Have you looked at an x-ray or disassembly video of an iPhone? There isn't a lot of empty space in there.
And what have Google and Samsung won by people having to buy a USB-C adapter, most likely for them? They also removed the headphone jack, and have never had a proprietary adapter standard to replace them.
Google, Samsung, and Apple all have lucrative wireless earphone businesses, or would like to. Simpler design with less components is also a win for them.
I’d pay quite a sum for such a service. The value of a lossless, universally compatible port is hard to overstate. At the very least they could give us a second USB-C port on top-end phones.
They removed it so they could sell overpriced airpods and dongles, and simultaneously kill the 3rd party headphone market.
You think the literal few cents that a headphone jack costs would be more of an incentive than being able to force their victims to buy $300 disposable headphones?
How anyone could claim in good faith to not understand this, I can't even.
They even purposely gimp the USBC port they were reluctantly forced to add so it doesn't support headset microphones.
Why should any manufacturer include components in a device that customers clearly don’t value enough for it to make a difference to them?
I get the objection to Apple artificially creating demand for proprietary adapters; I dislike that too.
But what good would it do me if they make me pay for a component I don’t need? I don’t get gratification out of reducing (nor increasing) their bottom line.
>Why should any manufacturer include components in a device that customers clearly don’t value enough for it to make a difference to them?
If Apple sold a model with a headphone jack and a model without, then we could compare sales numbers between the two models and you could make that claim.
Of course, Apple doesn't sell a model with a headphone jack.
What they do sell however, coincidentally enough, is $300 wireless headphones.
They also sell $19 lightning and USB-C EarPods, which were/are exactly the same price as the mini-jack EarPods. Or if you want to use different headphones, a $10 lightning/USB-C to jack adapter. They must be getting rich of those $19 headphones :p.
People in tech circles also lambasted Apple for removing DVD drives and a lot of other things. Yet a lot of non-tech people prefer Bluetooth ANC buds or headphones.
Also, if they were so intent on killing the jack for money, why do they still have it on MacBooks and even upgraded it with an amplifier that supports high-impedance headphones?
Better waterproofing and re-using the space sound like perfectly valid reasons.
>They must be getting rich of those $19 headphones :p.
Artificially limiting the available options coincidentally encourages some to buy the $300 headphones.
Selling some $300 headphones is better than none.
>Also, if they were so intent on killing the jack for money, why do they still have it on MacBooks and even upgraded it with an amplifier that supports high-impedance headphones?
They will remove it when they can. The laptop frog is not yet boiled enough.
>Better waterproofing and re-using the space sound like perfectly valid reasons.
Phones haven't gotten thinner or more waterproof despite removing the headphone jack.
My Samsung S10 5G from 2019 is the same thickness and has IP68 waterproofing just like the iPhone 15, but does have a headphone jack.
Coincidentally, it's the last flagship Samsung with a headphone jack.
Phone companies are just regurgitating the same shit year over year.
The SOCs take up the same space and batteries should be improving, so I don't accept space saving as a valid reason, especially when they haven't become slimmer.
I wish all the companies would just make the best phone they could instead of nickel and diming their customers.
But Apple is definitely the worst offender, and does their best to normalize so much anti-consumer stuff.
I believe that it should be obvious that the headphone jack was removed purely as a self-serving business decision because Apple wanted to sell more overpriced accessories, and not because customers didn't want it.
I'd also like to make the comment that almost all high-quality headphones are made for analog jacks.
So as a person who values high-quality audio, I am not interested in wireless headphones of any kind, cheap shitty USBC headphones, or needing to use an ugly inconvenient dongle to use my good headphones.
Lucky for me I'm not an Apple customer anyway for a myriad of reasons, but I'd argue there are no good alternatives for what would be my use case.
That's why I specified cheap shitty USBC headphones.
I also note that those need a large ugly USBA to USBC adapter.
If I'm honest, the design of those also doesn't personally appeal to me, and I've tried AT headphones before and I didn't find them comfortable and didn't like the sound. For phone use I'd be looking for IEMs and not over the ear models too.
I am aware that there are good USBC headphones out there, but the available options are so much fewer than analog headphones.
If you don't want cheap, shitty USB-C headphones... don't get them? I really don't get your point.
3.5mm to USB-C adapters are tiny and can include a much higher quality DAC than most phones reasonably will. Into those, you can then plug any headphone your heart or ears desire.
Audiophiles are such a niche market all things considered, and on top of that they seem to prefer their own DACs and/or headphone pre-amplifiers anyway – why waste space and money for a headphone jack that most users wouldn't use, and the ones that do would augment with external dongles anyway?
And for users that just don't want to deal with charging and pairing Bluetooth headphones, cheap headphones and adapters do just fine as well.
Now I need to buy three dongles, one for my car, one for home, and one for my go-bag, and do a silly scramble when I misplace the tiny. Plus buy USB-C replacements now that Lightning is dead. The dongle is also ugly (doesn’t match my phone or earphones) and easily broken, with an incredibly thin wire.
It’s just a worse situation all around. The DAC and amp built into the iPhone previously was of similar quality. Now life - especially working with audio gear - is more complicated and annoying, so that Tim could sell more e-waste.
