[elmarschraml]

The headphone port is inherently analog - more like power than VGA.

With VGA, it made sense to switch to digital ports once the displays went all digital (flatscreens). With VGA, you were converting a digital signal to an analog signal just to send it over the wire, where it got converted back to digital to drive the display.

But speakers or headphones are analog devices, they need analog voltage to make membranes move back and forth. The analog headphone port directly drives the speakers, whereas any digital port needs a chip inside the speakers to convert the digital signal to analog. It makes much more sense to have a single DAC (digital-to-analog converter, or "soundcard") inside the phone, than to have a separate one in every single pair of headphones.

Granted, you could argue that a digital signal travels better over the wire, or that the user could choose to use headphones with better quality DACs. But for all practical purposes, the analog headphone port works fine, and when it comes to standards, open and universal wins over the highest quality any time.

[agumonkey]

Very good points. Digital audio links will open market for deported DACs. Even maybe tiny generic CPU/DSP hybrids for [en]coding evolution purposes. Since nowadays this class of chips is hitting commodity production costs ..