And it just went on, Apple weathered the critics, the other makers also dropped it, and at some point there was just nowhere to go for anyone still wanted a 3.5 jack with a decent phone.
It's not a good solution though. In particular I find the USB-C port gets worn out pretty quickly. Its also easy to lose the dongle and of course it's more complicated to setup. (I'm not sure how to articulate the "it's more complicated" part. Adding the dongle elevates the action of "plug in headphones" from something you can do without attention to something that requires attention, and I don't like that.)
This is really where it hits. Every other device has a proper jack, so the dongle needs to be kept somewhere every other time.
I listen to music on earbuds on my phone on the go, a laptop at a cafe, and on my computer at my desk - all these have USB-C.
Even modern DAPs like Sony Walkman have USB-C as they are typically based on Android.
That leaves all the "legacy" devices that only a small minority use - home hi-fi stacks, vinyl record players, iPods, CD players, minidisc players?
It’s annoying to have non-mainstream preferences in an area where economies of scale mean every product needs to have mass market appeal. But you might as well complain about the tide coming in.
But in terms of consumers not caring, yes:
https://www.androidauthority.com/ting-headphone-jack-survey-...
It's objectively not a popular feature or something the vast majority of consumers are looking for.
Most people prefer Bluetooth because you don't need to deal with annoying wires getting tangled, ripping your earbuds out, etc.
Again, it's not that the market asked for the jacks to go away, they just don't care. And when there's something that consumers don't care about, companies tend to remove it. The jack takes up volume. Not huge, but on phones every cubic millimeter counts. And it's one more thing that can break.
And if you really want a jack, there's a $9 adapter you can just keep attached to your headphones. So everyone wins.
Thanks for this summary. I feel sad to be in a minority who prefer wired headphones. For me it's because all their failures you listed are issues I can understand and mitigate. But when bluetooth goes wrong, what do I do? Usually:
1. turn off both devices and then turn them back on again 2. try to reconnect 3. if step 2 failed, give up and try again another day
I don't learn anything. I feel infantilised and helpless.
The survey that you link is built on the premise that "you can pick only three things at most" as a manipulative trick. And since the headphone jack doesn't make it to the top 3, you use it as claim that consumers do not care about the headphone jack. This is not reasoning or stating objective facts, this is just a cop-out.
My claim is that the vast majority of consumers still need at some point in their use of their phone a way to plug 3.5 jacks into their phones somehow, and just put up with the enshittified new way: either buy some bluetooth adapter dongle, or a USB-C low quality DAC, or just give up and find a different solution.
1. Apple drops the headphone jack.
2. ???
3. Google Pixels don't have a headphone jack.
[1] https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-headphone-jack-phones/
The most important letters in English are E, T and A. I'm sure you won't notice if we remove H from all keyboards, right? After all, the survey says it's not in the top three. And given a choice between a keyboard without E and one without H, nobody buys the one without H, proving they really don't need the H.
This theory that people want headphone jacks and phone makers won’t provide them makes no sense. It requires phone makers to be so cost conscious that they’ll remove a desirable feature to save a few cents, yet simultaneously so clueless that they won’t take advantage of consumer preferences to beat their competition. This sort of thing happens with individual companies, but not with every single company in a competitive market with many competitors.
I don’t know why people can’t just accept that they have a minority preference. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m sure it’s far from your only one (I have plenty of my own, just not this one). There’s nothing wrong with general complaints that the market doesn’t cater to your minority preference. But arguing that it’s actually the majority, when it plainly isn’t, it just weird.
No, I wouldn’t but a keyboard with a tm key because I don’t care about having such a key. Pretty much nobody would. That’s why such keyboards aren’t made. You’re making my argument for me here.
Bonus: now that neither you nor Apple are including the jack, consumers resign themselves to a worse user experience and just buy your product (or theirs).
It's the same as glued batteries, unrepairable phones. Few customers making it an absolute criteria for their phone choice still doesn't make mean the majority sees it as a positive thing nor they agree. At the time on the android side, only Pixel and Samsung's lines were serious about the camera or international NFC support, moving to other phones just for the jack came with huge compromises that had nothing to do with the jack itself.
Feature combinations aren’t immutable facts of nature. Manufacturers make a conscious choice about what to include. If a good camera and international NFC combined with a headphone jack would attract a lot of buyers, don’t you think Samsung or Google would make a phone like that to better compete?
It’s nothing to do with “democratic ideal.” It’s about understanding that companies want to make money and if a feature is desirable, they will leverage that in their quest to make money. Some may fail to understand what their customers want, but all of them? It’s not plausible.
Is it ?
We have a paper trail of lawsuits telling another story.
I care plenty about the headphone jack but still reluctantly bought a phone without one (which I regret) because I have more than three requirements to balance. I expect that the users who did include the headphone jack in their top three features still care that e.g. the screen, battery and radio are all in working order as well, despite not being in their top three.
There isn't some grand conspiracy to keep headphone jacks out of phones. Why would they do that? You think Samsung or Google wouldn't jump at the chance to sell more phones by putting in a headphone jack, if that would actually help them compete? No, the reason few phones have one is because few people care about it, at least enough to influence their purchasing decisions.
There are plenty of examples of market failures in the world where lack of competition or information prevents consumer preferences from being reflected in product offerings. But smartphone hardware is definitely not one of them.
Same for Google's, though it's slightly less good iirc.
They aren't perfect - the maximum volume and impedance are pretty low so you do need an amp to electrically drive insensitive headphones.
Imagine the same argument for USB-C: at some point phones will be too slim to allow for that port, should every maker start dropping it right now ? That would be nonsense.
On adapters, it's no panacea: you still want the USB port available. Split adapters exist, but most of them only allow for charging, and the charging rate is also usually miserable.
You could say people who appreciated that should just eat it and feel in their bones how much the world doesn't care about them, that would be fair. Now staying sour about it is also one's prerogative.
PS: The biggest part for me is every other devices I own still having a pretty good jack. Laptops still have it, game consoles, VR headsets, TVs, high fidelity portable players, cars etc. So keeping around a very good headphone pair is still an enjoyable thing, except for the damn phones. Even in XL sizes. They're the only one needing a dongle, and regardless of the price that sucks.
I see it through the same lens as the cassette players like the Toshiba KT-AS10 that left part of the cassette outside for the absolute minimal footprint:
https://qth.tzpfsokx.cloud/index.php?main_page=product_info&...
PS: there is a mini headphone jack standard, but I'm not sure it's any good. At least it would clear the DAC problem, just still need a dongle.
Just because people think it looks neater than the more practical alternative.
The S2 had an amazing form factor - also with a small bulge, but at the bottom. It's a thousand times nicer to hold and carry than pretty much anything that came after. The S5 was fine too (waterproof AND you could pop open the back to swap the battery, if you can believe it!)
It's silly how much more ergonomic phones feel that don't have to compensate for an extra half millimeter.
* Many phones had this, but it's getting really bad now. Older phones typically also had the lens recessed to protect it, with a slim border around it. No more space for that now.
If you want actual quality... be ready to shell out a bit of money [1].
[1] https://www.amazon.de/Qudelix-Bluetooth-Adaptive-unsymmetris...