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Comment by ambichook | Hacker News Reader

pros and cons exist yes, but the core issue is that with a lot of phones you dont really have an option to choose which pros outweigh the cons, you're told to suck it up and use bluetooth.

i love my wf-1000xm4s, but i also love my catos, which played a large factor in why i chose the phone i did, the choice to pick one or the other depending on how i'm feeling matters to me. i dont want bluetooth audio to go away, but at the same time i dont want wired to go either. maybe one day i'll get a dedicated DAP and be able to freely pick whatever phone without suffering as much of a consequence but in the meantime thats too expensive and bulky for me to justify

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> you're told to suck it up and use bluetooth.

Told by whom? You can still get wired earbuds for iPhone, just that they don’t use 3.5mm jack. Even Apple offers ones.

3.5mm jack don’t seem to be missed at all by the majority of consumers. If you are in the minority there can still be options. Plenty as the matter of fact. Cost you money of course.

yes i can get wired earbuds for an iphone that dont use the standardised connector and therefore cant be used in say, my PC as well. or whatever other phone i may move to. or i can buy an additional device or dongle to get access to what was the standard years ago. the final option, the one i'm using, is choosing a phone with a headphone jack because i'm willing to make that compromise and think that i should support products that do what i want them to. at some point following current trends with the gradually degrading DACs in even the ROG phone i'm likely to need an alternate solution in the near future but i'd rather that solution not be needed in the first place. having a headphone jack doesnt preclude you from being able to use bluetooth audio, it just gives more choice. taking away the jack doesnt give you all that much in return.

If you follow the brand fans on social medias on release, there’s always a crowd asking if they plan to bring the jack back. It could be a vocal minority, but it could very well also be your biggest brand advocate & enthusiast. When I have asked ‘tech normies’ for anecdotes, many have said they bought Bluetooth purely in the aftermath of their latest phone upgrade removing the jack & having not invested in otherwise good-quality IEMs, etc. took an opportunity to choose to get some while having complicated & mixed pros/cons for them as often pointed out here. The biggest difference was in the past, that was always a user choice to get one or the other, has now been forced into a non-choice especially in phones where the time-tested 3.5 mm audio jack is still ubiquitous in other apparatuses. …But I’m sure the phone OEMs didn’t mind the uptick in buying wireless earbud bundles for the problem they created.

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