I’m not saying your argument is invalid but…sure the iPhone could also have a waterproof headphone jack if we wanted port covers on it too. The phone you linked looks nothing like something I want in my pocket all day
The Pixel 5a has a headphone jack, is waterproof, and has no port covers. It has an actual IP rating, with all the added expense that comes with, and still is shockingly cheap. It has a great looking design and is very close in size to a contemporary iphone.
It can be done, Apple didn't do it because they didn't want to.
Many many phones had waterproof headphone jacks without flaps before the iPhone 7 added waterproofing like the Galaxy S5. Many still do, e.g Samsung A52.
I'm not sure whether I'm more shocked you have multiple reasons/causes for breaking your phone or that you have enough data points available that you can reliably identify a "main reason" amongst those multiple reasons.
Seriously, have you considered taking better care of your possessions?
How the hell do cabled headphones lead to a broken screen? I've owned quite a variety of mobile phones over the last 23 years, have never used a case to protect any of them, have used cabled headphones with a bunch of them, and the only one I've broken is one that I deliberately dropped into a glass of vodka and coke back in the year 2000 because I was smashed off my tits and it seemed like a good idea at the time (it wasn't, even though I'd been planning to replace it anyway - in the interim the lack of a phone was a major PITA for several days).
The Samsung phones are waterproof, I have seen it accidentally tested.
I love my iPhone but, I really think it's no coincidence the headphone jack removal coincided with the release of airpods, just over a year and a half after the purchase of beats by Dre.
Yep, an S7 went swimming with me for about half on hour one day and after a quick pat down it worked just fine. I wouldn't mind the switch away from jacks so much if most phones & bluetooth earbuds supported higher quality codecs, but it seems relatively rare.
There's stuff like the Ulefone Armor 9 FLIP rugged smartphone which has the headphone jack and has even better ingress protection than the iPhone:
> the extra padding and protection that comes with an IP68/IP69K-rated, MIL-STD-810G certified outdoor smartphone
https://www.techradar.com/reviews/ulefone-armor-9-flir-rugge...
Apple removed the headphone jack for Airbuds and to get extra money. Their accessory division would be a Fortune 500 company, on its own.
You don't get to be a billionaire by giving money away (or not picking it up when users throw it at you).