I know I'm about 10 years late to this rant but I finally bought a new phone without a 3.5mm headphone jack. I resisted for as long as I could, but apparently wanting to plug a pair of headphones into your phone is now an unreasonable demand.
And I absolutely hate it.
I have Galaxy Buds 2, so it's not like I'm against wireless earphones. I've been using them for years. They're convenient, I get it. But why did having wireless earphones mean we had to lose the option of wired ones?
I like listening to things when I'm lying in bed, sometimes throughout the night. With wired headphones I could just plug them in and forget about them. Now I have to worry about whether the earbuds are charged, whether the case is charged, and whether they'll last through the night. And if they run out, that's it. I have to take them out and charge them. Something that was never a problem before has become another thing to manage.
And yes, I know USB-C headphones and adapters exist. But why should I need an adapter to do something phones have been doing perfectly well for decades? Now I have to carry another little accessory around, and if I want to charge my phone and listen through wired headphones at the same time, I need yet another adapter. Not to mention the charging port is now supposed to handle everything. I've had charging ports become loose and unreliable on older phones, so I'm not particularly excited about putting even more wear on the one port I have left.
What really annoys me is that we actually lost functionality. This wasn't some outdated technology that had become useless. The headphone jack worked. It was cheap, universal, reliable and didn't need a battery. It wasn't preventing anyone from using Bluetooth headphones either. We could have both, and for years we did.
I remember when buying a new phone meant getting more features. Better cameras, better screens, more storage, more connectivity. Now apparently removing something and making you buy another accessory is innovation.
And somehow we've all just accepted it. Phone companies removed a perfectly functional feature, told us it was the future, and we went along with it. I'm sure there were engineering reasons and space constraints, but I find it hard to believe that an entire industry suddenly became incapable of fitting a headphone jack into a phone.
I know this battle was lost years ago. I've finally surrendered because there are barely any decent phones left with a headphone jack, at least among the ones I was considering.
But I'm still annoyed that I had to give up something I actually used, not because something better made it obsolete, but because manufacturers decided I shouldn't have the choice anymore.