Thoughts on the extinction of the headphone jack on phones

[starfly]

Hi all -

Perhaps a bit of a rant, but I wanted to see everyone's thoughts on this current trend we're seeing on the extinction of the headphone jack on phones.

I think it's ridiculous. It's been THE standard for decades and is one of the few things that are essentially universal across audio equipment. Why do these manufactureres think it's a good idea to remove the headphone jack? All it does is force people to use an adapter (which people will lose, guaranteed, forcing them to buy another one), or to use wireless headphones (yet another thing that needs charging, adds weight to headphones, lower sound quality, etc.), or to use external DACs (again not ideal given that the whole point of a phone is to be portable, if you're now forced to add an extra device it adds to the bulk).

I have a pretty expensive CIEM which I use all the time with my phone for listening to Spotify, etc. I'm just really pissed at the thought of these becoming obsolete very soon when at some point probably all phones will no longer have 3.5mm headphone jacks. As long as it's possible though, my money will go to device manufacturers that still use headphone jacks. Currently have a Google Pixel (great phone!), but the Pixel 2 is looking like it will not have a headphone jack. Apple is out of the question. And more and more manufactureres are joining this list.

Super annoying! What do you all think?

 

[ostewart]

Until Bluetooth can offer actual lossless playback with reliability and good battery life, keep the headphone jack.

That being said, the portable player market has upped its game and there is a lot of competition so you can get a really good, simple player for pretty cheap now that will sound better than your phone. But if you solely use Spotify it could be an issue.

 

[Griffith]

It's premature and, almost, entirely driven by the desire to sell overpriced Bluetooth headphones with mediocre drivers.

Even a relatively well regarded Bluetooth earphone like the Brainwavz Blu-100 sound like cheap crap if you plug an MMCX Bluetooth module any competent cheap Chi-fi earphone like the Tennmak Pro.

The lack of headphone jack is going to be a make or break aspect of my next smartphone purchase.

 

[Sylmar]

I will never ever buy a phone that has no headphone jack. Period.

 

[FastAndClean]

i think the lack of headphone jack for an average consumer is not a problem, for me it is, i don't like to be dependent of battery life, the wire is important to me for sure

 

[FastAndClean]

and the next Samsung flagship phone have headphone out

 

[Slaphead]

To be honest out of all the people I know, I'm the only one who still occasionally uses wired headphones for portable use. However that's only when I use IEMs, otherwise I'm now wireless these days. On my commute I'd also say that wireless headphones outnumber wired headphones by at least 3 to 1.

With that in mind it's really no surprise that manufacturers are getting rid of the headphone jack. There are two main reasons for this. First off why include a part that only a small percentage of your customers will use, and secondly when you get rid of the headphone jack you get rid of one of the main points of device failure. This leads me back to the people I know - half switched to wireless due to convenience, and the other half switched to wireless because the headphone jack was buggered.

Now the headphone jack may have been a standard for decades (in fact the original 6.35mm TS connector has been in use for over 100 years), but it was never a particularly good standard for reliability. The problem was, was that there were never really any successful alternatives to it, so we got stuck with it. I remember in the eighties and early nineties I got through several tape and mini disc "walkmen", and always the first thing to fail was the headphone jack, unsurprisingly when the device was just outside of warranty, so in a sense I'm kind of glad to see the back of the damn thing.

The thing is, is that while I'm suitably impressed with Bluetooth on the whole, I'm not so enamored with the non-user replaceable batteries that most manufacturers are fitting to their BT headphones. All batteries will eventually fail or wear out, and in the worst cases that may well mean throw the headphones away and buy again, so not good really.

On the idea of USB/Lightning adapters for headphones, well, when I got hold of my iPhone 7 I tried out the lightning to headphone adapter for a few days and the truth is that it really was no more of a hassle than having to fit a 6.3mm adapter to a 3.5mm headphone, plus I found the sound quality of the adapter to be at least equal to, if not better than that of my other iToys. So, your expensive CIEMs aren't going to be obsolete any time soon - once you get over your reticence to use an adapter it really isn't an issue anymore.

Another thing to consider is that we, those of us that visit this forum and other audio sites, are the outliers, the weardy beardies, the very tiny group of smartphone users for whom audio is a least as important, if not more so, than any other smartphone function, and on the scale of things not very important at for the likes of the major smartphone producers. So I think you can expect that a headphone jack on a smartphone will be an anachronism in couple of years.

Basically the conclusion is that you'll have decide whether to go wireless, put up with an adapter, or buy a dedicated DAP in the future. The headphone jack is only going to disappear and it won't be coming back, on smartphones at least.

 

[Griffith]

I'm guessing you haven't seen how fragile lightning ports are. A small tug in the right direction and it snaps like a twig. Not to mention that according to most readings the adapters are outright worse than the, already average sounding, headphone jacks on most iDevices.

I don't have any particular appreciation or hate for the 3.5mm and I wouldn't mind it being changed for something better. Lightning isn't better. USB-C isn't better. They're poorly suited to sustain the type of abuse a normal stereo jack takes and limit all your hardware choices or force you to change all of your hardware. In the case of Lightning it dictates all your hardware purchases and can only be used with a very limited number of devices.

If you see this measure as anything other than an anti-consumer measure then I strongly disagree with you.

 

[vladstef]

The thing is, wireless headphones will never be able to compete with proper wired ones - you can't put driver, battery, dac, amp, playback controls, blue tooth module plus the rest of the circuitry in such a small space and expect it to be equal to any sort of dedicated equipment and regular wired headphones of any kind. Audiophiles live with constant compromises, and blue tooth shouldn't have to be one of them. Smartphone world has 2 extremes - phones with no 3.5mm jack and phones that have it (an a few of those that have really good audio output). When apple said that 3.5mm jack is a thing of the past, they lost a lot of credibility in my eyes - it's an analog standard that isn't limited in any way, meaning that it doesn't need an upgrade and never will (of course, we would all love a switch to 2.5mm balanced, and here, even 2.5 -> 3.5mm adapter would be justified for a perceivable future). This 3.5mm standard is not limited by bandwidth, you can't gain more like you can with new USB standards which are digital and limited by numbers.
Also, a small rant about USB-C to 3.5 'adapter', it's not an adapter for the love of god, it's a whole dac/amp combo, except it's very small. So this should be called a usb-c dac and word adapter is appropriate for this as it would be for Chord Mojo for example, and who would call Mojo an adapter... Complete lack of brain usage this whole 3.5mm jack removal trend. For me, it makes more sense to remove USB port and go wireless charging/file transfer and keep 3.5mm jack - this is very much wrong, but it's less of a sacrifice in the long run.

 

[starfly]

I'm guessing you haven't seen how fragile lightning ports are. A small tug in the right direction and it snaps like a twig. Not to mention that according to most readings the adapters are outright worse than the, already average sounding, headphone jacks on most iDevices.

I don't have any particular appreciation or hate for the 3.5mm and I wouldn't mind it being changed for something better. Lightning isn't better. USB-C isn't better. They're poorly suited to sustain the type of abuse a normal stereo jack takes and limit all your hardware choices or force you to change all of your hardware. In the case of Lightning it dictates all your hardware purchases and can only be used with a very limited number of devices.

If you see this measure as anything other than an anti-consumer measure then I strongly disagree with you.

Exactly! Those Lightning and USB-C ports are more fragile than 3.5mm ports. If i'm going to constantly connect/disconnect connectors to those ports multiple times a day, those ports will fail much quicker, essentially rendering my phone useless as I can no longer charge it. Now I on average only plug something in there once a day to charge it.

Also, a lot of the times at work I'm listening to music while charging my phone. That will no longer be possible with the removal of a headphone jack.

I do also have a dedicated DAP on the side, but lately I'm liking Spotify more and more, especially since I now have unlimited data, so I can stream all I want and I'm constantly discovering new music. And I resisted streaming services for a very long time (only started using Spotify a few months ago), as I thought the sound quality would be inferior. But it's just as good as 320kbps MP3 (at the highest quality setting), and I've done my own A/B testing between FLAC and 320MP3 and I can't hear any obvious differences (granted I have less than perfect hearing, so someone with better ears might hear a difference).

Maybe I should get a Fiio X5 III, which runs on Android and thus should support Spotify and tether to my phone to stream. But I just don't want to shell out another $400 just so I can have a headphone jack.

Anyway, I love my Google Pixel, but the Pixel 2 will not have a headphone jack. I was actually considering switching from Android to Apple last year because of better update policies and device security and less hassle overall, until they made that 'courageous' announcement that the iPhone 7 would be without a headphone jack. The new Nokia 8 will have a headphone jack and allegedly will have a similar update policy as the Google Pixel (almost instant updates). And of course Samsung still has headphone jacks, but I prefer stock Android over Samsung's implementation. I'll keep my Pixel for another year at least, maybe will keep it until it dies as it still runs just as smooth as the first day I bought it.