Weekend poll: Would you buy a smartphone without a headphone jack?.
More and more, it seems the headphone jack is being considered an acceptable casualty in the name of modern smartphone design. LeEco generated headlines when they dropped it on their new devices, but perhaps the biggest stir came when Motorola announced the Z and Z and Force would forego 3.5mm ports in favor of... a dongle.
This caused considerable consternation. Some, though, were in favor of it - Bluetooth headphones and earbuds are increasingly popular today, and while I'd argue the traditional cabled headphone still very much has its place, that place is probably less a smartphone than it was three or four years ago. Personal audio is changing, as are our phones.
Now, I personally find zero appeal in USB-C headphones - they're really just a gimmick to get you to buy new stuff from audio companies. Analog signal is analog signal, and headphones that actually process digital signal and provide built-in amplification are essentially just adding another expensive link in the chain to fail. No thanks. If I want to go into the "future" of personal audio, it's going to be sans wires altogether.
The adapter dongle for traditional 3.5mm devices is a solution, though I'd say that it's an imperfect one - I've already forgotten the dongle for my Moto Z Force review unit on one occasion when I wanted to used my headphones, and I've heard this echoed by numerous reviewers now. But eventually, you'd probably adapt (har har) or just keep the adapter dongle attached to your headphones at all times.
But my real beef? I still don't see a good reason to get rid of the 3.5mm jack in the first place. Sure, we see "thinness" or "simplicity" offered up, or in some cases, questionable claims of superior audio, but the 3.5mm stereo standard is just so damn ubiquitous. So, in this weekend's poll, I ask you: where do you stand on the issue of smartphones without headphone jacks? For the purpose of the poll, assume a small adapter dongle can be used with legacy headphones (like the Moto Z does), not that the phone is incapable of using 3.5mm headsets entirely.
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