We used to have earbuds that don't need to be charged because they had a headphone jack, didn't get lost so easily because they had a cord attached to a headphone jack, never lost the bluetooth connection because they had a headphone jack, and they cost less because they had a headphone jack. https://bsky.app/profile/daisyfm.bsky.social/post/3l3mfjc6sn62k
These jacks are still in every other audio device. They were removed from phones to force BT usage, which Google needs for their profiling telemetry network and Apple for their Find my Device thing. God forbid someone turns BT off or even decides they would prefer a phone without BT entirely. There is no other reason and how people prefer to listen to music has nothing to do with the subject.
Waterproofing is very difficult with a headphone jack. You'll notice virtually every single phone with a headphone jack is 'splash resistant' while many without are able to survive being submerged. It also saves a relatively large amount of internal space, for something that easy to move external with an adapter.
If we're talking about adding back in older communication standards, I would personally prefer an am/fm receiver and IR blaster; it would be cool to use my phone like a universal remote.
I don't get what people are doing who need waterproof phones, but I will accept that some people need this. To me it sounds far more like an edge case than people wanting wired headphones though, especially at the time they started removing jacks.
I really can't say for sure. It rains a lot where I live, so water proofing is a pretty big boon for me. I used to carry around a USB-C to headphone port adapter, but I never used it.
Valid. I've been thinking though. What's the problem with making a waterproof audio jack, if we have the USB C for charging?
I don't want to hate on wireless by any means. I often prefer wireless. But it's really fucking nice to have a power source connected and audio as well. It's very convenient. Especially if you have a dock and headset.
It just feels like such a redundant transformation that achieved nothing for the user.
There's adapters that allow charging at the same time. I'm not sure why audio jacks are difficult to waterproof. Samsung managed it on a few models, so it's certainly possible.
Personally I haven't had a situation where I wanted an audio jack in years, I assume the extra internal space goes towards things like longer battery life or slimmer form factors; not nothing, but also probably not a big deal for most people.
It seems like laptops are doing the same thing: all external ports are USB, and any specific needs get handled with dongles.
USB-C ports are pretty flexible, you can split one into many, use them for video & audio, use them for power delivery & networking, and they can transfer more data per second than cat5. It seems like manufacturers are trying to make it the one port to rule them all.