This is all still just rumor. The race to have products out the door on day 1 of a new iPhone launch means manufacturers actually chase these rumors and in some cases begin production of products before knowing if they'll even work!
The iPod touch is thinner than the 6/6S and it still has a headphone jack. Maybe Apple will remove it someday but there is no evidence that it will happen with the iPhone 7.
The iPod nano (5.4mm) is even thinner than the iPod touch (6.1mm). It still has a headphone jack.
And 5mm is the absolute minimum thickness for a 5-inch device; you really don't want a slab-shaped phone that is any thinner, otherwise the structural stress on it will genuinely make it warp/bend/crack in people's pockets.
Yes, it's still a rumor, but there's been enough independent corroboration that I think we can be reasonably confident it's actually happening this time.
Maybe they only want one port? Does that sound like Apple? Then they could add speakers on both sides of the port. Apple promotes music so having better audio would help them sell devices.
The beauty of the current style of headphone is that I don't have to remember to charge them.
I haven't had great luck with Bluetooth devices connecting reliably, every time, and at any rate, with the shitty batteries that device manufacturers use, I expect that I will be bricking more than one set of headphones very quickly, if I even bother buying them.
So now I'll have to pay $100 for a headphone with the quality of a $7 one while getting zero benefits and tons of incompatibility issues. That's "progress" all right. Progress for Apple's bottom line at the expense of every consumer who buys the new devices and headphones. It's just too bad consumers are too stupid to see how they're being fucked over.
A halfway decent DAC will cost closer to $50 than $1. Given the current market for marked-up mediocre headphones, I can much more easily see the parent's scenario than yours.
It's likely integrated with another chipset, but I don't imagine it's more than $10-20. However, to be standalone, there has to be a dedicated DAC, Amp, and power supply chipset, as well as the associated resistors and capacitors; which when not integrated into another package (like a phone motherboard) is not as cheap.
The least expensive USB set I've found in the past has run around $30, and you get what you pay for. Good enough for highly compressed voice communication, but terrible at rendering music.
They can't save much money on the DAC in the phone unless they also plan to drop the phone's speakers.
It's strange to me that some of the rumors try to spin this as a "cost savings" on the hardware in the phone. Removing the headphone jack wouldn't let them drop the DAC nor the set of amplifier circuits the speakers use because in order to be a "phone" it's presumed that it will still need speakers on the "phone".
Presuming that Apple continues to bundle in some form of earbuds with the iPhone after dropping the headphones jack it's essentially a net increase in DACs in the package (as I assume the speakers and headphone jack share a DAC currently; but I've not double checked an actual hardware breakdown). Quite the backwards direction for something rumors seem to be trying to spin as a "cost saving" measure.
Maybe it's all a conspiracy by Big DAC? ;)
[Bonus punchline: Big DAC is the name of the old school hip hop cover band I sponsor.]
This article covers that there is going to be an increase in cost for the consumer as we're conditioned on the reality of Apple offloading the DAC to the headphone companies.
The article also talks about how, but doing this Apple opens the door for more cost to own an apple by buying accessories to continue to use your existing headphones.
This article doesn't go into DRM when there is no digital to analog conversion. The killing of the headphone jack seems to open the door for the phone to decide whether its going to play the music returning to the original ipod problem of whether it was bought with Itunes or not.
My experience with USB in general is it's a PITA if you need to insert / remove on regular basis. The sharp edges scratch at the plastic, and you typically always try to insert it at the wrong angle first try, and so need to play the USB dance of switching back and forth until it finds its way in. Its impossible to do while in your pocket, which is where the jack really comes into its own.
One downside compared to micro-usb in my experience was having my macbook stop charging after (apparently) using the wrong usb-C adapter. I don't think I ever worried about which actual adapter I used for a micro-usb device, but I guess you have to be more careful which usb-c chargers you use... another example: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/google-engineer-finds... )
This won't help with the connector wearing out, and when there's only one connector for charging and headphones (and everything else), it will wear out more quickly. The USB and Thunderbolt ports on my laptop are already getting flaky, and it has been a mere 2 years.
Nah, they have often had this sort of user-hostile-in-the-name-of-cutting-edge attitude for a long time. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. IMO this is a case where it doesn't.
The iPod touch is thinner than the 6/6S and it still has a headphone jack. Maybe Apple will remove it someday but there is no evidence that it will happen with the iPhone 7.