cheapest ones from a vending machine, are currently fine. I don't need custom specialty products... or, well, maybe I do, once a new phone without headphone jack is forced upon me in order to have a normal life where I can run the local transport company's app and other such semi-necessities...
Another downside btw is that you can't charge your phone anymore at the same time. I bought a wireless charger to remedy that but the device gets super hot, thermal protection kicks in, and it starts to throttle the charging. Doesn't seem great for battery longevity. There's devices that combine power and headphone jack into USB-C, but there I couldn't find a single one where the reviews didn't say it broke after two weeks or unusable sound quality or so. I simply miss a separate headphone jack... but this will have to do. Thanks for looking up which one you've got :)
How much of a chance that you'd find some other detail that's not ok if it had a jack?
2. USB-C adapters are one extra thing to carry around and easy to lose or forget, unless you just never unplug it, which is cumbersome
3. Many people who were born before the year 2005 (me included) have wired headphones that they prefer and have used for years that still work fine and have the sound quality and comfort that fit our needs.
4. Outside of the smart phone world, 3.5mm audio jacks are still very common and not obsolete
5. Bluetooth is cumbersome on many phones and headphones, introduces latency, and affects audio quality
I wouldn't buy a phone just because it had a headphone jack, but it's definitely a draw for me when a phone does (+ a removable battery or expandable storage, but HN is probably gonna tell me those things are obsolete as well).
2. connect it to the end of your headphones and leave it there
3. do the above
4. buy a good adapter
5. don't use bluetooth and buy an adapter
e: I was a little flippant. Point being: Time has marched on, TVs don't have RCA jacks either. You are an enthusiast and that's fine, I am too, but everyone else has moved on to bluetooth and wifi-enabled speakers and TVs. I'm happy to simply have the option, it's not like half-decent dongles are particularly expensive.
> Time has marched on, TVs don't have RCA jacks either.
Bad comparison. 3.5mm audio is still standard almost everywhere else for audio. RCA jacks are not. Your laptop, speakers, Steam Deck, monitor, and yeah probably your TV still have an audio jack.
> You are an enthusiast and that's fine, I am too, but everyone else has moved on to bluetooth and wifi-enabled speakers and TVs. I'm happy to simply have the option, it's not like half-decent dongles are particularly expensive.
I'm not an enthusiast; I, like probably 90% of the US population, have wired 3.5mm headphones in my home that I like to use with my electronics. It's bonkers to me that people are calling wired headphones obsolete; this makes me think that they either throw away all of their electronics when something new comes out, or are under eighteen years old and have never owned a pair.
2. connect it to the end of my headphones and leave it there
3. remove it so I can connect same headphones to laptop
4. lose adapter
repeat
Doesn't your laptop have USB ports?
"Not enough people complained" is a terrible metric. Companies do anti-consumer nonsense all the time and there is no effective way for the customer to "vote with their wallets" when near enough everyone converges on the same solution.
And why did Apple do it? Don't overthink it -- it is more profitable for Apple not to put headphone jacks in their phones because then they get to sell expensive AirPods. That's it, that's the reason. There have to be millions of super frustrated iPhone users like me out there that are annoyed every single time they have to use a stupid fucking Lightning dongle just to listen to stuff with decent headphones, but Android is not an option for me and the iPhone 7 is too old to be viable, so I just clench my fists in my pockets every time I think about my garbage iPhone (and sometimes whine about it on the internet.)
Removing the headphone jack was bad, is bad, and will forever be bad. Just bring it back. Sell it in the Pro Max as a super audiophile high end DAC thing, I'll pay the $2000 or whatever you want, I don't care, just put the fucking jack back in.
You don't have to overthink, you just need to think. Why permanently graft a part to a highly space optimized device when it isn't even being used most of the time?
I got over it, you should too. It helps to try to put off the onset of grumpy old man syndrome as long as possible.
I mean, that's a valid way to view it, but I doubt it was an engineering decision first and foremost. Hanlon's razor applies: 1) Apple makes a ton of money from selling AirPods and 2) this decision was made during the Jony Ive era of "remove literally everything that is not strictly necessary just because fewer ports is more aesthetically pleasing". Under these conditions, of course they would remove the headphone jack. It's Apple doing Apple shit.
But: people used the same arguments -- less ports saves space, who needs it, etc -- to argue that the HDMI port, MagSafe, and decent keyboards would never come back. But they did, in MacBooks that were thicker than the previous generation. Sometimes you can teach old dogs new tricks.
They could have polled the market to see what it wants: release an iPhone that has a headphone jack and is slightly bigger if needed, and a slim one that doesn't have one. This will never happen, and that is my point: you or I will never know if people care, because people never had the ability to choose.
You can list things as much as you want, but the market shows that almost noone puts their money where their mouth is once a phone with a jack is launched.
This likely has more to do with the fact that the only phones that have headphone jacks are low-end "cheap" phones with worse specs everywhere else. If the new Galaxy came out with a headphone jeack, I don't think their sales would suddenly tank.
It flies in the face of claiming to care for repairability and sustainability. Wireless earbuds (maybe including the ones they sell) I by and large dont have replaceable batteries. That isnt sustainable.
If my USBC jack breaks from wear and tear being in my pocket with a cable attached to them, I no longer have a working phone and need to buy a part to fix it, if the headphone jack breaks, I can live without headphones and still have a functional phone. If the selling point is sustainability, they miss the mark by creating extraneous rubbish, even if its not direct
I do have another one (from my spouse's phone), but my current phone doesn't need an adapter, because it has a 3.5mm jack.
Edit: also https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/b7vjo9/anything_mor...
What about jogging? Not a good example either?
If that's the case in the US, I've learned something new. Generally, based on comments, there seem to be fewer consumer protection laws over there.
Personally, I've never met anyone who had a need for reading floppy disks or connecting their computer printer to their phone, but I know many people who like to listen to music with their wired headphones on the go.
It can be, but your operating system needs to support it.
Support for audio delay compensation is pretty good on macOS. No idea about other OSes, though.
Seriously: who needs a headphone jack anymore?
I hate the waste generated from having battery powered headphones, and generally dislike the batterification of so many products these days. Wires can be messy but they are usually replaceable and I don't have to worry about properly disposing of them as much as I would for an item with a LiON battery.
IIRC the xperia phones are just as water/dustproof as the pixels/iphones so not really sure why we had to give up the port other than for maybe a mm of thinness and a reason to sell a new series of audio devices to consumers.
I ended up going with the pixel 4, which was the newest phone I could fine that at least didn't have a camera cutout.
I have since discovered that in android developer options, you can choose to give up the screen real estate around teh cutout to effectively hide it. Given this, in the future, I'll look for phones that have a jack, worrying less about the cutout.
If the Fairphone ever comes to the US with full support, I would strongly consider it, even though I _really_ want a headphone jack. I think that for a fully repairable phone, I might be willing to trade.
It appears like my ideal phone is probably never going to exist again, so I'm going to have to compromise on something.
It's one of the things I feel like iPhone does right supporting most frequencies even for US models. The new mandatory eSIM on it makes it a no-go for me though when I travel to Europe and want to buy a SIM card at the airport/corner store.
Cursory browsing... There's Infinix (serves mostly Africa and Asia) and Tecno (popular in India) and a few other brands that are mainly released in Asia. Beyond that, can you really count all 14 "Redmi" as separate phones when some only differentiate "5G" or "not 5G"? Same with various "Fan" or "VIP" editions, which typically tweak one or two peripherals?
Are you really in the market for vivo, Realme, TCL, Oukitel? Or a specialist/rugged brand like Ulefone or Doogee?
Ironically, the most popular handset made outside of China for a worldwide market is the Galaxy A24, which has a horrendous single on-board speaker. So much for audiophilia! (In fairness, as soon as you restrict Chinese and Hong Kong headsets, you're down to just a few brands. Weird tangent, it's nice to see Nokia putting out spec-competitive mid-market Android phones. I might get one next because Asus and Sony are sticking with two OS upgrades.)
Then I fell into a rabbit hole and plotted the GSM Arena prices of phones with jacks and without: https://gitlab.com/PennRobotics/permalink/-/raw/main/handset...
From that, I can fathom that headphone jacks are largely bullshit features tacked on to devkit-derived bargain bin phones, which creates a huge peak in jacked sub-$150 units. From $300 up, where you expect good peripheral selection and a normal Android experience, it's clear that headphone jacks are in the minority.
I was in the same boat: gotta have headphone jack. The best player here was LG. Keyword: was. Now I'm convinced that until phone makers actually prioritize wired audio, the better path forward (and which won't be long-term obsolete) is picking the smartphone with the best overall specs/support plus a USB splitter and whichever grade of USB DAC you prefer to drive your headphones. It's easier for the manufacturer to waterproof their case and gives more room for battery, etc. This also lets you quickly transfer your preferred hardware to a tablet/laptop/desktop, which seems like a pain unless you're in love with something high-impedance like HD600, ATH-R70, DT990, etc.
More importantly, even if I didn't need one I would still want one. A headphone jack is a universal connection for audio, Bluetooth is not. And wired headphones are strictly superior to wireless headphones, as they don't need to be charged and can't be lost as easily.
Also, there are wired usb-c headphones, my partner is using one.
But for car you can consider modern cassette adapter with Bluetooth and built-in mp3 flash player.
I'd say being able to live without a smartphone is only in third-world countries at this point, and less and less even there. In Argentina, everything from government services to booking a hair salon appointment to viewing restaurant menus is done via Whatsapp and QR codes, for example.
Even just the power out for a few days after a storm and you’re done during that time. I can think of additional failure modes.
I very much doubt you can't pay parking without a smartphone.
I've also been to random parking lots in the middle of nowhere with a cardboard sign saying "Venmo $5/hour at X".
Anyone who has good wired headphones. Or issues with Bluetooth headset. Or need to have wired audio output together with wired charging.
I hope more phones will be available with audio jack.
People born before the year 2005 who don't throw away perfectly working electronics when a new shiny alternative comes around the corner.
Anyone who wants to listen to music with headphones and doesn't want to be tracked via bluetooth. Bluetooth tracking beacons are used extensively and can log your location within a foot of where the beacon is placed or from as far as 20 miles away.
Bluetooth also increases your security risk. There have already been several exploits with bluetooth over the years.
* Pairing UX is unreliable and has corner cases that even Apple hasn't solved and they're probably the best case. 1/8" is predictable and reliable (and doesn't require extra thought / kit to make sure you can power at the same time).
* Battery life isn't an issue for wired headphones.
* Latency is unacceptable for some use cases (mostly specialized audio), and sometimes audio quality is degraded too.
I like wireless audio, (especially for workout listening) but I miss the headphone jack on my original iphone 5 SE at least once a week.