[Altay-]

Do you really think the audio jack was removed because of thinness?

Have you seen the inside of a smartphone? Its not just about thinness. There is very little space for anything besides the battery.

Also, removable batteries and the audio jack get in the way of dust/water proofing.

You may think shrinkage is pointless, but that's clearly not what the market or the top designers think. Why do you want a giant, useless, 100+ year old analog port on your 2017 device? I don't. Its ugly.

[_jal]

Agree on the battery part. But...

> Why do you want a giant, useless, 100+ year old analog port on your 2017 device? I don't. Its ugly.

Arguing about aesthetics is futile, but I want the port because I find it useful, and don't measure utility by invention-age. Seems similar to judging a beer by the bartender's height.

[thecrazyone]

I like this comparison, will steal.

> Seems similar to judging a beer by the bartender's height.

I'm puerile :)

[Arizhel]

>Also, removable batteries and the audio jack get in the way of dust/water proofing.

My Samsung Galaxy S5 proves you wrong on this.

>Why do you want a giant, useless, 100+ year old analog port on your 2017 device?

3.5mm jacks aren't 100 years old. 1/4" ones are. And I want one because my $350 Sennheiser headphones use a 3.5mm jack, and Bluetooth headphones sound like crap and Beats headphones are utter garbage.

[otheotheothe]

While i agree that the port is useful and i want a phone with one, your comment about Bluetooth headphones sounding crap is ridiculous.

The Bower and Wilkins ones are decent, the BW P7 Wireless is the best portable headphone i ever heard, the integrated bluetooth DAC is actually better than the DAC integrated in my iphone 5s and huawei p9 phones.

I had the sennheiser momentum 2 headphones before them, also different AKG Headphones and the BW7 Wireless beat them on all aspects when it comes to the sound, in Bluetooth mode (they also have an optional cable included - they sound better with the bluetooth dac tho!)

[vidarh]

Maybe that's true, but my experience from the other end of the price scale is that cheap bluetooth headphones are absolutely awful compared to cheap wired headphones. I'd love to be proven wrong on that, as I don't like the wires, but even when I've had bluetooth headphones that sounded tolerable, switching back to even the cheapest wired headphones felt like a revelation.

Personally, I care just enough about the audio quality that this matters, but that I'm not willing to pay for an expensive pair like the BW P7 (more like 1/10th of that price...), and in my price range.

Bluetooth won't be a good replacement until they can compete on quality across that whole price range.

[hueving]

>Why do you want a giant, useless, 100+ year old analog port on your 2017 device? I don't. Its ugly.

I presume you've removed the electrical outlets from your home for the same reason.

[JoeAltmaier]

And the water faucets! And the drains! And the toilets! And the windows! And doorknobs! And doors! Heck who needs doors - we can just crawl in the windows.

Sometimes things invented 100 years ago (or 1000) are all we need. People don't evolve that fast.

[ascorbic]

There's an incredible innovation that can shrink a 3.5mm audio socket by over 30% in thickness. It's called a 2.5mm socket.

[marcusjt]

One of my old phones (the Treo 650 I think) had one of those sockets, and using an adapter to plug in 3.5mm earphones was pretty irritating.

[ascorbic]

More or less irritating than a Lightning-3.5mm adapter?

[PhasmaFelis]

> Do you really think the audio jack was removed because of thinness?

That and to shill overpriced, easy-to-lose Bluetooth earbuds, yeah.

> You may think shrinkage is pointless, but that's clearly not what the market or the top designers think. Why do you want a giant, useless, 100+ year old analog port on your 2017 device? I don't. Its ugly.

How on earth is a tiny, inconspicuous round hole uglier than a big dangly headphone adapter?

That aside, this is exactly the problem I'm talking about. The "top designers" have decided that phones are fashion accessories first and working tools second. I like good design as much as the next guy, but good design is functional. A pretty tool that doesn't work properly is useless.

[waivej]

I think the audio jack was removed as a step toward not requiring cables at all.

[ComputerGuru]

You need to revisit your comment. A 3.5mm port with Bluetooth does not require cables any more than a Bluetooth-only device.

[spacemanmatt]

Except BlueTooth audio quality is terrible. No one is wrong to want something better, wireless or 3.5mm.

[ComputerGuru]

That's fine, but that has nothing to do with whether or not the presence of a 3.5mm jack makes wires mandatory. Whether or not the quality of the bluetooth stack improves with the removal of the 3.5mm jack is highly debatable.

[vidarh]

There is very little space for anything because of the insistence on making the phone thin. Without the thinness fetish there'd be plenty of space without sacrificing the jack. Add even 1mm, and e.g. the area covered by a battery with the same capacity is drastically reduced. Just look at some older (thicker) phone batteries for comparison to the pancake batteries in newer phones.

> Also, removable batteries and the audio jack get in the way of dust/water proofing.

The same method used to dust-proof/water proof the USB apply exactly as much to the jack. And they also apply just as well for the battery compartment - nobody cares about making the battery compartment dust proof, after all.

I can say water proofing is never something I've looked for in any phone beyond being able to handle the occasional splash. Even then, if you look at the inside of devices with removable batteries vs. devices where the batteries are not intended to be, the main difference is that in the former there is usually an inner shell covering the rest of the components - overall the internals of the phone tends to be better protected. If you want to water-proof that inner compartment, then worst case you get shorts. Again, this is about thinness and some extent cost-custting - dust proofing and water proofing is a total canard since you still have wires crossing the boundary, and two more sets is not going to make a major difference.

> You may think shrinkage is pointless, but that's clearly not what the market or the top designers think.

We don't know what the market thinks, because there are no high end devices that sacrifice thinness for e.g. battery capacity as none of the big brands dare to even try to be different.

I've just gotten a Umi phone that uses a 4000 mAh battery (vs. more typically 2400-2600 for most of the mid-range MTK based phones) and it's fantastic to have that extra battery capacity, but it's a Chinese phone with little presence in Europe/US.

Give it a few more years and we may see if any of the smaller brands manage to grow based on their larger battery capacity.

There are a few others - you can get a decent quality Android phone with 6000 mAh, and one with 10,000 mAh. The downside is that the latter was built with the assumption that anyone wanting that much care more about battery lifetime than anything else, and so it sacrifices the screen quality for a lower power one too, and makes various other sacrifices.

> Why do you want a giant, useless, 100+ year old analog port on your 2017 device? I don't. Its ugly.

I found this hysterical after your appeal to the authority of "the market or the top designers". Outside of Apple, pretty much only HTC have taken that leap. The vast majority of "the market or the top designers" so far still insist on keeping the headphone plug. Maybe that will change, but I note that on my commute now, pretty much everyone I see with a new iPhone also drag along ugly adapters so they can use their old headphones.