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Thinness and waterproofing are the two things I've heard that lead to removing the jack. Neither seems insurmountable, but if you want to try and remove as man

by Cogito 8y ago

Thinness and waterproofing are the two things I've heard that lead to removing the jack. Neither seems insurmountable, but if you want to try and remove as many obstacles as possible in the search of those two things then the headphone jack is apparently one of the simpler ones. Speakers, camera lens, physical buttons, charging, and data transfer are the remaining ones I can think of, and many of those have already been replaced in some models.

yellowapple 8y ago
Samsung's been shipping waterproof (or at least water-resistant) headphone-jacked phones for years now.
- Cogito 8y ago
  Exactly, I think there are solutions for more or less everything I listed, or solutions could be found if necessary. I think the headphone jack is a very practical component of the phone, and miss it regularly, but removing it does remove a few limitations on the designer. At some point, in perhaps the not too distant future, I wouldn't be surprised if phones had been reduced down to look like not much more than a piece of glass. Maybe even a piece of flexible glass! That's definitely been the trend for a while now, and things like edge to edge screens and wireless charging move us further in that direction. Thankfully neither of those seem to have necessitated the removal of some other function. There have been other casualties other on this path to simplification, such as the removal of the physical home button, but I don't think any which leave as big a gap as the headphone jack.
  - lagadu 8y ago
    That would definitely be cool, we see them fairly often in modern scifi films/shows too nowadays.
- icebraining 8y ago
  Yeah, I mean it's not like they need to allow air to pass to the interior of the phone. All you need is a couple of exposed metal tabs, no different than the USB/lightning port.
lagadu 8y ago
Can't be thinness because the thinnest iphone ever is the 6s, which has a headphone jack and it can't be waterproofing because android makers seem to do waterproof phones with jacks just fine some of them even thinner than iphones too.

by Cogito 8y ago

yellowapple 8y ago

Samsung's been shipping waterproof (or at least water-resistant) headphone-jacked phones for years now.

Cogito 8y ago
Exactly, I think there are solutions for more or less everything I listed, or solutions could be found if necessary. I think the headphone jack is a very practical component of the phone, and miss it regularly, but removing it does remove a few limitations on the designer. At some point, in perhaps the not too distant future, I wouldn't be surprised if phones had been reduced down to look like not much more than a piece of glass. Maybe even a piece of flexible glass! That's definitely been the trend for a while now, and things like edge to edge screens and wireless charging move us further in that direction. Thankfully neither of those seem to have necessitated the removal of some other function. There have been other casualties other on this path to simplification, such as the removal of the physical home button, but I don't think any which leave as big a gap as the headphone jack.
- lagadu 8y ago
  That would definitely be cool, we see them fairly often in modern scifi films/shows too nowadays.
icebraining 8y ago
Yeah, I mean it's not like they need to allow air to pass to the interior of the phone. All you need is a couple of exposed metal tabs, no different than the USB/lightning port.

lagadu 8y ago

Can't be thinness because the thinnest iphone ever is the 6s, which has a headphone jack and it can't be waterproofing because android makers seem to do waterproof phones with jacks just fine some of them even thinner than iphones too.