Asklemmy

Why wouldn't you prefer a headphone jack in your phone? It is yet another option for headphones that worst case you don't use. The only reason it has been removed is because it saves companies a few cents on the cost to build the product.

Credit where it's due, Bluetooth headphones have come a long way. I like the ones I have now. That said, removing the jack and micro SD slots was extremely anti consumer and they should come back.

This is my first phone without a headphone jack.

I miss it dearly.

nope, actually never used it. i've had and will continue having Bluetooth headphones

"VPN user voting is not allowed"

Lol.

I hate that I now have to use wireless earbuds that I now have to worry about charging, or that go flat at the most inopertune times....

Having something plugged into the usb-c port all day sounds like a recipe for a broken port.

Yes, because fuck having to charge and monitor another battery and the way they are trying to push higher price and disposable device.

Nah, once I made the switch to Bluetooth 8 years ago or something. I have never gone back.

Actually I did once between Bluetooth headsets and the first time the cords got tangled I was like oh right that's why.

The headphone jack would be less painful of a loss if phone manufacturers started adding a second USB-C port on top of the device. That way you wouldn't have to choose between charging your phone, listening to your game without lag and in privacy, or carry a dongle to try doing both things at the same time.

This poll kind of sucks for data gathering. You ask two different questions but there's only one set of answers. Even the first question alone asks if we use and/or require, which should be separate.

To answer though: I use my headphone adapter whenever I travel but don't have a regular headphone jack. A jack is not absolutely required for me to purchase a phone but the adapter is.

Drag your preferred option to the top wtf is this UX...

Yes. It's my way of voting with my wallet. I already have a few nice headphones and I'm not replacing them just because phone manufacturers are cheap and lazy.

Besides, I hate batteries. They always die at the most inconvenient time. And USB-c just for audio is way overkill.

I exclusively use wired earbuds because I fucking hate bluetooth as a technology

Why isn't there an option for "the lack of a headphone jack is a complete deal breaker and I refuse to even consider a phone that doesn't have one?"

I hate to say but the poll is biased because you asked two questions that are not the same.

I currently have a phone without a jack, so the first question is obviously no. But the second question, would I prefer it, is a yes.

So there's a group of people who would prefer it, but it's not a deal breaker for them in your data, but they answered a different question than the headline.

Yes! No.1 reason: microphone quality! I have to attend many calls every day and no Bluetooth headset (BT v.4 > 5.3, SPS, AAC, LDAC) has even come close to the simple quality of a ~25,-€ wired headset.

I use my headphone jack everyday, I'm way more obsessed with music and audio than I am about photography. My phone camera is for taking pictures of my dog looking goofy 95% of the time, I don't need multiple 4K cameras with pro grade lenses for that.

This is becoming a real concern for me even though I have no plans to replace my current phone, I already got slim pickings in the current market and doubt the trends gonna change anytime soon.

I use both. I want both. Bluetooth and headphone jack. Is this too much to ask?

Opted not to vote because:

• biased leading questions
• strawpoll

Nice bullshit poll making 'Yes' the pre-selected choice and clicking an other option not changing it, even when its highlighted. Dragging choices is absolutely counterintuitive and actively misleading. Lets start a poll if people like murder and wonder about the 50/50 result at the end.

Yes but this voting style is uhhh ... poop

I'm not a fan of BT headphones. It's three things (2 pods and the case that charges them) that you have to juggle and keep charged, vs just one that works whenever the device it's plugged into works. Wired headphones have a nice additional perk of discouraging people from interacting with you, while (at least anecdotally) the BT ones seem to lose that deterrent... and the venn diagram for times I want to use headphones and the times I don't want to deal with other people is just one crisp circle.

I always try to pick out a phone that has a 3.5mm jack, but that's becoming increasingly hard to do.

The poll/voting process is flawed & I don't like that.

That said, idk, I'm a blue collar working adult & the aux/wired connection isn't a necessity in my daily life. I can often, if not always, blast my music on an Ion loudspeaker. Car has Bluetooth. Home, I've got Bluetooth.

But that's just not the point for me; my phone has an aux port & I rarely use it. Used it to connect headphones on a walk last week. It's nice & I like having the option. Getting rid of it was purely an anti-consumer move, so needless, and obviously they can build it into the phones without detracting from battery or taking away from water resistance. Everything I've heard justifying removing aux is either a lie or an excuse.

It's a nice to have and frankly aside from maybe water resistance there's no good reason to remove it. The 3.5mm jack has worked since the dawn of portable music, doesn't require often fickle pairing, and of significant issue to me at least doesn't have the potential for some future DRM scheme when the media companies decide you have to use their special app to play something. It's much the same reason I resisted HDMI for as long as possible.

That said, I do use wireless and probabbly would routinely even if the current phone did have a jack, but I would very much like to have it there just for the option to plug a wire in and attach it wherever I feel like. Wouldn't be the first time an aux port or RCA adapter came in handy.

Yes! I do still use the headphone jack. Bluetooth is trash and suffers from extreme latency and is not capable of the same quality of a wired connection.

I recently bought some bluetooth earphones (sony wf-c500) after many years of avoiding it. I was under the impression that things had improved but bluetooth is still as bad as I remember them. The audio latency on windows alone is unreal but another kettle of fish.

The real disgrace is that phone manufacturers removed the MicroSD card slot and then tried to justify it with weak excuses that didn't add up. MicroSD/SD cards have also recently become much quicker but nobody was using a MicroSD card as primary storage anyway so it was irrelevant and a weak argument at best. The only reason why phone manufacturers did remove it was to charge you much more for the large storage capacity phones. I would also say the price increase for that given storage space was and is also vastly more expensive than it actually is. In other words it is a cash grab. Its also of no coincidence that many phone manufacturers also now sell their own shitty Bluetooth headphones.

We can also sight the absence of charging cables/cords and wall plugs/power bricks. Not to mention that people these days are more privacy focused and tech savvy and begrudgingly use android or apple phones as they know with each update their privacy is being further eroded away. Whilst also being undermined by manufacturers with such things as planned obsolescence and them deliberately making it difficult if not impossible to repair your own phone.

...and phone manufacturers wonder why nobody wants to buy a phone anymore. Dumbasses! The truth is there are many more number of reasons why phones are garbage these days.

I do prefer to use a headphone jack when my phone is the source of music for my amplified sound system and large room speakers.

I mostly use bluetooth, but the jack of my phone is not sitting there unused. I have wired headphones too, and I frequently use my phone as a microphone (because it is one) by connecting it to my computer by a jack cable.

Also, the next headphone of mine will probably be wired. Always keeping it charged is not really a problem, but the privacy aspect of Bluetooth has started to disturb me.
With a wired connection, you exactly know and control who connects to your devices, and at the same time you don't announce to the world that you are here.

Also, as I understand you can't use USB-C for audio and charging or data transfer at the same time, or even all 3 at the same time. Is that right?
That is critical functionality for me. Audio is not just entertainment, it could be an online meeting or other things too, and at one point I'll have to change my phone, or transfer files from it. However I don't have a USB-C phone so I can't test it, so I would appreciate if someone could confirm if this is actually the case.

I usually use wireless headphones nowadays, but there are still plenty of instances where I'm happy to have the headphone jack. Random parties where someone needs to play music via the aux cable, going somewhere with only some small wired headphones in my pocket because I dont have space, etc. For me it's still quite important that my next phone has one.

My current phone (Pixel 6) doesn't have a headphone jack, and I hate it because of that. I bought an adapter and it didn't work, turns out most phones with a Qualcomm SoC have a DAC so a passive adapter is fine... But the pixel has a non-qualcomm SoC which doesn't have a DAC connected to the USB-C port so I had to get a dongle with a DAC. They suck, and cost more than the passive dongles, and half of them sound like garbage with terrible QC.

Also dongles are easy to lose or break, since they are fragile.

My next phone has to have a headphone jack.

I don't actively need a headphone jack on my phone but when I do need one I am annoyed that my phone does not have one.

Man, fuck this straw poll website. VPN voting is not allowed? I’m not even on a VPN.

In answer to your question, OP: No, it’s not a requirement for me. I would much prefer if I had one, but it’s not that important for me, I don’t often listen to music from my phone, and when I do I’m in the car, so I just play it over Bluetooth.

No. I had jumped to BT long before Apple* first dropped the hole. I hate cords; I hate the tangle and snagging. It's another lever with which to break a connection on the circuit board, and another ingress for water.

I know audio is better over cords, but I don't hear the difference, so the convenience won for me.

• I just discovered that my phone sometimes autocorrects "Apple" to "asshole." Fun.

Yes and removable battery aswell.

Choosing a new phone has been rather easy, since about once every 5 years someone makes one model that loosely fits the criteria.

No headphone jack, no buy.

Yes. Yes yes.