Why the Headphone Jack is Going EXTINCT
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2019-05-06
·
1,032 words · ~5 min read
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when apple revealed the iphone 7 back in 2016 the company was widely ridiculed
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for describing its decision to omit the formerly universal headphone jack as
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courageous a term that is usually reserved for people like war veterans
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and cancer survivors but marketing bombast aside apple started a trend as
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they so typically do and these days many other smartphone manufacturers are
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ditching the headphone jack is there actually a good reason for this now the
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cynics quickly crafted their own theories apple was trying to be different just
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because or maybe they were trying to push their conveniently just released
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not to mention expensive wireless airpods which is obviously going to be
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easier if the alternative is a clunky looking dongle or maybe they just wanted
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more of that sweet sweet lightning connector royalty money for the
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third-party headphones that would inevitably show up down the line
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featuring that connector but none of these explained the industry trend that
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was about to take place i mean did the others follow suit just because they
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wanted to be cool like apple well hold on a minute now maybe there were some
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shenanigans going on here but the official explanation that apple gave
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once you get past the nonsense about courage actually made quite a bit of
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sense smartphones are really miniature
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computers and the companies that manufacture them are tasked with taking
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the basic functions of a machine that has traditionally occupied a large chunk
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of your desk or at best your backpack and fit them into something that can
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comfortably rest in your pocket and they also provided the admittedly
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very reasonable rationale that fewer points of ingress made it easier for
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their latest device to officially be water resistant
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i mean here's the thing we kind of take it for granted because smartphones even
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waterproof ones are everywhere but all of that stuff is not trivial to
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do and it requires very efficient use of just about every bit of available space
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inside the device so it shouldn't have surprised anyone that manufacturers
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including apple had been increasingly viewing the headphone jack as a space
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hog that just doesn't justify how much real estate it takes up
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and this is especially true when you consider that some people already didn't
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use it and they've got so many extra
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features that they're trying to cram into these phones to make them stand out
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from the competition from 3d face recognition sensors to triple camera
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setups to more spacious batteries and this is all in the name of
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differentiating their phone from their competitors in a world where truly tiny
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differences between models can make or break sales
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and according to the folks calling the shots for these manufacturers trends
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like displays that take up as much of the front of the phone as possible and
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thin sleek chassis are driven directly by consumer demand this has led to not
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just headphone jacks but also bezels and even physical buttons ending up going
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the way of the television channel dial
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now we aren't going to defend every reason
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some companies claimed that they were ditching the headphone jack because it
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delivers poor audio quality compared to wireless solutions or headphones that
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connect digitally via usbc or a lightning port but while an analog
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connection can be affected by electrical interference from other components
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inside a phone many users were perfectly happy with the sound quality they were
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getting and the convenience factor of
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something that's compatible with all your old stuff is pretty high but
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regardless of the intentions of the company that made your smartphone the
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disappearance of the headphone jack looks like it's a trend that's going to
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be very hard or maybe even impossible to
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reverse even though many users have lamented that bluetooth usbc and
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lightning headphones often don't provide good enough sound quality
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or a good enough user experience to justify their price tags throw in then
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the fact that you often have to buy a separate adapter just to listen to your
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headphones and charge your phone at the same time and taking out the headphone jack
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remains a controversial decision more than two years after we were all first
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introduced to the idea well
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i for one accept it i think it's going to be okay as long as this doesn't
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become a trend in the tablet space that wait what
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really i mean come on
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