It's time to put the headphone jack behind us
Commentary: With huge advances in wireless audio, is the humble 3.5mm headphone jack as crucial as it once was?
It's been five years since Apple took it upon itself to take the headphone jack out of its iPhones. The change brought backlash from fans, but to their dismay, the industry followed suit. Nowadays you'd be hard-pressed to find a flagship phone that has one.
The fact of the matter is, five years have passed and that's a long time in tech. We've seen innovation in wireless audio technology come on leaps and bounds. In its infancy it was spotty, but now we have codecs that can almost mimic the fidelity of lossless audio. Not to mention the extra real estate freed up by the 3.5mm headphone jack's omission.
An analog component in a digital world.
Having personally ditched the wires back in 2016, I came back to them for this video and found them miserably cumbersome. I'm not saying there isn't a place for the headphone jack, but maybe its omission from our phones is just part of the industry's wider move from analog to digital, with even the charge port doubling as a point for data transfer. (And that may be the next to go.)
For the full lowdown, take a look at the video above and let me know your thoughts in the comments.