It’s not over, though. Many mid-range and low-end phones are still being released with headphone jacks. Clearly there is a) still a market to sell this feature to and b) still a way of incorporating a headphone jack into the design of a modern smartphone. We can theorise and speculate over whether this market had crossover with the one that bought high-end phones (before the manufacturers forcibly split them into separate groups by only offering the headphone jack on their cheaper models) or whether a mid-range or low-end phone has the same design limitations as a high-end phone, but I think it’s perfectly valid to continue to question why the headphone jack disappeared on more expensive phones. I don’t think consumers have received an honest or acceptable explanation yet from manufacturers, and for as long as that is the case there will be people who feel like they’ve been fucked over by yet another “courageous” example of planned/forced obsolescence.
That’s half of the question. The other half is whether wired earphones would have died out as quickly as they have appeared to if phone manufacturers had not removed the headphone jack whilst simultaneously pushing their own brand of TWS earphones, often in a bundle with the new phone. Prior to TWS you didn’t see that many Bluetooth earphones. A lot of people still got around with the famous wired iPhone ones, for example.
It’s not over, though. Many mid-range and low-end phones are still being released with headphone jacks. Clearly there is a) still a market to sell this feature to and b) still a way of incorporating a headphone jack into the design of a modern smartphone. We can theorise and speculate over whether this market had crossover with the one that bought high-end phones (before the manufacturers forcibly split them into separate groups by only offering the headphone jack on their cheaper models) or whether a mid-range or low-end phone has the same design limitations as a high-end phone, but I think it’s perfectly valid to continue to question why the headphone jack disappeared on more expensive phones. I don’t think consumers have received an honest or acceptable explanation yet from manufacturers, and for as long as that is the case there will be people who feel like they’ve been fucked over by yet another “courageous” example of planned/forced obsolescence.
I guess the real question is how many people use it? I have not seen a pair of wired headphones in use in years.
That’s half of the question. The other half is whether wired earphones would have died out as quickly as they have appeared to if phone manufacturers had not removed the headphone jack whilst simultaneously pushing their own brand of TWS earphones, often in a bundle with the new phone. Prior to TWS you didn’t see that many Bluetooth earphones. A lot of people still got around with the famous wired iPhone ones, for example.