Probably preaching to the choir here, but headphone jacks are really a must, and USB-c adapters have their limits

"USB-adapter" in this context used to be quite a shitshow.

I've seen at least the bastardisations of the USB-c spec where manufacturers just repurpose a couple of pins for analog audio. One for samsung, one for Xiaomi etc.

I hope most have gone over to being proper USB soundcards with a DAC today.

I will be sad when my S10 dies, purely for finding a headphone jack. It might sound dumb, but I only see drawbacks to bluetooth audio, as it's not solving any problem I had to begin with. :)

Might have missed it but still shocked that there are only a couple models that go for more than one USB-C port.

I have been of the opinion that the adapters are acceptable because you gain flexibility with things like external DACs, which several people have brought up, but having to trade between charging and wired devices or a truly overkill dock style dongle just seems so silly when phones absolutely have the space to put two ports.

I just keep buying phones with headphone jacks. I use bluetooth headphones too, but have a wired set for fallback, especially when travelling.

Also, if you're on a call or vc, a good wired set wth a well placed mike on the wire (e.g. marshall mode) gives you better sound quality and better exclusion of environment noise than any bluetooth headphones, and you don't have to worry about earbud batteries running out mid call.

It limits phone selection a lot, but so far there has been good phones with headphone jacks every time

My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy A32, the last in the A3x line that has one. It's really nice to have a headphone jack because... well, you plug your pair in, and it just works. You don't have to worry about Bluetooth connections, or another battery that will die one day that you constantly have to recharge. Also, you get FM radio functionality on your phone, which isn't really useful, but it's pretty fun to mess with. I'm surprised Apple never had it on the iPod Touch despite the Nano and Classic both having it (some with a special accessory that unlocks the feature, some have it built in).

Also, support for my phone ends on Android 13 (One UI 5.1), meaning if I want new features (or even emoji updates), I have to get a newer phone, and that means either getting a lower tier model to keep that headphone jack at the cost of performance, or getting the same tier (or higher) at the cost of the jack. And I was never convinced by other Android phone manufacturers either, especially since companies like OnePlus don't sell their products in my country, so my options are either Samsung, Google, or a whole bunch of Chinese companies, many have really terrible skins of Android. Either that or I get an iPhone, and none of the ones that are currently supported have the headphone jack. So I guess I'm sticking with my A32 until the day it nukes itself.

My friend group used to be very big on "pass the aux cord" when we're hanging out. It was incredibly easy to switch out our phones (or iPods and portable CD players before that) to let all of us contribute music for the gathering.

Now? Ok, I disconnected from the BT speaker. Do you see it yet? Lemme try turning the BT speaker off and on again. [BING BONG!; "Connected"] Ugh, it reconnected to my phone. Let me just turn BT off on my phone and you try again.

It's just such a PITA with BT, and having to keep USB-C and Lightning adapters on hand is even more annoying than that. If only there were a reliable and dedicated connection for audio devices....oh well.

A good quality DAC connected to your USB port will give you far better sound than having a headphone jack.

Headphone jack and removable battery are the two features I will not compromise on. Makes selecting a new phone pretty damn easy. I would have loved a fairphone but sorry, no exceptions.

I actually quite like the Bluetooth DAC I got because of the disappearance of my headphone jack. It breaks that physical attachment of my headphones to my phone while giving very good quality audio.

I'd recommend checking out the Fiio BTR line if interested.

A "must", only for a subset of users.

If it were truly a "must", more people would be complaining.

I get it, you find Bluetooth unappealing for reasons, just like I find larger phones unappealing. Unfortunately, we're a minority, neither of these are a "must" for most people.

For me I'm really split on wired vs wireless headphones as well. I do love how being wireless makes moving around easier. I'm sure we've all felt the rage when the wire gets caught and gets unplugged. But the amount of times I have to charge it while I want to use it is pretty annoying too.

I get it. However, I switched to having a good set of overear headphones connected via Bluetooth some years ago. I’ve never looked back, the freedom is amazing!

I was dead against losing my 3.5mm jack, and tried to use a USB-to-3.5mm adaptor but it was poor, with issues like your sister experienced.

I finally decided to try a set of relatively cheap earplugs and I wish I'd done it sooner. They're lightweight, have good connectivity and a convenient charging case. I'm getting better quality audio and experience than I was with my 3.5mm jack - i'd have to replace my headsets every year or less as the wires got damaged over time, and the audio quality is actually better with my bluetooth earplugs. I used to avoid bluetooth after bad experiences over the years with audio drop out and connection issues, but I've not had any problems with my newer devices.

I'm not pretending they are audiophile quality but neither is 3.5mm audio in a phone - they just don't have good quality DACs in phones. Bluetooth is finally a decent and convenient step up for me for day-to-day use and I'm finally not as bothered about losing my 3.5mm port. It's also worth noting that if you want better audio, you can get bluetooth DACs and plug wired audio into those for an even better experience - I'm tempted but it's expensive and I'm not sure I'd appreciate the benefit enough to make it worthwhile for me.

About 4years ago, I decided to get a phone that I could modify (custom rom, root and such) and that had a proper camera. So I got a xiaomi mi 10, which has no audio jack (or even sd card reader..)

The default adapter lasted about 3years (I dont use wired earphones that often) and I decided to get a "proper" one from a ugreen brand (I found reviews that their previous model was bad and they had released a new better one) (it's this one UGreen AV161). It seems sturdy (it has that fiberglass sleeve too), hoping it will last.

It's indeed bad that they dont put a headphone jack and I find it sad that fairphone dropped it too, cuz I'm thinking of buying a phone from them in the future. Not only it reduces the phone's usability, but also indirectly forces you to buy wireless earphones. On top of that, using wired earphones puts extra wear on the single usb port (which I dont know how easy it is to replace it, I've only replaced a micro-usb port).

I dont exactly know where I'm going with this comment, but ok😅

No not it is not a must. And the vast majority of pwope don't care.

Flagship phones are crap IMO, my personal hatred for glass as a material used unnecessarily for the back is immense.
Glass sucks in every aspect, it's slippery, it's heavier, it's a finger print magnet, and it's fragile in a place where you can choose synthetics that are better in every way.
Losing the jack and SD cards suck too, and preventing replaceable batteries is so bad, it's actually illegal in EU from 2027. I have no idea why that couldn't have been sooner.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/06/22/new-eu-law-to-force-smartphone-makers-to-build-easily-replaceable-batteries

The rules will come into force in 2027.

I'm so sick of this, that I've decided NO WAY I'm buying a flagship next time, despite I absolutely love features like an amazing camera and screen.

But they can piss right off with their bullshit, pardon my French.
I bet a manufacturer could get sales advertising that it's NOT a glass back, and that it HAS mini-jack.
But I also miss the notification LED, how did they figure it was a good idea to remove that too???

The weird thing is they ALL do this shit? Where's the competition on maintaining well established functions? A mini jack doesn't prevent use of wireless earphones, but lack of it absolutely prevents the use of wired ones.

I lost my jack during an upgrade last year, but I also got free buds with the phone. I thought I would hate them, but I actually listen to more music now than I ever did before because it's so convenient not to be wired to the phone.

We also have a couple of good over-ear wired headphones in our house, so I bought an adapter to be able to use them. I bought a no brand one for a few pounds off Amazon (just to try it out at first, really), so probably the DAC inside is not doing them justice, but they still sound great, much better than the buds. It still works fine now, so until it breaks, I'm pretty happy with it. If it breaks, I won't be happy with it, but then I'll probably get a better one.

For your sister, maybe try a different adapter if the connection's bad, assuming it's not filled with lint or something. Google assistant has only ever gotten in the way of everything for me, so don't enable it - not sure what to do about that.

she has to twitch the jack in the adapter for the thing to work

This is the downfall of all headphone jacks tbh

The headphone cable is excellent for sure and I will never ever buy another set of wireless headphones again.

I have one set of wireless earbuds (Sony XM3) for when bigger headphones are impractical and for the price the battery life is shit. After roughly 2ish years of moderate use the battery life is cut noticeably and after 3 they barely last 30 minutes. Thankfully changing the battery is fairly simple (go sony!) although the battery used is a weird proprietary cell that cannot be purchased through legitimate channels and is fairly expensive (boo sony). But whatever, $30 on batteries is better than tossing earbuds that cost $250-300 a few years ago.

That said I have moved on from phones with headphone jacks. I still have a few sets of proper ass headphones that are pretty nice. If I want to use them with my phone I don’t fuck with dongles, I have a Qudelix 5K DAC/AMP. This allows me to use my wired headphones with any Bluetooth thing really. The only thing that could improve it is a user replaceable battery, and they made that: the Qudelix T71 although I haven’t tried that. And frankly I’m pretty sure I can figure out swapping the battery on this whenever it croaks. I’ve sourced and changed a lot of batteries in my time.

It’s not as nice as my proper setup for listening to flac or vinyl but it’s pretty indistinguishable aurally for the most part when listening to flac on my phone (vs flac on my home server via my better dac/amp which again is pretty aurally indistinguishable unless you’re a buttsniffing audiophile type. And if you are I dare you to double blind test it)

Regarding your sister's issue: that happened to me less when I paid a little more for a quality adapter. I think I got a two pack for $15 and the cord has some rubber protection where the wire turns into USB C and where it turns into a headphone jack. Haven't had the same issue your sister is having ever since.

I got some bose bluetooth headphones probably 7-8 years ago at this point and they're still working fine. I hate earbuds, personally, so that was never an option. I do hate having one more thing to charge and possibly die, but the noise canceling is also super helpful so that's fine for me. I've had zero problems with google assistant or anything else, but I'm pretty sure I have it mostly disabled on my phone.

The g84 is a great mid range phone with all the things that a phone should have, except for a decent camera.

Being Motorola it has a couple of idiotic quirks that will never get fixed

• kills Facebook messenger in the background no matter what your do.

• on some but not all Australian 5g networks, the camera closes after a few seconds and is unusable unless you switch to 4g etc.

I can live with those given the rest of the stuff is great for the price point.

Rarely use headphones so can't comment much on that side. FM radio seems to manage without.

I am about to switch to a pixel 7a from a 3a and am facing this issue. My wired ear buds date to some type of sandisk mp3 player I bought about 15 years ago and are pretty rough, so I have been looking at my wired options. Thanks for this post!

I love my pixel 6a, except for this point.

Fortunately, I have no bad experience on it with USB c adapter and the jack glued to it 😁👌

I initially held on to the headphone jack but nowadays I've completely stopped caring. My Galaxy Buds 2 Pros are pretty dang good even by audiophile standards and the convenience of TWS is quite nice. For my wired IEMs the 9$ Apple dongle works just fine with my Galaxy S24+. Nowadays some IEMS also have USB-C version and I suspect that this trend will continue. Like it or not that jack will eventually become a thing of the past on the vast majority of consumer electronics, not just on phones.

I basically don't notice that I don't have a headphone jack. My usb-c adapter is just permanently affixed to my wired IEMs and it basically makes no difference to me if the plug is round or usb-c shaped.

I definitely recommend biting the bullet and getting a good adapter. Since I have a pixel I use the Google one. I made sure my partner got an official apple one for their iPhone since I remember seeing rumors about a volume difference between them if mixed and matched. Aside from Apple shenanigans I haven't really had an issue with them. I also only charge at night so I never have the problem of needing to charge and listen at the same time.

I think that the insistance on headphone jack has gone too far.
There are now enough wired USB-C headphones and wireless earbuds available.
Yes, there are edge cases, like people who work in audio industry where most equipment uses jack as standard connector, or car aux ports, etc.
But when it comes to most casual listening, there are enough solutions.

When migrating to the new phone I tried with USB-C to 3.5 adapter. It did not work most of the time. I suspect that the issue was in my somewhat defective headphones, which have damaged wire and therefore unreliable connection.
Previous phone and other devices were probably able to mitigate the occasional "disconnect", while the adapter completely dropped connection.

But then I bought USB-C headphones, which work fine.