Taking the Headphone Jack Off Phones Is User-Hostile and Stupid (theverge.com)

A WSJ report on Tuesday claimed that the next iPhone won't have the 3.5mm headphone port. A handful of smartphones such as LeEco's Le 2, Le 2 Pro, and Le Max 2 that have launched this year already don't have a headphone jack. The Verge's Nilay Patel has an opinion piece in which he argues that smartphone companies shouldn't ditch headphone ports as it helps no consumer. He lists six reasons:
1. Digital audio means DRM audio :Restricting audio output to a purely digital connection means that music publishers and streaming companies can start to insist on digital copyright enforcement mechanisms. We moved our video systems to HDMI and got HDCP, remember? Copyright enforcement technology never stops piracy and always hurts the people who most rely on legal fair use, but you can bet the music industry is going to start cracking down on "unauthorized" playback and recording devices anyway.2. Wireless headphones and speakers are fine, not great.
3. Dongles are stupid, especially when they require other dongles.
4. Ditching a deeply established standard will disproportionately impact accessibility.:The headphone jack might be less good on some metrics than Lightning or USB-C audio, but it is spectacularly better than anything else in the world at being accessible, enabling, open, and democratizing. A change that will cost every iPhone user at least $29 extra for a dongle (or more for new headphones) is not a change designed to benefit everyone.5. Making Android and iPhone headphones incompatible is incredibly arrogant and stupid.
6. No one is asking for this.

Comments

Re:cost reduction

[Anonymous Coward]

You're forgetting they'd most likely include a lightening port to 3.5mm dongle, which would cost more than the 3.5mm jack in the phone.
That said, They'd likely make a killing reselling lightening port Beats Audio headphones to the hipsters & clueless.

Re:This is what passes for innovation

[BronsCon]

The market hasn't moved on to bluetooth headsets. A segment of the market uses bluetooth headsets (myself included) but I'd hardly say we've moved on to them. They're great for making calls or listening to music in noisy environments where difference a quality pair of headphones makes can't be heard anyway, but bluetooth uses very heavily lossy compression, unless you're lucky enough to have a phone and headset that both support Apt-X, in which case you only lose quality to re-compression. A good pair of wired headphones simply can not be beat, though; no re-compression, no signal loss, no dropouts due to interference when everyone else on the bus or train has their own headset and half of them have a smartwatch, all using the very narrow sliver of spectrum available to bluetooth and all within range of each other.

Re:cost reduction

[sr180]

Samsung Galaxy has been waterproof without removing the headphone jack...

Some early HTC / Dopod windows phones had no headphone jack. It was all pumped through the usb. And It sucked. It sucked hard core. I have no interest in ever buying a phone again without a headphone jack.

Re:cost reduction

[Calydor]

That was bullet point #2 in the list: 2. Wireless headphones and speakers are fine, not great.